Keith Crisco, the man locked in a tight battle with Clay Aiken for the Democratic nomination for North Carolina's Second Congressional District, died suddenly at his home on Monday, reportedly from a fall.

From WTVD:

Crisco was born and raised in North Carolina. He graduated from Pfeiffer University with a BA in mathematics and physics and received a master of business administration from Harvard University.

In 1970 and 71, he served as a White House fellow with a position of Assistant to the US Secretary of Commerce. In 1978, Crisco became the president of Stedman Elastics in Asheboro. He has served on the Asheboro City Council.

In 2009, he was appointed as Secretary of Commerce for North Carolina and served until 2013. Crisco was also a member of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health Advisory Council.

After last week's election, Aiken led Crisco by about 370 votes—-11,649 to Crisco's 11,277—though Crisco refused to concede; the Board of Elections was scheduled to have a voter canvass on Tuesday.

UPDATE 5:19 pm: Aiken has suspended his campaign:

The upside-down crucifix gushes spiders in every direction. A second ago it was a regular crucifix that Eva Green was tearfully Ave Maria'ing at, but fuck you if you thought it would stay that way. After all, this is Penny Dreadful, where every pile of corpses has a Nosferatu in the middle, every skull is covered in flesh-eating beetles, everything creaks except for when things selectively don't, and everyone tailors their signature look so as to be identifiable in mist-shrouded silhouette. If there's a crucifix, assume it will be upside down and blasting spiders ASAP.

Right from the cold open, a tone is set, and that tone is brown. From the brown hallway down which some woman creaks, to the (implied) brown dookie she stoops to deposit before being supernaturally snatched up backwards out the side of her house, to the same brown hallway her daughter creeps to discover her dismembered corpse, everything in this scene really boils down to one word: unimportant. Then we're bombarded with Marilyn Manson B-roll over the opening credits (you pour the blood into the teacup, then you smash the teacup on the floor, the kids will go wild), and we're off on our cobblestone carriage ride to nighttime pervert town.

Penny Dreadful is doggedly linear, which makes my job easier. Sure, there's a dislocated sprinkling of Eva Green trembling around CG spiders (way to blow your spider budget in the pilot, PD), but that's mostly garnish. It's September 22, 1891, and Josh Hartnett's Wild West Show is the toast of a field(?) in London, featuring a gunslinging Hartnett hollering about Custer's last stand while shooting everything and everyone and exuding the raw charisma of a headshot of Josh Holloway. Ethan Chandler (Hartnett) lives a simple life nailing gunplay groupies behind stagecoaches and gazing at a watch inscription (from his Father oooOOOoo), but he's about to be repeatedly told there's more to him than that.

While everyone else in the audience was looking at his bullets, Eva Green was fixated on Ethan's taut buns, perfect for a little bit of night work. She shows up during gazing hours to give him a thorough Sherlocking in hopes of recruiting him for her league of extraordinary public domain characters. In exchange, he gets an address, a semen-freezing smile, and what may well be the only bit of characterization he'll ever get:

"I see a man who's been accustomed to wealth, but who's given himself to excess, and the unbridled pleasures of youth," she tells him, "A man much more...complicated than he likes to appear." I have to give big props to Showtime for their bravery in representing complicated characters on television. This is truly a golden age.

Their misty rendezvous (way to blow your mist budget in the pilot, PD) leads to an opium den, which leads to Timothy Dalton, which leads to a bunch of questions everybody's real cagey about answering for no reason. I'll summarize because they're incapable: Timothy Dalton is Sir Malcolm Murray, father of Mina Murray (or possibly Harker, depending on how Dracula this gets), and Mina's been took. Until he's reunited with his daughter, he's sworn not to reunite his goatee with his beard. He's like eight feet tall, carries a sword cane, speaks High Valyrian, and says things like, "Is this the individual?"

Murray's brought Ethan as muscle to back him up in a meeting with a trio of sallow-eyed dickheads. Right off the bat, I was like, "These guys are a bunch of creepy-crawly Nosferatus. They're perverts. They live in a basement and I can't stand them." I'm never wrong when it comes to Nosferatus. One of them has a mop on his head. Another is Czech novelist Franz Kafka. They try to pull a Clever Girl on our heroes but they saw them like a second ago so it doesn't work.

All this pales in comparison to what's just over in the next room: a big pile of corpses and a dead baby (dead baby budget blown), and also another Nosferatu, but a different, scarier one. Sir Malcolm quickly identifies its weakness (sword canes) and dispatches it, but not before Eva Green stares it down because she's maybe psychic? They try to interrogate a Nosferatu about it but she opts to exercise her right to hiss. Despite Sir Malcolm's admonition not to be amazed at anything he sees, Josh Hartnett simply can't restrain his sense of childlike wonder, in part because NOBODY WILL EXPLAIN ANYTHING TO HIM.

