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GrubHub CEO Matthew Maloney, trailed by costume characters, walks the New York Stock Exchange tradin

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GrubHub CEO Matthew Maloney, trailed by costume characters, walks the New York Stock Exchange trading floor before his company's IPO on Friday. Investors sent shares up 51 percent to $39.20 in early trading in its stock market debut. Image via Richard Drew/AP.


Zen Koans Explained: "Sour Miso"

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Zen Koans Explained: "Sour Miso"

Consider a salad. It is made up of many ingredients. Yet we give then all one name: "salad." It's kind of funny.

The koan: "Sour Miso"

The cook monk Dairyo, at Bankei's monastery, decided that he would take good care of his old teacher's health and give him only fresh miso, a paste of soy beans mixed with wheat and yeast that often ferments. Bankei, noticing that he was being served better miso than his pupils, asked: "Who is the cook today?"

Dairyo was sent before him. Bankei learned that according to his age and position he should eat only fresh miso. So he said to the cook: "Then you think I shouldn't eat at all." With this he entered his room and locked the door.

Dairyo, sitting outside the door, asked his teacher's pardon. Bankei would not answer. For seven days Dairyo sat outside and Bankei within.

Finally in desperation an adherent called loudly to Bankei: "You may be all right, old teacher, but this young disciple here has to eat. He cannot go without food forever!"

At that Bankei opened the door. He was smiling. He told Dairyo: "I insist on eating the same food as the least of my followers. When you become the teacher I do not want you to forget this."

The enlightenment: "Okay," Dairyo said. But in his head he was like, "Nah."

This has been "Zen Koans Explained." Not what you've been told.

[Photo: Shutterstock]

Cronut Bakery Shut Down for "Severe Mouse Infestation"

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Dunkin' Donuts has some company: On Friday, the New York Department of Health temporarily shut down Dominique Ansel Bakery, maker of the famous Cronut, because of a "severe mouse infestation."

Video of the mouse scurrying across the bakery's floor surfaced yesterday. The Department of Health didn't waste much time responding: Gothamist reports that by 3 p.m. Friday, the bakery was closed, with a Department of Health notice attached to its front door.

"The establishment was closed by the Department because of a severe mouse infestation that requires professional pest control services," a Department of Health spokesperson told Gothamist.

Dominique Ansel released a statement about the closure. From Eater NY:

Due to the video that was released, the health department used it as evidence to ask us to re-cement and closed down the bakery for extermination. As a small one-shop bakery, we often feel like we're being looked at under a tremendous microscope. A lot of time people don't see the larger ramifications of their actions and how a tiny video of a mouse running across the screen for 3 seconds can cause harm and damages to an honest, small business that people's livelihood depends on. We of course believe that we run a clean and good operation, but see that we were targeted and will rise to the occasion to be even better.

Chef says we will be doing everything that was asked of us, and hope to reopen on Monday. And he's saddened for our customers who had plans this weekend that we weren't able to welcome them. Our team will be here in person to speak to customers live.

Stephen Colbert is Reportedly the Frontrunner to Replace Letterman

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Stephen Colbert is Reportedly the Frontrunner to Replace Letterman

#CancelColbert? More like #PutColbertOnNetworkTVInFrontOfAnEvenLargerAudience, if rumors about CBS's plans to replace Late Night host David Letterman next year are true. Mashable reports Colbert is "the front-and-center candidate" for the job.

Former Deadline editor Nikki Finke reported the same rumor on Twitter Thursday.

No offer has been made, but according to Mashable's sources on both sides of the possible deal, Colbert was talking to CBS before Letterman announced his retirement. Colbert's own Comedy Central contract is up at the end of 2014, and Letterman plans to leave Late Night in "2015, for the love of God!"

Questions still left to resolve: Whether Colbert wants to make the jump to network TV, whether Comedy Central wants to get into a bidding war with CBS to keep him, and which Stephen Colbert the network wants to hire.

The Case That James Franco and His Teen Sexter Are Hoaxing Us All

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The Case That James Franco and His Teen Sexter Are Hoaxing Us All

Earlier this week, poet, teacher, and award-winner James Franco was apparently caught propositioning a 17-year-old girl for a hotel sleepover when images of his Instagram messages were leaked online. But did he really try to bang a teen Scot? Here, we outline the compelling case that Franco is pulling a hoax.

EXHIBIT A

The trailer for James Franco's new movie, Palo Alto, was put online Tuesday morning, just hours before the "scandal" made news.

EXHIBIT B

What is the plot of Palo Alto, a probably terrible film based on a definitely terrible book written by author and movie star James Franco? It tells the story of a 14-year-old girl named April who enters into a relationship with her old, creepy soccer coach, played by author and movie star James Franco.

