WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

• Good news for all of you who like bad news: North Korea is saying that South Korea's actions are driving the peninsula to the "brink of war."NK is like that boyfriend that says his girlfriend made him hit her. Obama vowed to defend South Korea if North Korea tries anything more. This has potential to be so fucking shitty for everyone.
• An Indonesian cleric has been jailed for marrying a 12 year old girl. He said he was gonna wait til she hit puberty before banging his bride ... I'm not sure why he couldn't just wait until puberty to marry her. On top of that, he also stated that he was planning on marrying two other girls, aged 7 and 9 (Muslims are allowed up to 4 wives in Indonesia). In case you were wondering, the childbride was delivered back to her parents by cops immediately following the wedding -- not sure why they weren't arrested as well.
• Speaking of child molesting priests, a priest who was accused of molesting a kid managed to prove that he's a super scumbag by hiring a undercover agent as a hitman to kill the kid he molested. Way to be Holy, asshole.
• The 29 miners that were trapped in the New Zealand mine are presumed dead following a second explosion. Why are mines suddenly in the news so much? Have they been this disastrous in the past, or is this a new phenom?
• San Francisco is filled with geniuses: they're regulating their Happy Meals. Now, in order for a McDonalds in SF to offer happy meals with toys, they have to meet certain dietary standards. There's hopes that this will help fight childhood obesity and that other cities will follow suit.
• Fans have been lined up at a Barnes & Nobel in Phoenix since 1am for a Sarah Palin book signing. Mark my words: She is going to run for President in 2012, and she is going to win. Do I want her to? No. But she will. She's doing everything right. She knows that popularity wins and she's working on spinning every aspect of her life to make her popular.
• It looks like things like the interwebs is making insider trading more and more gray.
• Facebook just won the trademark on the word FACE. Face. FACE!?
• SpaceX, the first commercial-based company has been granted permission to have their spacecraft return to earth after leaving it.
• This Sunday "60 Minutes" will be taking an inside look on the new Spiderman musical that Bono wrote. It's the most expensive musical ever and it just so happens to have one of my best friends in it! Mazel Tov, Mat Devine!!!
• Cookie Monster wants to be on SNL. This isn't newsworthy, but I figured that it's a light hearted thing that can be used to change the topic when things get heavy or heated during Thanksgiving dinner.
• Kuwait is looking to ban the use of digital cameras in public by anyone who isn't an accredited journalist.
• In Israel you are required to do about 2 years in the army, no matter what. I've found that this has toughened up a lot of Israeli's that I know and given them a "no bullshit" attitude that can sometimes be seen as abrasive. Obviously, some Israeli citizens have no interest in being in the army -- especially with things being so tense. But, being the industrious people that they are, the Israeli government is now using Facebook to track down draft dodgers. Way to go, Facebook, way to go.

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

• The Chinese have built that world's top supercomputer. The computer is called the Tianhe-1A, and it knocked the American supercomputer, Jaguar, to second place. In third place is another Chinese supercomputer. To give some prospective on how fast these technologies move, three years ago, a US supercomputer was ranked at #1 and today it's #12. This is important because on top of China becoming an economic superpower in the coming years, becoming a technological superpower will help up their abilities to develop things like war strategies and other methods of control. People are saying not to worry about this... yet. However, we're talking about the same government that just sentenced a woman to a year in a labor camp for Tweeting: "Charge, angry youth." And now, it looks like China has found a way to re-route a significant amount of U.S. internet traffic. According to a report:

  The rerouting happened on April 8 and lasted for about 18 minutes. The traffic hijacking affected U.S. government and military networks, including those belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Commerce, NASA and the U.S. Senate. Commercial sites, including those belonging to Microsoft, Dell and Yahoo, were also affected.

So yeah... American computer nerds, get on it.
• Yesterday it was in the news that Germany was upping their security due to terrorist threats, and it looks like a bomb was intercepted on it's way to Munich. The terrorists have it all wrong -- your enemy's enemy is your friend. You guys both hate Jews. Or at least, Germany once did... remember? You're going after the wrong country. The French hate Jews as well. So do the Brits. So... like, stop with this bullshit, guys.
• Scientists think they found proof of the existence of extra dimensions. NO BIG DEAL OR ANYTHING. My theory is that not only has the planet been visited by aliens, but we've also been encountering "aliens" from other dimensions on the regular. Ever have dejavu or ESP? I think that's actually us encountering the time dimension slicing through our lives. This makes more sense when you watch Carl Sagen talk about it.
• Wanna know what's happening at the Large Hadron Collider? Here's an update! Looks like they've managed to trap some anti-matter.
• Scientists say that global weather is going to get even more devastating thanks to climate change.
• Cal-Maine, one of the country's largest egg distributors, are being accused of animal cruelty. There's some pretty horrendous things going on there, and while I haven't yet given up on eating eggs, I am considering it. I gave up eating chicken because nobody gives a shit about chickens, it seems, so they let them live in gross conditions and I am not into that.
• Shit is getting more bonkers in Haiti. People are attacking peace keepers and accusing them of starting the cholera outbreak. I hate to say it, but it's possible. I mean, there's already speculation that the US used HAARP to cause the earthquake.
• Are MySpace and Facebook joining forces? They're gonna make some sort of announcement at 12 PST today.
• Satellite imagery shows activity over North Korea nuclear testing site.



Wow. Today's news was so tin-foil-hat worthy. Sorry.