Stronger Than Coffee

Need a jolt in the morning? Then just take a gander at this photo of the gorgeous Amy Winehouse. I'm not sure if she's really 24 or the living dead, but in either case I'm fairly certain that the only way to kill her is to destroy the brain.

Give The People What They Don't Want

The tech world is full of inherently terrible ideas, many of which never see the light of day. One especially bad one that just won't seem to die (like some celebutants) is the idea that people want to buy DVDs that will self-destruct in a couple of days. Aside form the fact that the entire concept is basically like raping mother nature, it's an idea that consumers have shown zero interest in getting behind. But nearly a decade after the idea was first floated, Staples is about to get onboard with it.

Flexplay, a company that's been peddling self-destructing DVDs for five years or so, is teaming up with the office supply chain to start selling the future coasters for $4.99 each later this month. It makes perfect sense to do it at a time when downloads are becoming more popular, Netflix is ubiquitous and there's a newer disc format out there competing with DVD. If you haven't converted your stock over to Office Depot, hurry.

Judgement Call

Should you feel bad for Kelsey Grammar or not?

One one hand he's had a whole slew of personal tragedy. In 1968, his father was murdered on the front lawn of his home. In 1975, his sister was raped and murdered by a gang of hooligans after being abducted outside a Red Lobster restaurant in Colorado. And in 1980, his twin half-brothers were killed in a SCUBA diving accident.

On the other, he made millions upon millions playing one character for 20 years (and more than half was on the terribly unfunny Frasier)

On one hand, he just suffered a mild heart attack.

One the other hand, he was was paddle-boarding with his wife, Camille, when he experienced symptoms. In Kona, Hawaii's big island, where they live. And this is his former playmate wife:

Well, to be fair, she has irritable bowel syndrome, and that's kinda unsexy.

Diddley Deadly

Finally, a good name I can use, instead of just putting it and the dates!

Bo Diddley was a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive guitar work inspired legions of other musicians. He died at 79 of heart failure at his home. The musician had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Diddley appreciated the honors he received, "but it didn't put no figures in my checkbook. If you ain't got no money, ain't nobody calls you honey," he quipped.

The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago. His first single, "Bo Diddley," introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as "shave and a haircut, two bits". Diddley's influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic and was also one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, adding reverb and tremelo effects. He even rigged some of his guitars himself.

Growing up, Diddley said he had no musical idols, and he wasn't entirely pleased that others drew on his innovations. "I don't like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it," he said. "I don't have any idols I copied after. They copied everything I did, upgraded it, messed it up. It seems to me that nobody can come up with their own thing, they have to put a little bit of Bo Diddley there," he said.

Diddley, like other artists of his generations, was paid a flat fee for his recordings and said he received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances. "I am owed. I've never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."

In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music, "Jungle Music." It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll." Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat." And he did.

Bummer, Man

Long-term heavy use of marijuana may cause two important brain structures to shrink, Australian researchers said on Monday. I'm sorry, can you repeat that?

Brain scans showed the hippocampus and amygdala were smaller in men who were heavy marijuana users compared to nonusers, the researchers said. The men had smoked "at least five marijuana cigarettes" daily for on average 20 years. Damn, calling them marijuana cigarettes makes it sound totally uncool.

The hippocampus regulates memory and emotion, while the amygdala plays a critical role in fear and aggression. The study also found the heavy cannabis users earned lower scores than the nonusers in a verbal learning task -- trying to recall a list of 15 words. Yeah, well, what list of 15 words? I bet if pizza, interweb, and Will Ferrell were chosen they'd remember.

Among the 15 heavy marijuana users in the study, the hippocampus volume was 12% less and the amygdala volume was 7% less than in 16 men who were not marijuana users. The researchers acknowledged that the study did not prove it was the marijuana and not some other factor that triggered these brain differences but the findings certainly suggested marijuana was the cause. Marijuana users were more likely to exhibit mild signs of psychotic disorders, but not enough to be formally diagnosed with any such disorder, the researchers added. While about half of the marijuana users reported experiencing some form of paranoia and social withdrawal, only one of the nonusers reported such symptoms. The heavy marijuana users, average age 40, said they had used other illicit drugs less than 10 times.