Close examination of the trailer reveals that the moral of the film is summed up in a line from the teaser: "You're young, you don't know why you do things."

EXHIBIT C

You know who knows why he does things? James Franco.

This past February, he mused on the dual subjects of doing things and why in an op-ed for the New York Times titled Why Actors Act Out:

"Any artist, regardless of his field, can experience distance between his true self and his public persona. But because film actors typically experience fame in greater measure, our personas can feel at the mercy of forces far beyond our control. Our rebellion against the hand that feeds us can instigate a frenzy of commentary that sets in motion a feedback loop: acting out, followed by negative publicity, followed by acting out in response to that publicity, followed by more publicity, and so on.

Participating in this call and response is a kind of critique, a way to show up the media by allowing their oversize responses to essentially trivial actions to reveal the emptiness of their raison d'être. Believe me, this game of peek-a-boo can be very addictive."

EXHIBIT D

Apart from his uncontrollable peek-a-boo addiction, what impetus would James Franco have to publicize his indie movie about creeps and youth? In June, he began an Indiegogo campaign to fund the project. On the page he wrote:

Because of who I am, people often believe that it is easy to find investors and distributors for my films. Unfortunately, things aren't that easy. More times than not, I have put in my own money to produce my films and my student's films. However, this time it's different; We need more funding, I will still fund part of it but I need of your help, filming three feature films back-to-back requires more funding than I can give.

Franco managed to part over $327,000 from deep-pocketed fools. He's got to give them $327,000 worth of entertainment somehow, and it probably won't be from that movie.

EXHIBIT E

James Franco is currently in New York performing in Of Mice and Men on Broadway. This is where he supposedly met "Lucy Clode," the young woman he allegedly tried to bang in a Times Square Hilton earlier this week.

According to the mainstream media's version of events, the genesis of their failed rendezvous first began outside the Longacre Theater, presumably after Franco's Tuesday night Of Mice and Men performance.

Here's the video "Lucy Clode" allegedly uploaded to Instagram after meeting Franco:

The timeline of the events that followed is incredibly complicated, because the entire thing is a hoax. But if you still believe it's is real, let's work through it:

  • "Lucy" films video of James Franco leaving the threatre after his 8:00pm performance on Tuesday evening.
  • After returning to her hotel with her mother, "Lucy" uploads the video to a now-deleted Instagram account, and tags James Franco in it, per his verbal request.
  • She hears from him around midnight on April 2nd. This would match up with with the timeline of her texts ("April Fool's was an hour ago," she writes at one point during their interaction). We will assume that her iPad, which shows a timestamp of 5:33 in screenshots, stayed on Scotland time.
  • ALTHOUGH, the notion that her iPad would stay on Scotland time is dubious, especially because she was using hotel wireless ($13.99/night). Yes, she could have changed the "Set Automatically" time default, but what teen would remember to do that? I'm willing to overlook this point, because questioning time zone defaults is where we start inching into crazy territory, and this theory is not crazy. It is sane and correct.
  • At around 1 a.m. Wednesday, "Lucy" has Instagram, text, and photo "proof" she is communicating with James Franco.
  • At some point on Wednesday, bonnie young "Lucy" on her iPad somewhere in New York City, uploads screenshots of her interactions with Franco to Imgur. There is no evidence of her doing this, beyond the Imgur images themseles. No digital trail. No responses from anyone. No leaked texts from her friends. Just an explosion of tweets starting around 5:30pm EST of people sharing now-dead links to the screenshots of the alleged James Franco shenanigans.

Let's assume for a second that "Lucy" really is a 17-year-old Scottish tourist who turned down sex (and a night away from Mom!) with author and movie star James Franco.

She goes to bed feeling excited and alive and loving New York! She wakes up with her mom on Wednesday, maybe worries about her A-levels for a little while, and eventually decides to upload screenshots of her exchange with James Franco to Imgur, reddit's favorite photo-hosting service, and nowhere else. Not to Instagram, a platform she regularly uses. Not to Twitter, where none of the 59 people she follows seem real. To Imgur alone. Nothing to see here, just a normal Scottish teen, hosting rainbow parties on the moors and uploading pictures to Imgur, a website she loves. A James Franco original drama, released straight to Imgur (no Indiegogo needed).

EXHIBIT F

We can't overlook the over-the-top stupidity of the texts themselves, which, even given the low bar of conversations regarding potential hook-ups, read as fake and contrived. The most unrealistic part of the back-and-forth is how Franco continuously poses questions in clusters:

The Case That James Franco and His Teen Sexter Are Hoaxing Us All

The Case That James Franco and His Teen Sexter Are Hoaxing Us All

While I am no beautiful young woman touring the Big Apple with my mother, I have had my fair share of sketchy text conversations. All of them have employed variations of the same structure: a bland pleasantry here, a "haha" there, but an endless barrage of questions grouped in threes?

