Friday’s Random News

I’ve got this giant stack of digital stuff on my desk (ok, they’re just bookmarks), so let’s get it on!

– Actor Ashton Kutcher made a biopic of former Apple head Steve Jobs. As part of “getting in to character”, Kutcher decided to go to Jobs’ famous “fruititarian” diet. Within days, Kutcher was in severe pain. Admitted to the hospital, his pancreas was all out of whack. What did Jobs die of? Pancreatic cancer. (story)

This editorial from TorrentFreak talks about jail terms for unlocking mobile phones and how it shows the “true black heart” of the copyright monopoly. Which is funny, because Canipre, a company that helps movie studios sue downloaders was recently busted for using Flicker photographs without permission.

– There’s a new technique for estimating a person’s time of death… and it involves the brain’s internal clock. Neat, yet somehow scary.

– Speaking of science, some scientists are convinced that the Planck spacecraft has shown actual, physical evidence that our universe might not be the only one.

– Also from the world of science, the Suomi NPP satellite recently captured images of gravity waves caused by a cyclone near the Bay of Bengal. The pictures are fascinating!

– You might have heard this already, but Georgia Tech will soon offer a full online master’s degree for only $7,000. In what educators are calling a “first”, Tech will offer full, genuine CS master’s degrees to folks who can ante up the bargain basement price (well, and pass the coursework, of course).

– Cops in California went undercover at a local high school to bust a 17 year-old special needs kid for selling them marijuana. The kid – diagnosed with “Asperger’s and other disabilities” was at first excitedto make a new friend, especially one who called and texted him around the clock. But then the “friend” tried to get the kid to sell his prescriptions meds. When the kid refused, the “friend” badgered him to get him some weed. What I want to know is… why do cops have such a GIANT HARD ON to bust kids? (story)

– I love it when liberals fight each other! In what had to have been one of the oddest scenes ever, a group of transgendered men attacked feminists at a conference at Portland State University. So, basically, this particular bunch of feminists believe that “social roles based on sex are undesirable and harmful to women”. And this particular bunch of transgendered men believe that “social roles based on sex are natural and innate and that it is instead the unchanging nature of biological sex that is undesirable.” The men approached the women, who were sitting at a table with books and pamphlets. The men knocked the table over and destroyed the books. Fun!

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