Supporters of legal sales and regulation of marijuana took issue with the findings, particularly because they were based on men who were such heavy, long-term users.

"These were people who were essentially stoned all day every day for 20 years," said a Marijuana Policy Project spokesman. "This study says nothing about moderate or occasional users, who are the vast majority -- and the (study) even acknowledges this. The documented damage caused by comparably heavy use of alcohol or tobacco is just off-the-charts more serious, and you don't need high-tech scans to find it."

Researchers have begun new research on the effects of both short-term and long-term and moderate and heavy use of marijuana. Who ever wrote that last sentence must be high.

Spel Chekk

A computer spell-checker run amok christened several Pennsylvania high school students with awesome new last names.

Middletown Area High School's yearbook listed Max Zupanovic as "Max Supernova," Kathy Carbaugh as "Kathy Airbag" and Alessandra Ippolito as "Alexandria Impolite," just to name a few. Supernova? Supercool.

"It was kind of funny, but kind of rude at the same time," Ippolito said.

The mistakes were found on four of the yearbook's 176 pages, the co-editor said. Ed Patrick of Taylor Publishing, which printed the book, said his company is responsible for the errors and will provide free stickers printed with the correct names. "It happens all the time, every year," Patrick said. "Look at any yearbook in the country."

Actually, I don't think it does. Because back when I was working on the yearbook in high school, there was no spellcheck on the name section. Because they're names, idiot.

Writing Weekend

The first installment of His Words - Not Mine is due Monday morning, and while I have fleshed out some of Scartoe's ideas, putting them to paper (figuratively) is a different story. Guess I know how the next couple of days are going to be spent.

This whole arrangement, having won the coin toss seemed to be better to take the first swing than develop the game plan. I think that the advantage in starting is not having to worry about an idea going astray. Not that I don't have plenty of ideas floating around, it's just I couldn't bear the thought of one of my children being raised differently than I had in mind. Plus, I like the challenge of having to write somebody else's story and coming in with a different perspective to their plot or characters.

Please check out the first chapter Monday morning after 9am.

Yes, It Makes You Look A Little Gay

There's a fine line between superhero and superhomo.

UPDATE: The embed is a little wonky, so if there's nothing to click on and play, jump to the site.

Cocaine Jesus

U.S. customs officials have seized a statue of Jesus Christ made from plaster mixed with cocaine -- the latest sophisticated attempt to smuggle drugs from Mexico. And add drugs to construction supplies.

Sniffer dogs at the border crossing in Laredo, Texas, alerted officials to the smell of narcotics in the 6.6 pound statue, which was in the trunk of a car being driven by a Mexican woman.

Yes, this is the first time you've ever heard the phrase "The statue tested positive for cocaine".

U.S. border police later arrested a 61 year old Mexican man accused of offering the woman $80 to carry the statue to the bus station in downtown Laredo. Apparently, the officers were so happy at their discovery that the woman was able to escape back to Mexico. What did she do, tip toe quietly behind them while they looked the other way?

The average price of a gram of pure cocaine in the United States is around $130. The average cost of Jesus - priceless! I think that a Cocaine Jesus would be an excellent god to follow. Much better than Heroin Buddha, Marijuana Yahweh, or Lite Beer Allah. But then again, you can't trust a god that's made of drugs. You can trust in God and you can trust in drugs, but you can't do both. That's theology or something.

Take That You Filthy Apes!

Dean Kamen ain't a-scared of the cyber-ape apocalypse. In fact, he's going to fight fire with fire.

Kamen has developed an impressive, mind-controlled prosthetic robot arm. Dubbed "Luke" (after Skywalker, most likely), is an incredibly sophisticated bit of engineering that's light years ahead of the clamping "claws" that many amputees are forced to use today. The arm is fully articulated, giving the user the same degrees of movement as a natural arm, and is sensitive enough to pick up a piece of paper, a wineglass or even a grape without mishap.

Shitty City

That movie about four pre-menopausal alcoholics who'll fuck anything with a Y-chromosome comes out today, and I am thrilled at the backlash and mockery over it. You don't have to go too far on the interweb to catch a taste, so I'm not going to spend time digging all that up for you. Instead, I just have to question the virtue of our old vaginas.