Surely in real life James Franco knows to play it cooler than that.

EXHIBIT G

Yesterday, smack dab in the middle of this "Lucy" controversy, Franco used Instagram to promote his growing number of followers:

EXHIBIT H

Today, one day after bragging about his newfound followers, he went on Live With Kelly and Michael and, apparently of his own volition, addressed the incident:

"I'm guess I'm—you know—I'm embarrassed, and I guess I'm just a model of how social media is tricky. It's a way people meet each other today but, what I've learned—I guess just 'cause I'm new to it—it's like: You don't know who's on the other end. You meet somebody in person and you get a feel for them. But you don't know who you're talking to. So, I used bad judgment and I learned my lesson.

Unfortunately, in my position [...] not only do I have to go through the embarrassing rituals of meeting someone, sometimes if I do that, it gets published for the world."

2,020 Instagram posts deep, it takes balls for James Franco to describe himself as "new" to social media. In fact, given the quality and variety of his uploads, one could argue that James Franco is something of an expert.

EXHIBIT I

Even James Franco is not dumb enough to identify himself as James Franco when soliciting anonymous sex from a tech-savvy teen.


All of this is not to say that Lucy Clode does not exist. She has enough of an online presence to establish the fact that she is, in fact, probably alive. And that she—or someone who looks like her—was, almost certainly, standing outside that theater. But anyone who's seen an episode of Catfish or two knows that to assume anymore beyond that turns us all into sad idiots, gazing into our computer screens and desperately believing that everything we think we've seen is real.

Really what this controversy boils down to a simple debate. Is James Franco is a creep? Or is he a hoaxer?

But on what planet is the answer to this question not clearly both?

Someone needs to stand up and call this story out for the bullshit it clearly is. It isn't hard to believe at all that the man who would do this and this and this would be trying to fuck with everyone for attention.

And even if I'm wrong, at the end of the day, I would rather be wrong than live in a world where we give James Franco the satisfaction of our trust.

If we allow James Franco to effectively teach us "lessons" about social media and communication and publicity—if we really let James Franco win—well, fuck. We all lose.

[Image via Getty]

​Desus Is the Opposite of Horse_Ebooks

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​Desus Is the Opposite of Horse_Ebooks

The week of April Fool's Day was a bit existentially dispiriting around here. The warning went out for April 1: Remember, a lot of what the internet will be getting excited about today is fake bullshit being spread in bad faith purely for the sake of getting people excited.

Then on April 2, the New York Post hit newsstands with "Should kids do juice cleanses?"

Luckily, the Kid Mero and Desus were also around on April 2, so that Mero could tweet this:

The idea of Desus, a beloved pseudonymous funny black person on Twitter, actually being a white impostor was more than the audience could bear, or exactly as much as the audience could bear.

Everything is a scam. Trust nothing. Bots are humans. Humans are bots. White people ruin everything. Identity is plastic. Satoshi Nakamoto is not Satoshi Nakamoto.

And then this morning Mero and Desus brought out the first edition of their podcast to feature them on camera. Punchline: No, Desus is not white. The imposture was an imposture.

Please alert Susan Orlean.

Flowchart: How To Know Which The Returned You Are Talking About

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Flowchart: How To Know Which The Returned You Are Talking About

If you want to start a really confusing conversation with someone, ask them if they have ever heard of The Returned.

About two weeks ago, I saw a trailer for a movie directed by Manuel Carballo called The Returned, which is about a post-zombie apocalypse world in which a cure for the zombie virus has been developed, but shit hits the fan when the world's supply of the cure runs low, and people start turning back into zombies. It sounded like a cool movie, so I tried to find it on Netflix.

I found The Returned on Netflix, but The Returned I found was a French TV series (translated from Les Revenants) about a small town in France where people from the town who have been dead for many years suddenly reappear, unaged and unharmed. The premise sounded somewhat familiar to the movie I was looking for, so I watched it. It was pretty good.

While watching The Returned, it dawned on me that the new ABC show, Resurrection, followed the exact same premise. "Aha!" I thought. "Resurrection must be the English-language remake of The Returned. How cool am I for watching the original version first?"

