By Gavon Laessig (BuzzFeed) Nancy Upton, the gorgeous prankster who satirized American Apparel’s condescending search for a plus-sized model with smutty and silly overindulgence photos, actually won the online contest! Then American Apparel acted all American Apparel and wouldn’t recognize her victory, even though she had far and away the most votes. Here are some more of the photos that lampooned the contest and won the hearts of online voters.
via Woman Who Made Fun Of American Apparel Contest Wins, American Apparel Act Like A Bunch Of Babies.
By Noddy (DailyKos) The chances are increasing that your child will be arrested for being a child and behaving in a childish fashion at school. Behavior that once got a child a trip to the principal’s office or detention will now get them booked at the police station. Doubt me? Look it up: a 5 year old arrested for having a temper tantrum in kindergarten and a 12 year old arrested for scribbling on a desk, a 13 year old boy was arrested for burping, a 5th grader arrested for giving a wedgie, and I’m sure you can find more.
It’s never too early to teach your child what to do if they get arrested at school for normal behavior, as demonstrated by the arrest of the above children.
So what do you teach your child?
Pretty much the same things you would do yourself, but the most important one is to teach your child to tell the arresting police officer, “I want a lawyer.” School officials and police officers won’t call the parents, because they don’t think parents have any need to know their child is being removed from the school. In the case of the 5 year old, it wasn’t the school principal who called the parents or the police – it was a guidance counselor who felt the need to inform the mother. Teach your child those critical 4 words – “I want a lawyer” – the police by law have to respect that regardless of the age of the arrestee.
I am not a lawyer or a police officer, but almost everyone in my family is in law enforcement – highway patrol, county sheriffs, lake patrol, city police, police detectives, police forensics…this is what they advise and told me and my children to do. The two most important things are: Say the two sentences and nothing else, and don’t touch the police. Other things may vary from state to state, but the gist of the following can help keep your child safe. That “I want a lawyer” sentence will be the lifesaver for your child – the lawyer will call you and take care of the child. If you teach your child nothing else, teach them to say “I want a lawyer” as soon as the police arrive.
The older the child is, the more you can teach, but start with those 4 life-saving words. “I want a lawyer.” Even a three year old can learn to say that. You may need to teach your three year old to say that if day cares start emulating schools and calling the police on minor disciplinary issues. Play-act it with toy handcuffs, or even real ones. zip tie or metal – those are easy enough to find at flea markets. When the handcuffs come out, teach the child to say, “I want a lawyer.” Make it a game when they are young, and re-enforce it as they age.
via Daily Kos: Teach Your Child How to Survive Being Arrested at School.
By Katie Moisse (ABC News) A Florida woman was rushed by helicopter to an Alabama burn center after her face caught fire during routine surgery.
Kim Grice, a 29-year-old mother of three, was having cysts removed from her head at an outpatient surgery center in Crestview, Fla., when the flash fire erupted.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. But surgical fires are usually sparked by heat, often from tools like lasers, and then fueled by alcohol, surgical drapes and oxygen. Grice was wearing a non-rebreathable oxygen mask, according to Traylor.
In October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration launched an initiative to curb surgical fires through increasing awareness and promoting risk reduction practices.
“There are between 550 and 650 surgical fires a year,” said Mark Bruley, vice president for accident and forensic investigation for the ECRI Institute, adding that fewer than 30 of them result in patient injuries.
via Fire Erupts on Woman’s Face During Routine Surgery – ABC News.
(PhysOrg.com) A lot of people who have gone to the zoo have become the targets of feces thrown by apes or monkeys, and left no doubt wondering about the so-called intellectual capacity of a beast that would resort to such foul play. Now however, researchers studying such behavior have come to the conclusion that throwing feces, or any object really, is actually a sign of high ordered behavior. Bill Hopkins of Emory University and his colleagues have been studying the whole process behind throwing and the impact it has on brain development, and have published their results in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Hopkins and his team have focused their research on chimpanzees, mainly due they say, to the fact that chimps are our closet living relative and that they are the only other species besides humans that regularly throw things with a clear target in mind. He and his team have been watching chimps in action for several years and comparing their actions with scans of their brains to see if there were any correlations between those chimps that threw a lot, and those that didn’t or whether they’re accuracy held any deeper meaning.
Surprisingly, they found that chimps that both threw more and were more likely to hit their targets showed heightened development in the motor cortex, and more connections between it and the Broca’s area, which they say is an important part of speech in humans. The better chimp throwers, in other words, had more highly developed left brain hemispheres, which is also, non-coincidently, where speech processing occurs in people.
Such findings led the term to suggest that the ability to throw is, or was, a precursor to speech development in human beings.
After making their discovery regarding the parts of the brain that appear to be involved in better throwing in chimps, the team tested the chimps and found that those that could throw better also appeared to be better communicators within their group, giving credence to their idea that speech and throwing are related. Interestingly, they also found that the better throwing chimps didn’t appear to posses any more physical prowess than other chimps, which the researchers suggest means that throwing didn’t develop as a means of hunting, but as a form of communication within groups, i.e. throwing stuff at someone else became a form of self expression, which is clearly evident to anyone who has ever been targeted by a chimp locked up in a zoo.
via Researches find poop-throwing by chimps is a sign of intelligence.
(LA Times) A woman who pepper-sprayed other shoppers Thursday night at the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch had armed herself with the caustic spray to gain an advantage in the fight for merchandise at the Black Friday sale, a fire captain said.
Twenty customers, including children, were hurt in the 10:10 p.m. incident. Shoppers complained of minor skin and eye irritation and sore throats, he said.