Fortunately, I did not have to watch the six seasons of screw-gars spreading their legs for all comers, but somebody who did calculated all the partners they bedded in that time. Samantha led the pack with 41 johns (and one woman for good measure), while the rest of the horses trailed far behind but together. Carrie hooked up with 18 as well as Charlotte, and Miranda was just shy of tying with 17. By the way, hate yourself if you're a man and you know who which character is. So for 94 shows, they banged 94 guys. Nice work, skanks.

According to condom manufacturer Durex, the nation average of partners a woman has is nine, but women in Manhattan more than double that count with 20. These four totally skew with their figures. What I've always maintained is that the show tries to legitimise the action of a couple of whores under the guise of looking for love and happiness. And as women get older and more desperate to not be a spinster, they make more mistakes and unwise choices - like channeling their inner slut. Clearly these troglodytes have intimacy issues and trouble maintaining relationships, and boy, can they pick them!

There's no question women are going to flock to a movie that dangles fashion and sexual gratification before them, but let's pray they can tell the difference between entertainment and reality. Because four natty fictitious sluts is plenty.

no shit it's ugly

D1ckb46 H4x0rs

From the Threat Level section of Wired, details on the Comcast website attack from yesterday, where hackers took control of both their homepage and webmail service for over five hours. Check it:

In an hour-long telephone conference call with Threat Level, the hackers known as "Defiant" and "EBK" expressed astonishment over the attention their DNS hijacking has garnered. In the call, the pair bounded freely between jubilant excitement over the impact of their attack, and fatalism that they would soon be arrested for it.

"The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would," says Defiant, a 19-year-old man whose first name is James. "I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad." The two hackers are members of the underground group Kryogeniks. The interview was arranged by Mike "Virus" Neives, an 18-year-old New Yorker who pleaded guilty as a minor last year to hacking AOL. Neives, who was on the call, is also a member of Kryogeniks, though he and his compatriots say he's stopped hacking.

Neives vouched for the identities of the hackers. Threat Level also confirmed Defiant's identity over AOL instant messenger, on a handle that's known to belong to Defiant. Neither hacker would identify their full names or locations. Defiant's MySpace profile lists him in Cashville, Tennessee, but he says that's incorrect. His girlfriend lists herself in New York. Threat Level expects both hackers' names and locations will emerge soon.

The hackers say the attack began Tuesday, when the pair used a combination of social engineering and a technical hack to get into Comcast's domain management console at Network Solutions. They declined to detail their technique, but said it relied on a flaw at the Virginia-based domain registrar.

Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade disputes the hackers' account. "We now know that it was nothing on our end," she says. "There was no breach in our system or social engineering situation on our end." However they got in, the intrusion gave the pair control of over 200 domain names owned by Comcast. They changed the contact information for one of them, Comcast.net, to Defiant's e-mail address; for the street address, they used the "Dildo Room" at "69 Dick Tard Lane."

Comcast, they said, noticed the administrative transfer and wrested back control, forcing the hackers to repeat the exploit to regain ownership of the domain. Then, they say, they contacted Comcast's original technical contact at his home number to tell him what they'd done. When the Comcast manager scoffed at their claim and hung up on them, 18-year-old EBK decided to take the more drastic measure of redirecting the site's traffic to servers under their control. (Comcast would neither confirm nor deny the warning phone call.) "If he wasn't such a prick, he could have avoided all of that," says EBK. "I wasn't even really thinking. Plus, I'm just so mad at Comcast. I'm tired of their shitty service."

"They called me back five minutes later and said, 'We got Comcast'," recalls Neives.

The defacement message was short and simple: "KRYOGENICS Defiant and EBK RoXed Comcast," it read. "sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven."

Comcast boasts 14 million subscribers nationwide, and handling the massive traffic aimed at Comcast.net was no easy task. The hackers stayed up most of the night opening new webhosting accounts, and constantly moving the DNS to follow them. In all, they claim, they burned through 50 different hosts to keep their defacement alive. "You know how hard it is to find hosting handling that kind of traffic?" says EBK "The first one went in two minutes." The attack began at around 11:00 p.m. Eastern time, and the hackers owned Comcast.net until 4 or 5 a.m. Even when Comcast regained control, it took hours longer for the change to fully propagate through the DNS, leaving some customers without webmail access as late as 11:30 Thursday morning.