Resurrection is in fact based on The Returned, if by The Returned, you're referring to a 2013 novel by Jason Mott that is about, you guessed it, people who were once dead suddenly returning to existence. The Returned by Jason Mott has nothing to do with the French TV series known as The Returned. But you know what is related to the French TV series known as The Returned? A 2004 movie directed by Robin Campillo called Les Revenants. This film, for some reason, is translated into English as They Came Back. It is about 70 million dead people around the world suddenly coming back to life and struggling to reintegrate into society.

Last year, A&E announced that it was making an English-language adaptation of The Returned, the French TV show that was adapted from the 2004 French movie by the same name. This show will most likely be called The Returned. Meanwhile, season two of the French-language The Returned will begin airing later this year on Sundance Channel.

As you can see, there are currently far too many entries in popular culture known as or derived from The Returned. This level of oversaturation can make it difficult for everyday people like you and me to know which The Returned we are talking about when we engage in conversation with someone about The Returned. To help alleviate this problem, I have created this helpful flowchart:

Flowchart: How To Know Which The Returned You Are Talking About

Also, has anyone checked out The Returned? Is it any good?

Chart by Sam Woolley

A large turnout for the Afghan presidential election has led officials to extend the voting period o

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A large turnout for the Afghan presidential election has led officials to extend the voting period on Saturday by an hour. The turnout comes despite Taliban threats against all participants involved in the election and militants carrying out fatal attacks on polling centers in recent days.


Chinese Ship Hears "Ping" That May Be Lost Flight 370

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Chinese Ship Hears "Ping" That May Be Lost Flight 370

As the month-long time limit on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's battery powered "ping"-emitting black boxes comes close to an end, a Chinese patrol ship searching the southern Indian Ocean as part of the multinational search effort discovered a pulse signal that may (or may not!) lead them to the missing jet.

The signal, picked up on Saturday, had a frequency 37.5Hz per second, which Anish Patel — president of Dukane Seacom, manufacturer of the pingers in question — said is "the standard beacon frequency" for both the cockpit and flight data recorders. Although the report seems hopeful (as hopeful as anything has seemed regarding Flight 370), there is still a good chance that this discovery won't lead to the end of the search. AP reports that it was "not determined whether the signal was related to the missing jet," and oceanographer Simon Boxall told CNN that the frequency is used by a number of different of instruments.

At a media briefing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's defense minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters that, no matter the cost or time, Malaysia would not give up the search. "I can only speak for Malaysia, and Malaysia will not stop looking for MH370."

[Photo credit: AP]

Four People Killed In Astoria Car Crash

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Four People Killed In Astoria Car Crash

Four people were killed in a car crash in Astoria, Queens on Friday night. The group had been driving back from a birthday celebration when their car hit a curb and flipped into the East River. Two men and two women were pulled from Steinway Creek after being trapped in the car for more than half an hour.

Paramedics rushed the four passengers to Elmhurst Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens where they were shortly pronounced dead. The 20-year-old driver managed to escape the car and swim to shore, where he called 911 and flagged down rescue workers as they arrived. He was treated for hypothermia at Elmhurst Hospital early Saturday.

The cause of the accident is still under investigation. Police sources confirm that the driver was not drunk, but the speed of the vehicle may have been a factor.

[image from the scene via AP]

Witnesses and relatives of the soldiers wounded at the Fort Hood shooting say Spec.

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Witnesses and relatives of the soldiers wounded at the Fort Hood shooting say Spec. Ivan A. Lopez's fury was caused by a dispute over paperwork. Lopez apparently became angry after asking human resources for a leave-of-absence application but was told to come back the next day.

Weird Liar Says He Sleeps With 200 Women From Twitter a Year

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Weird Liar Says He Sleeps With 200 Women From Twitter a Year

A 25-year-old man who lives with his mother (oh, his poor mother) in London claims to have slept with 200 women in the past year, all of whom he found through Twitter.

His name is Ben James and, with over 74,000 Twitter followers, he is certainly the most popular man on Twitter currently living with his mom and claiming to use the social network as a device that affords him unlimited sex. The Daily Mail has the scoop:

Ben, who sends around 20 tweets a day, said: 'I'll send out a funny tweet, something edgy, and then it gets retweeted a few hundred times.

Every retweet gets me a hundred or so followers, plus a few celebs, and from that I get a bunch of direct messages.

'Girls send me hundreds of messages a day. Some send naked pictures, some ask for my phone number; and some ask me straight out for sex.

And the siren song tweets, that even attract a few celebs? "Girls will find a misspelled word in your Tweet but can't find their baby father," "I dare a girl with drawn on eyebrows to argue with me. I'll lick my thumb," and "Sweat pants hair tied chillin' with no Makeup on - that's why you single go and put some on" are a few. No, wait — ladies, come back!