Wal-Mart employees were taking statements from about eight customers who had been pepper sprayed near the front of the store, Seminario said. “After we paid, we saw five that were in really bad shape,” she said. “They had been sprayed in the face, it looked like, and they had swelling of the face, really extreme swelling of face, redness, coughing.”
via Customers hit by pepper spray at Wal-Mart describe scene of chaos – latimes.com.
Costco's 'Mini-Piglet'
By Curtis Cartier (Seattle Weekly) Feast your eyes on the Mini Piglet! This pressure-formed pig-shaped pork monstrosity is a revolution in culinary alliteration (looks and tastes like the animal it began as). And it’s on sale at Costco right now!
via ‘Mini Piglet’ Is Costco’s Most Horrid Meat Abomination – Seattle News – The Daily Weekly.
BERLIN (AFP) – A cleaning woman at a German museum who mistook a sculpture for an unsightly mess has destroyed the valuable artwork beyond recognition, a spokeswoman for the western city of Dortmund said Thursday.
The cleaner at the city’s Ostwall Museum went to work on the Martin Kippenberger installation titled When It Starts Dripping From the Ceiling, which was valued by insurers at 800,000 euros ($1.1 million), she said.
The late contemporary master had created a tower of wooden slats under which a rubber trough was placed with a thin beige layer of paint representing dried rain water.
Taking it for an actual stain, the cleaner scrubbed the surface until it gleamed.
“It is now impossible to return it to its original state,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the damage had been discovered late last month and that the work had been on loan to the museum from a private collector.
via $1.1M German museum piece falls victim to cleaning lady.
(MSNBC) Hallmark recently rolled out a new line of layoff greeting cards. Stores have a specific section for job loss and recession humor, offering words of support and encouragement. With the unemployment rate at nine percent, the company says customers called-in the need.
One card reads “Don’t think of it as losing your job. Think of it as a time out between stupid bosses.”
via Hallmark unveils “layoff cards” for the unemployed – Local News – Indianapolis, IN – msnbc.com.
The two toucans
(Press Release) Kellogg’s, the maker of Froot Loops and other sugary breakfast products, is taking legal action against the Maya Archaeology Initiative (MAI), a nonprofit that defends indigenous Maya culture, claiming that the use of a toucan in its logo infringes on Kellogg’s Toucan Sam character and games. The MAI logo can be viewed at www.mayaarchaeology.org.
“This is a bit like the Washington Redskins claiming trademark infringement against the National Congress of American Indians,” said Dr. Francisco Estrada-Belli, president of the Maya Archaeology Initiative and a globally recognized expert on Maya archaeology and culture.
In a detailed response to the cereal giant, Maya Initiative legal counsel Sarah Mott explained that the toucan in MAI’s logo looks nothing like Kellogg’s cartoon character and said the two entities are not in competition. MAI’s logo is based upon a realistic toucan native to Mesoamerica, while Kellogg’s Toucan Sam is a cartoon character with colors that represent Froot Loops’ food coloring.
Mott also challenged Kellogg’s claim that it uses “Mayan” imagery, another reason Kellogg challenged MAI’s logo, and accused the company of sending racist messages to children.
“There is nothing Mayan in [the Froot Loops] Adventure,” Mott wrote to Kellogg’s corporate counsel David Herdman. “Disturbingly, the villain in this Kellogg’s Adventure—and the only character of color—is a ‘witch doctor’ who cackles malevolently when stealing from children. At best, this is culturally insensitive. I would characterize it as a demeaning caricature of an advanced and ancient civilization.”
“Kellogg’s products are a staple of many Guatemalan households,” said Estrada-Belli, a Guatemalan national whose organization promotes education opportunities for Maya children, archaeological work and defense of the rainforest. “We expect a brand that is so familiar to children to play a role in supporting cultural and racial understanding around the world, rather than undercutting it by promoting demeaning racial stereotypes.”
The company has a history of unsuccessful challenges to others’ use of toucans, claiming to hold a trademark on all images of the Central American bird.
The Maya Archaeology Initiative is a project of the California-based World Free Press Institute, a non-profit with a history of defending free expression and challenging repression of cultural heritage issues. The organization has conducted programs for the United Nations, the Ford Foundation and others.
CONTACT: Sam Haswell (415) 699-2802
By Tamsin McMahon (National Post) The City of Saskatoon issued an apology this week to residents after police shut down one of the community’s main bridges for three hours so a bomb squad could probe a mysterious box chained to a lamp post that turned out to be a city-owned traffic counter.
The hard plastic waterproof box, known as a Pelican case, was resting “at the base of the pole,” said police spokeswoman Alyson Edwards.
While they determined there weren’t any explosives, police warned the public that night that the box did contain “electronic equipment capable of capturing and transmitting traffic and/or pedestrian data to an unknown location.”
“A potential owner for the equipment has not been identified as of yet,” they said, prompting a flurry of Wednesday morning media accounts of a “mystery box” found on the bridge.
“I literally read it in the paper and said I know exactly what that is,” said Don Cook, a city transportation planning engineer.City traffic workers had installed the device on Tuesday morning. While Mr. Cook said the city has been using traffic counters in boxes, including at the bridge location, for “decades,” they usually involve pneumatic tubes that stick out onto the roadway, or video cameras. This one, which uses a radar to record traffic volume, speed and pedestrian data that can be remotely downloaded to city computers, was new to Saskatoon this year.
via ‘Bomb’ that shut down Saskatoon bridge really city-owned traffic counter | News | National Post.