EBK slept for an hour Wednesday night; Defiant for 20 minutes. Even as the attack was in progress, the hackers began to feel the weight of their actions. Both say they've been raided by law enforcement before. "I slept in my clothes, because the last time they came, I was in my underwear with my dong hanging out and shit," says Defiant.

"I feel like he did it for the publicity," says Luis "Auto" Alicea, a former member of Kryogeniks, who runs a website hosting screenshots of hacks in progress. "The fame."

Defiant began hacking about three years ago, when he was kicked out of high school for possession of narcotics at the age of 16. "I wound up assaulting the school resource office," he says. He entered a home schooling program, but didn't take to it, and gravitated to the internet. There he "bumped into the wrong people." EBK, too, says he dropped out of high school.

Thursday, the pair were dealing with their newfound fame, laughing over the press coverage with a mix of glee and nervous excitement. Some reports have speculated that the hackers were retaliating for Comcast's recent sabotage of BitTorrent traffic; Defiant and EBK say that's false: they just hate Comcast in general. "I'm sure they hate us too," says Defiant. "Comcast is just a huge corporation, and we wanted to take them out, and we did," he says.

Fellow hackers, relying on press reports claiming that customer data may have been compromised, are hitting up the duo for passwords to Comcast e-mail accounts, which they say they don't have. "Nobody was listening in on the ports to try and get usernames and password," says Defiant. "We could have, but we didn't." (On this point, Comcast and the hackers agree).

The hackers say the flaw they exploited still exists, and that other large websites are equally vulnerable. Asked if they plan to attack anyone else, EBK says, "Who knows. Only Kryogeniks knows"

The elder hacker in the team says he was reluctant to use his access to take over Comcast.net, and emphasizes that the pair tried to warn Comcast about the flaw.

"I was trying to say we shouldn't do this the whole damn time," says Defiant. "But once we were in," adds EBK, "it was, like, fuck it."

These two douches are totally screwed. To say they didn't know what they were getting themselves into is a load of shit. They found a vulnerability in a corporate website and went ahead with a hack because they were rebuffed upon reporting it? I don't think so. Planned attack all the way, from seeking out the flaw, to spending all that time keeping ahead of Comcast to keep the hack firm. This kind of hacking is just cyber-graphitti. Totally fitting the picture of Defiant is him chugging a bong rip. H4x0r 7001.

Kissaleezza

If ever there's another war under false pretenses, the Kiss Army can count on help from Condoleezza Rice.

The Secratary of State met the rock band when they happened to share a hotel in Stockholm. She was there for an international conference on Iraq while Kiss had a gig then next day.

"I was thrilled," Rice said of her late-night encounter with frontman Gene Simmons and bandmates Paul Stanley, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer. They met in the executive lounge of their hotel, where they signed autographs and handed out backstage passes and T-shirts to her staff. "It was really fun to meet Kiss and Gene Simmons," she told reporters, noting they seemed well informed about current events. The band had asked if she could stop by after she finished dinner with the Swedish foreign minister and Rice readily agreed.

Kiss weren't wearing their trademark stage makeup but were still recognized.

Rice is a classically trained pianist with self proclaimed eclectic musical tastes, she conceded she had never seen the group in concert. And while she frequently attends classical music performances, Rice claims to have been to only four rock concerts in her life - Paul Revere and the Raiders, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Earth, Wind and Fire, and U2. You can see how out of touch she is with the "rock" music just by looking at those bands and thinking they're all rock.

No word on if Gene Simmons banged her...because that's what he does.

UPDATE: Proof! And proof that Paul Stanley looks like shit. He is an ugly woman.

Harvey Korman 1927-2008

Harvey K was on the Carol Burnett Show, but I think his best work was in Blazing Saddles and History Of The World, Part I. It's shitty, but I didn't realize he was still alive. Was.