And for those of you who still aren't convinced, the claim comes with a bit of sexy chat evidence:

Weird Liar Says He Sleeps With 200 Women From Twitter a Year

Hmmm. Story checks out! And if you haven't gotten your fill of Ben by now (who has?) (round 2 is a must), don't worry: the Daily Mail reports that Ben, a "TV producer," is in talks with MTV about a reality show called It's a London Thing.

Okay!

[Image credit: Shutterstock]

Scientists Label 15 New Emotions, Want to Make Robots With Them

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Scientists Label 15 New Emotions, Want to Make Robots With Them

Previously, the only scientifically identified basic human emotions were happy, sad, fearful, angry, surprised, and disgusted. In a new study published in the journal PNAS, scientists have added 15 new "compound" emotions to that list, which were created by making different combinations of the six basic emotions. Now, you can feel such exciting new sensations as "fearfully surprised" or "sadly disgusted!"

The basic six emotion categories were determined based on the facial muscles humans use to express emotions. But human feelings are definitely more complicated than just what the physical face displays and scientists understand this.

Aleix Martinez, an associate professor at Ohio State University, says that the problem with labeling and identifying emotions is that scientists "cannot fully understand our cognitive system ... if we do not study the full rainbow of expressions that our brain can produce."

But why is labeling these "new" emotions important, other than to create more scientifically-accurate Emoji? Martinez and his team say that these compound emotions will help future research in the areas of PTSD and developmental disorders such as autism. Face blindness, a cognitive disorder in which people are unable to differentiate between people's faces or easily recognize their emotions, may also benefit from this new research.

Scientists also believe that mapping the human spectrum of emotion is especially useful for making robots who will be able to more accurately understand what humans are feeling:

It could also be used to create better human-computer interaction systems.

In Japan, for instance, engineers are trying to create a robot that can interact naturally with humans, Martinez says. Japan's rapidly aging population is lacking young caretakers, and this robot could be a companion to the elderly.

"In order to do that, you need to have a system that can recognize the expressions of the user," Martinez says.

Because exactly what this world needs are robot "caretakers" who can feel such natural human emotions as "fearfully angry" and "disgustingly sad." Start building the fallout shelters now, the emotionally expressive robots are coming.

New Republican Ad Uses Obama Impersonator, Is Just Odd

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Jack Kingston is an 11-term Republican Congressman running in the primary to become Georgia's next senator, and his most recent ad features a phone call from a rather desperate "President Barack Obama."

In an effort to distance himself from the Affordable Care Act, the Congressman enlisted an Obama impersonator to give him a call, pleading with him to back off. "Kingston, this is the president. You've got to back off Obamacare," says President Obama, in a voice that is, admittedly, very nearly his exact voice.

After listing each of the measures Kingston has taken to fight the act, he ends the call with, "Kingston, let me be clear: I do not want you in the Senate. Call me back, Kingston...please?"

Hmmm. As far as voice messages go, it's not bad — they're tricky! — but it is a little rude, a little sad, and, I think, shows President Obama's hand a little too clearly. Next time you give a Congressman a call, Fake President Obama, maybe hide your exact intent a bit? Just until he calls you back! (An example: "Kingston, let me be clear: I would like to talk to you about how I feel about the possibility of you being in the Senate. Call me!")

Oh, and next time you, Jack Kingston, name your campaign video "Call Me Maybe," you should include at least a few bars of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe."

...Please?

PS: Answer the phone when the President calls.

[h/t Mediaite]

Ohio Judge Wants to Recognize Gay Marriages

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Ohio Judge Wants to Recognize Gay Marriages

Judge Timothy Black said in federal court Friday that he will order Ohio to recognize out-of-state marriages. The order will be a step towards recognizing gay marriages in Ohio, but the state will still keep its ban on performing same-sex marriages.

Black made his announcement during the final arguments of a recent lawsuit which challenged the gay marriage ban. The lawsuit was filed by four gay couples in Ohio and the representing legal team asked Black to say that Ohio's gay marriage ban is "facially unconstitutional, invalid and unenforceable."

The team also wants the window open for additional litigation that would force the state to lift its ban on gay marriage. "This is a serious problem at the basic level of human dignity," said civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein during Friday's arguments, "That human dignity is denied by the way Ohio treats same-sex couples." State attorneys argued that it is Ohio's sole province to define gay marriage between a woman and a man, which they assert is the "traditional definition."

Gay marriage is currently legal in 17 states and federal judges have struck down bans in states such as Michigan, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Black says he will issue the ruling on April 14th, though Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Ohio's attorney general, said the state will appeal Black's order when it comes out.


"I shot at the bird and, I guess, one of my BBs hit this guy."

