Author: Jim Cofer

– You know those news stories you sometimes read about a child trapped under a heavy object, and a panicked parent temporarily gaining super human strength in order to rescue the child? Well, it’s apparently happened again, this time in Kansas. Apparently Nick Harris, a completely average 5’8″, 185lb. man, saw a neighbor’s daughter being accidentally backed over by a Mercury sedan. He rushed over and lifted the car off her. He tried lifting several other cars later that same day, but could not replicate the deed.

– In his new film Up In The Air, George Clooney stars as somone who is a member of an airline’s super-secret frequent flier program that offers such perks as private check-in, secret doors that allow him to get “cuts” to the front of the security lines, customer service on a first-name basis who will do anything to get him to his destination, even if that means booking him on another airline or holding connecting flights at the gate, and a “never, ever, ever bumped” policy. Although the film takes a few liberties, such über-elite programs are actually real. This post over at ABC News talks about the real-life perks that some lucky folks get.

– Firefox 3.5 has apparently overtaken Internet Explorer 7 as the single most popular browser.

– Click here to read about the couple who paid around $150,000 for a 175 square foot “micro studio” apartment in Manhattan. The apartment is 15 feet long and 10 feet wide, and the bed takes up a whopping third of the living space… but the view is reportedly spectacular!

– Britain’s Prime Minster Gordon Brown once bounced a £3 rent check when he was in college. This news came to light as his former landlord, who found the check while going through some old papers, decided to put it up for sale on eBay. I’ll let you write your own “how can he balance the budget when he can’t even balance his own checkbook” jokes.

– A group of undersea archaeologists have found yet another strange formation on the bottom of the Caribbean sea, and think that the pictures show more proof of the existence of Atlantis. I say “another” because some people have been convinced for years that the so-called Bimini Road is evidence of some great civilization that once flourished in the Caribbean islands. The group hasn’t released the specific location of their “find” yet.

One of my all-time favorite hotties, actress Brittany Murphy, has passed away. She was 32. From reports:

Los Angeles police have opened an investigation into circumstances surrounding the death of actress Brittany Murphy.

Police have been dispatched to Cedars-Sinai and to Murphy’s home in the tree-lined hills of West Hollywood. Police sources emphasized that their inquiry was preliminary, adding they could not say whether it would point to any criminal conduct.

Murphy, 32, died early today after going into cardiac arrest, law enforcement sources said. L.A. city firefighters responded to “a medical request” at Murphy’s home in the 1800 block of Rising Glen Road. Murphy was transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.

Born in Atlanta, Murphy moved to Burbank with her mother at age 13. Her film break came in the movie “Clueless” (1995), in which she starred opposite Alicia Silverstone.

You will be missed, Brittany!

via L.A. police investigate death of Brittany Murphy | Los Angeles Times.