Ooga Booga

If a tribe lives in the forest but has never been seen, do they make a sound?

That answer is still being debated, but they do photograph. One of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes was spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border. The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the government.

They photographed "strong and healthy" warriors, six huts and a large planted area, but it was not known to which tribe they belonged. The government does not make contact with the Indians and prevents invasions of their land, to ensure total autonomy for the isolated tribes. Survival International said the Indians are in danger from illegal logging in Peru, which is driving tribes over the border and could lead to conflict with the estimated 500 uncontacted Indians now living on the Brazilian side.

There are more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, most of them in Brazil and Peru.

Me, I find it a little odd that there are still people in 2008 that have no contact with the outside, civilized world. Really, what did they think that the helicopter was that flew over to take their picture? A giant, shiny bird monster? I like that they have their weapons drawn, but it looks a little cartoonish. Even staged, perhaps. Why are they fake spray-on tan orange, and the third person (who looks like a woman) midnight black? I'm all for making a point about conservation and preserving nature's indigenous creatures, but the cynic in me questions the authenticity...

Swayze Centaur

What possesses a portly man to get this hybrid celebrity / mythical beast tattoo on his calf is so far beyond me...but thank God we have it to admire.

Double Birthday Trouble

For over 15 years it's been a welcome super-bitch having to juggle the celebrations of both Herr Docktor and Mush. What are the chances that two of my longest and best friends would be born on the same year and day? (365-1, smartasses)

Between and with these two, I have:

• been arrested
• played with my band at their school
• dropped acid (at Disneyland, no less)
• shared an apartment
• seen them naked
• held at gunpoint by the police
• traveled to visit them when they lived out of state
• attended several concerts, including Lollapalooza, Pearl Jam w/ The Ramones, and Counting Crowes (before their album debut)
• hooked up with their sibling's friend
• played Street Fighter II until almost dawn at Charlie's Donuts

• studied for some hard ass tests
• attended a wedding they ministered
• worked in a restaurant
• watched them vomit (copious amounts, too)

• thrown keg parties and progressives

• attended prom (not as the other's date)

• helped them move

• sparred (it sucked, trust me)

• played Dungeons & Dragons

• went snowboarding

• two words: street cream!
• tried to help pitch a publishing project, only to head into Mexico to get cervezas y prescriptions

And which applies to which may surprise you. Hope neither of them wants to be president, because I just fucked them with all that. I love you guys both, you old(er than me) bastards!

Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle?

Now you can take your Guitar Hero experience anywhere with the Nintendo DS as demonstrated in this incredibly cheesed-out video. I know some actors are hard up for a dollar, but this is embarrassing.

Anybody wanna guess how much they're going to be selling replacement stylus picks for? Guaranteed that gets lost in the first week.

Roborilla

Using only its brainpower, a monkey could direct a robotic arm to pluck a marshmallow from a skewer and stuff it into its mouth. Great, the dawn of cyber-apes is upon us.

The technology behind this feat may lead to brain-powered prosthetic limbs for people with spinal cord injuries or disabling diseases that make such simple tasks impossible. Or make our simian brothers nigh unstoppable. Until now, such brain-machine interfaces have been used to control cursor movements on a computer screen.

To operate the motorized appendage, monkey guides the robot arm the same way it does its natural limbs, through brain signals. The signals are transferred through an array of microelectrodes half the size of a thumbtack that has been implanted in the monkey's brain, then amplified and relayed to a computer that operates the robotic arm. Certain motor neurons fire rapidly when the monkey wants to move a certain way.

The researchers said it takes about three days for a monkey to learn to operate the arm, and they continuously improve. So far, they have trained two monkeys to feed themselves with the robotic arm. The monkeys sit in a chair with their arms gently restrained in sleeves that keep them from simply grabbing the food on their own. The monkeys appear to enjoy the task, but just wait until they rise against the humans.

Now that the system appears to function, the scientists seek to refine the system by developing an operating wrist and jointed fingers to add dexterity to the device.

Printer Of Death

This demo for Metal Storm's kill box pod weapons system is sedate, but totally cool. Never has solid state weaponry been so interesting or effective at turning you into pulpy, unrecognizable bits.