Goonies Director Teases Sequel Featuring Original Cast​

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Goonies Director Teases Sequel Featuring Original Cast​

Almost as popular as sequels to classic films are rumors about sequels to classic films, and Goonies director Richard Donner did his part to jumpstart the latter when speaking with TMZ this morning.

After the TMZ cameraman prodded Donner for an answer that disparaged Hollywood's obsession with rebooting superhero franchises (which he refused to give ["What happened to the art, though?" "The art is made by a lot of good filmmakers."]), the cameraman asked if he had plans to make another comic book movie. "If you call Goonies a comic book," Donner replied. "We're doin' a sequel."

This, of course, isn't the first time rumors of a Goonies sequel have surfaced. (Sean Astin said it was an "absolute certainty" in 2007.) So, as is true with all rumors like this, it's best to take the future possibility of Goonies 2 as a strict "umm, maybe."

When Donner was asked if any of the stars would return he replied, "Hopefully all of them."

[Image: Getty.]

People See Jesus in Grilled Cheese Because They Want Justice

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People See Jesus in Grilled Cheese Because They Want Justice

When people see significant, often religious imagery in everyday images, from grilled cheese to their dog's butt, it's called "pareidolia." But as for exactly why people see divine figures like Jesus in things like potato chips and other ordinary objects, a recent study in the journal cognition says it is due to a phenomenon called "the moral pop-out effect."

What this pop-out effect theory states is that when moral concerns are on your brain or bad things are happening to you, such as a family member being ill, you're more likely to perceive the world in a way that re-dresses injustice.

In the New York Times article on the phenomenon, the effect is compared to when you feel hungry. When you're hungry, you're apt to focus on the food around you. Smells and pictures of food "pop out" at you on the street. When you're looking for guidance related to the problems in your life, signs of salvation and morality pop out at you. So the reason you see Jesus in your potato chip is because your brain is sort of hoping to see Jesus in that potato chip.

In a series of experiment to determine the existence of this moral pop-out effect, people were quickly flashed screens of scrambled letters in which some words were formed. When "moral words" such as "virtue, steal, or God" flashed, participants identified those words over "non-moral" words. Therefore, "moral words" are more easily recognizable.

In a follow-up experiment, people read two versions of a fake news story in which a murderer was either arrested or not arrested. If the murderer in the article was still at large, participants recognized moral words even faster in the previous experiment than those who read about the murderer being brought to justice.

As for the people who see religious figures in basic images and objects, many of those reports were by people who were stressed over a family member's health. So, the next time things are looking pretty down in your life, expect your junkfood to get a lot holier!

NASA's Moon-Orbiting LADEE Will Crash Land This Month

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NASA's Moon-Orbiting LADEE Will Crash Land This Month

NASA's moon-orbiting LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) spacecraft is expected to make a crash landing on the moon sometime this month, after having explored the planet's thin atmosphere and lunar dust environment since October.

Rick Elphic, LADEE project scientist, explained in a a news conference on April 3rd that this would in no way be "a landing you walk away from," so before LADEE crash lands and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter begins its search for all the little LADEE parts, it will explore the lunar dust up close — only a few kilometers above the moon's surface.

This up-close look will help to solve one of LADEE's missions: the origin (or existence) of a glow on the horizon of the moon that Apollo astronauts noticed occurring before sunrise. So far, LADEE hasn't recorded dust concentrations that would account for the glow.

LADEE project manager Butler Hine hopes the spacecraft holds out until accomplishing its mission: "Even if we perform all maneuvers perfectly, there's still a chance LADEE could impact the moon sometime before April 21, which is when we expect LADEE's orbit to naturally decay after using all the fuel onboard."

If you are so inclined, NASA has invited the public to guess the date that LADEE will crash into the moon's surface. Good luck, nerd!

[Image: Getty]

Mentally Unfit

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Mentally Unfit

When the police found me I was standing on a subway platform, somewhere in Brooklyn, barefoot, wearing only soccer shorts in October, and crying. My hands were folded behind my head like a captured soldier. For the previous 12 hours I had wandered the streets of New York, convinced that I was being videotaped, Truman Show-style, by hidden cameras. I made my living as a public defender in Brooklyn, but I did standup at night. I'd recently met with a network executive to discuss a pilot for a reality show based on my act; now I thought the city was my set.

As soon as I walked out of my apartment on the corner of St. Marks and Avenue A that afternoon, I knew we were rolling. I could tell the people on the sidewalk were actors, but just barely. They resembled the normal East Village lot, but they were archetypes—the skaters were all wearing DC Shoes and expensive skinny Levi's, the construction workers' boots were too worn, their accents too Brooklyn thick, and what kind of girl wears Louboutins in this neighborhood? Even the homeless people, with their made-up facial tattoos, were a little too attractive.