What follows is a series of scenes featuring a succession of perverts investigating the corpse of the uber-Nosferatu (my rule of thumb for perverts: if you can readily imagine them drinking a vodka and milk out of a champagne flute, they're a pervert). One of the perverts likes to cut up corpses and is fascinated by life and death WHO COULD HE BE. He discovers hieroglyphics etched on the thing's underskin, which leads to this delightful exchange:

"Fascinating. Hieroglyphics."
"Egyptian?"
"Undoubtedly."

And the music swells, like that's a twist. Another pervert is Mr. Lyle, an Egyptologist who's apparently only actor on this show allowed to move his eyebrows and says "little Persian boys" with real and abiding grossness. He identifies the hieroglyphics as maybe meaning "blood curse"–"Those Egyptians were a bit madcap when it came to specifics" haha yeah true true–and sources them to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which, okay, yeah, obviously, when have Egyptian hieroglyphics not been from the Book of the Dead.

Meanwhile, Eva Green tries to keep Josh Hartnett in the league with vague explanations (they're gonna be chilling in the place where science and superstition walk hand in hand), and reads his tarot. You'd think the card he'd pull would be Death, because characters only ever pick Death, but he pulls The Lovers, because that's the other one characters pick. They share a moment.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Sir Malcolm brings our unnamed corpse-pervert to the Explorers' Club, where UCP declares his fascination with life and death and Sir Malcolm employs him to find a cure for vampirism, declaring finally that he would murder the world to rescue his daughter. Keep a weather eye for the inevitable spin-off, Malcolm Murray Murders The World. Later, he sees a vision of Mina after finding the window of his room open and thinking nothing of it, which, if you're dealing with vampires, don't do that. Nobody is good at their job except for the guy whose job it is to shoot people, and it turns out he's a bit of a crier.

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, UPSIDE-DOWN SPIDER-CROSS.

Bring it home, pilot, what's our twist? Is it that UCP has a stitched-up corpse hitched up to some kind of electrical apparatus? Is it that the budget for corpse penises, once thought blown, is, in fact, fully intact? Is it that a lightning strike reanimates the corpse?! Is it that UCP's name is actually Victor Frankenstein?!?! Wait, really, it's that last one? That's a twist? That's not a twist, Penny Dreadful. You should have saved your twist budget for some more mist.

So far, we've got a few half-identified mysteries (what's up with the hieroglyphics? is dracula involved? is jack the ripper at it again?), a handful of glower-happy characters like you've never seen them before, a couple'a corpse dicks, and an upside-down spider-cross. Penny Dreadful seems to like to heap on the corpses, then pretty it up with verbiage that dances on the border of pulpy and pointless.

I'll look forward to it making more use of its setting; apart from a singular scene of crowd chatter outside the investigation of the cold open slaughter, the show's dogged about keeping focus on our heroes, and it can feel a hair claustrophobic, especially in a period context. These hitches aside, Penny Dreadful feels well-positioned to undo its corset and let the fun flop out, guts and all.

[Image via Showtime]

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If you want to buy three servings of a nutritional powder than can be combined with water to create a synthetic "meal" with the exact appearance and consistency of semen, you're going to pay a lot for the privilege. Soylent is really in demand.

The post-food inventor of Soylent just triumphantly tweeted the following eBay listing:

Soylent on Ebay. More expensive than a serving of caviar. http://t.co/QYQJqSvcTl

— Rob Rhinehart (@robrhinehart) May 12, 2014

It's certainly getting more buzz than caviar these days—the nutrient slurry just got an extensive writeup in the New Yorker, and fluid enjoys a strong following among startup kids looking for the next productivity booster.

But if Soylent is ever going to supplant just... eating stuff, it's going to have to come down in price by about $114.99. Actual semen remains free as a DIY meal.

A video recently posted to TerRio’s Vine account depicts the six-year-old internet sensation battling Ice JJ Fish, the self-proclaimed man who sings with "100 voices." It’s not so much a "dance off," as the description calls it, but rather TerRio pop-locking (quite terribly, tbh) for five seconds while Ice JJ's song, "On The Floor"—which has reached over 21 million views on YouTube—plays in the background.

The most striking part of the clip, however, comes at the end, as TerRio suddenly quits dancing, perhaps tired out by the considerable amount of weight he’s put on since being propelled into Internet infamy. TerRio rose to fame for his signature dance and phrase—"Ooh kill'em"—and the sweet, sad irony of it all: we just might.

[h/t @JulianPatterson]

If you haven't seen "Girl Getting Hit With Shovel," the best action and comedy film of the year (according to respected film review site Deadspin), you're doing yourself a grave disservice. If you have, you'll be able to better appreciate this mashup of A-Ha's "Take On Me" and the sound of a flying shovel making contact with a teen girl's head and shoulders.