The herd steered me toward Tompkins Square Park at the end of my block. I couldn't believe how well they'd cast "generic old man on a park bench." The attention to detail let me know that he was supposed to be my first mark, so I approached him immediately. Wild-eyed, I said hello. He looked nervous but returned the greeting. I grabbed his bike with the intention of taking it for a few laps. "No!" he shouted, as he yanked it away. The old man had some chops. Figuring our scene was up, I sprinted east toward the dog park and hurdled the fence. Before popping back out at the end of the dog run, I dropped down to gallop on all fours with the pack.

Any minor doubts that we were shooting were eliminated when Daniel Day-Lewis power walked through the basketball court. He was dressed in full Gangs of New York regalia—top hat and coat, but, of course, not too heavy for the period, and a long waxed mustache. The producers knew he was my favorite actor, and as a legendary practical joker, he must have agreed to make a cameo just for the hell of it. We certainly couldn't afford him.

I continued my march through the city for the next 11 hours. On the corner of Houston and First Ave, thinking the streets had been closed for me, and the cars were piloted by professional drivers on a closed course, I sprinted across the intersection, narrowly avoiding several taxis as they braked and swerved out of my path. On the other side, I unilaterally engaged a group of black men in a rap battle. My words spilled out of me as if I was reciting memorized verse, familiar as the Pledge of Allegiance, but faster and fiercer than Eminem. I didn't know I could do that, but I felt like a professional MC.

"Yo, man. You gotta chill. You're going to get squashed." I wasn't sure if he meant by him or the traffic.

"Nothing can touch me. This is my day," I countered, and threw my baseball cap on the ground. A demonstration of victory and a generous offering of a soon-to-be-valuable souvenir.

"You're crazy, dude. You should roll. Be careful."

I continued following the foot traffic through the East Village, still thinking the invisible producers, watching on monitors, were using the pedestrians to guide me to specific shooting locations. I ended up on a Brooklyn-bound L train, surrounded by what I still thought were extras and assistants, headed to Williamsburg.

When the train stopped, everyone spilled out in their own directions. Alone and without guidance, I panicked. "What do you want from me?!" I screamed, crying so hard my contacts flushed out of my eyes. I'd lost the game.

The police approached, and their uniforms looked real, but I thought the cop who cuffed me—"for safety purposes"—was an actor. "But you're not real cops?" I asked as they detained me. "No, there's a costume party later," he said. Well, it was close to Halloween, I thought.

Hours later I was admitted to Bellevue's locked psychiatric ward. They called my mother in Wichita, Kansas and told her only that I was being held in a mental ward. At 50, she booked her first trip to the East Coast.

The next day, she walked through the two doors marked "Danger of Patient Elopement," tried to ignore the nylon restraints peeking out of the nurse's drawer and spotted someone resembling her 26-year-old, bearded, public-defender son. I was 35 pounds underweight, shoulder blades slicing through my blue scrubs. I had a rigid mohawk and a Wyatt Earp style mustache.

"Bird?" I asked.

I'd nicknamed her the Bird as a teen because of her tendency to move her head in choppy sequences when her feathers were ruffled. I squinted at her, trying without my contacts to make out the blurry image.

"The Bird is here," she told me.

"The Bird can't be here, the Bird lives in Wichita."

"The Bird got on a plane," she said. "You're a bag of bones, Gorilla."

Throughout the day, I'd spotted at least 30 doppelgangers of people from my past— my best friend from grade school, the girl I lost my virginity to at 14, and, in the hospital intake, my father whom I hadn't seen in years. I was shocked at how much research this must have required by the producers. It wasn't until my mother used my nickname, stemming from my excessive body hair and barrel chest, that I believed it was actually her and not an actor in prosthetics.

She tried to convince me that we were not being videotaped by hidden cameras, that the other patients were not wearing masks and voice modulation boxes. The bald old man wandering around talking to himself was not the dad from Everybody Loves Raymond. This was real. I assumed the producers had not told her what was going on, in the interest of keeping her performance authentic.

"Mom, you're a terrible actor," I said.

"You are in a locked psychiatric ward," she explained. "Your roommate said you wrote all over your apartment walls in red Magic Marker."

"I was being filmed," I insisted. "Daniel Day-Lewis was on my street."

"Son, half the people in your neighborhood look like Daniel Day-Lewis."

I just stared at her blankly.

Logic failing, the Bird took a break and held my hand. This breed of bird does not shrink from adversity. She raised three kids alone, working at a grocery store full time and eventually earned a Ph.D. in urban education.

This was not her first experience with psych wards. Her older brother overdosed the day I was born. He was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and spent the last 15 years of his life institutionalized. Later she told me that she went to my apartment after her visits, completely shattered, pleading to herself, "He can't be schizophrenic. I can't lose him. He is not my brother. He's too brilliant."

Regaining sanity in a mental hospital was like treating a migraine at a rave. My belief that I was being videotaped was supported by the fact that the place looked exactly like the set of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest—walls totally white, inmates wandering around drooling, fighting patients tackled and injected. The only change since the 1950s seemed to be the smoking ban. The Bird's calming reassurances and a heavy dose of antipsychotics eventually helped dissolve the cinematic into reality—the doctors started to look real, and I began to realize that, quick as catching a cold, my mind had disappeared. I was diagnosed as Bipolar 1 with a psychotic break, not schizophrenic like Uncle Neddie. With proper meds, this could be an isolated incident.

After one week on the ward, we returned to my East Village apartment. I felt better, but not safe. In the bathroom mirror I could still see the madness in my dilated pupils. The term "psychotic break" tortured me. I was in the same league as Charles Manson and Uncle Neddie—the man who, high on PCP, was beaten by five cops on my grandma's front lawn, and who chased me with nunchucks on his Christmas visits when my soccer ball got near his room. I wanted to shatter the glass but instead I collapsed in the corner, shivering and crying. The incomprehensibility of the situation overwhelmed. The Bird came in and rubbed my back.

"I'm insane," I sobbed.

"You're going to be OK, Gorilla," she said.

"Can we just watch TV? I don't want to be alone."

"Of course."

We posted up on my couch and watched The Princess Bride, a movie I had memorized by age seven. I feared that I would be my family's burden for life, but with The Bird by my side, I calmed for the first time in weeks. The Bird and I flew home to Wichita the next day.

Depakote made me gain 30 pounds in three weeks. Risperdal reduced me to an impotent, libido-less, drooling sack. My 70-pound English bulldog snored at my feet as I watched hours of television and we competed to see who could generate more slobber and gas. I was so scared of what had happened that I took the drugs until I decided that feeling no emotion was worse than severe depression. Against the advice of my psychiatrist in Kansas, I abruptly quit taking both. He told me I was exposing myself to a serious risk of seizures and almost certain severe depression. The seizures never came.

I went through months of sleeping 15 hours a day, bitter that this disease had chosen me at random, possibly erasing years of academic achievement and my career as an attorney. My girlfriend broke up with me over Gchat a few days before I returned to New York. She was livid that I'd risked going off my meds, and she didn't believe me when I told her I'd trust a psychiatrist in New York to prescribe something new. "I'm done trying to make someone happy who seems comfortable being miserable." Friends distanced themselves, uninterested in remaining in my crazy orbit. I lost my apartment in the Village. It had been difficult to paint over the Magic Marker.

The Bird and I both worried I'd returned to New York too soon, but there was nothing else to do. I couldn't keep chain smoking Marlboro Lights in the garage and drinking beers in the basement while family friends acted like it was a blessing that I'd come back to the Heartland. When she called to tell me my bulldog had died, I said, "I hope you don't care that I don't care. I just can't care."

"Not at all," she said. "You got a lot going on right now."

When I panicked in the middle of the night, I'd call her. She answered every time, she never cried. "You aren't crazy. Crazy people don't know they're crazy," she tried to reassure me. Eventually, Lamictal, a much milder mood stabilizer, returned me to a safe equilibrium, and the 3 a.m. calls became less and less frequent. I realized there would be no shaking the fear that this could happen again, but I accepted it. It's not fair, and no one asks for this, but neither do diabetics or cancer patients. It wasn't my fault; mental illness is no more preventable than lymphoma.

After a three-month leave of absence I returned to work. My caseload had dropped from 70 to zero. Reactions to my return ranged from, "Where have you been?" to "Welcome back." A few people hugged me and cried. As public defenders we fight for clients who are mentally unfit to stand trial on a near-daily basis. We meet our clients for the first time in jail. I knew if there was a group of people that wouldn't judge someone for a DSM-V code, it was my colleagues.

But, real or imagined, I felt a widened berth in the hallway and could only see their shattered perception of who I was in their eyes. The hotshot with the mohawk was actually the deeply troubled sad sack with "issues." Soon enough, I was back in court, and my projections begin to melt, but I was armed with a completely different understanding of my mentally ill clients than I ever hoped to have. Every time I was forced to send someone to Bellevue I battled a wave of nausea. I wished I could tell them, "You aren't crazy. Crazy people don't know they're crazy."

Zachary McDermott is a writer and public defender in Brooklyn, NY. He is currently working on a memoir.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

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