YouTube keeps taking down Dj Cow Herder's magnum opus, but the public demands access to this important, challenging work, so mirrored copies have popped up all over the place—although they may be gone in a day or two.

Despite rumors that the girl in the video, Miranda Fugate, died from her shovel-related injuries, later tweets confirmed that she had stumbled away, slowly learning that life is OK.

[H/T Reddit]

Game of Thrones always touches on interesting legal issues. For instance, when the government's dragons charbroil your flock of goats, you can totally recover damages under the common law theory of "trover." Mhysa isn't being nice, she just has a competent understanding of tort law.

Of far more importance to the Westerosi justice system is the idea of "trial by combat." Apparently, any accused person can claim this "right," and have champions fight on their behalf to determine their legal fate.

Trial by combat isn't a mere invention of George R.R. Martin or other fantasy writers who find stabbing drama to be more interesting than "courtroom drama." Trial by "battle" was a remedy under English common law, and by extension American common law.

And you know what, it was a pretty good idea! Not necessarily in the way it's portrayed by HBO, but historical, real-world trial by battle was actually a fairly just and smart way of handling certain disputes...

Trial by battle was popularized in England by William the Conqueror (who, I just learned, was apparently called "William the Bastard" before he started, like, conquering people). The practice was never particularly widespread, but it could be used in response to three types of situations. It turns out that two of those situational uses make a lot of sense.

The most common use was in a land dispute. "I own up to that tree." "No you don't." "Let's fight." Just like on GoT, the people in conflict would choose champions to fight for them... technically to the death, but most often to the "ow, you win."

An article by economics professor Peter T. Leeson of George Mason University argues that trial by battle in this situation was a perfectly rational and economically efficient way of managing those types of land disputes. There were "champions for hire." Some were better and more expensive than others. How much money you were willing to pay for your champion probably roughly coincided with how much the extra property was worth it to you.

You shouldn't think of it as a poor person in a property dispute with a wealthy land owner. You should think of it as two impossibly rich land owners squabbling over who has access to a pleasure lake. We need to spend time and resources on judges or juries for this? Screw it. I bet we'd get the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight if it was the only way Samsung and Apple could settle their business.

The second, basically reasonable situation trial by battle was used was in courts of chivalry over disputes of honor. I don't even have to explain this: your mother smells of elderberries, gauntlets down, knights jousting. Again, who has a problem with this today? Instead of Tom Cruise threatening to sue South Park, wouldn't you just rather see Cruise and John Travolta fight Matt Stone and Trey Parker in the octagon?

The most popular, yet least used and least defensible trial by battle option was in the criminal context. That's how it's portrayed on Game of Thrones. A man stands accused of something, a show trial is convened, the man has the option to fight to the truth in the absence of a formal trial.

You can see why this wasn't the preferred method of criminal justice, even in medieval England. Why would a king go through the trouble of setting up a show trial only to have it thwarted by the vagaries of hand to hand combat? We're talking about kings here, divine-right monarchs. Trial by combat doesn't put the decision in the hands of God, the king IS God. Nobody was getting out of a state criminal proceeding by hiring a good fighter.

However, in their book History of Criminal Justice, Mark Jones and Peter Johnstone explain that trial by battle was used when the accuser and criminal defendant were both private parties. Again, this looks more like the land disputes we talked about earlier. "He killed my friend." "No I didn't." "LIAR [draws sword]."

So, the most accurate use of trial by combat in Game of Thrones is actually the Sandor Clegane-Beric Dondarrion fight. I bet you didn't think that.

In any event, trial by battle all but completely died out in England after the Crusades. Jones and Johnstone say that in 1819, a criminal actually got away with his crime by asking for a battle, and after that embarrassment, England officially outlawed the practice.

Note the date: 1819 is long after American independence. And remember that the original colonies adopted all of English common law that they didn't specifically overrule in the Constitution or other laws. So... technically, you could make an argument that trial by battle is still a legal remedy in America.

I don't think it is, but maybe we should bring it back. Society would probably be less litigious if Law and Order occasionally turned into Game of Thrones.

A Chinese student living in Japan was attacked on social media after showing up late to a reservation at one of the finest sushi spots in Tokyo, trying to order "cooked sushi" to go, and then ranting about the food and service online.

Tokyo's Sukiyabashi Jiro is possibly the most famous sushi restaurant in the world. Its founder, Jiro Ono, was the subject of the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and famous customers include President Barack Obama and Japanese PM Shinzō Abe.

But 23-year-old Chuhan Lin apparently didn't have an Obama-level experience at the restaurant's Roppongi location (which has 2 Michelin stars and is run by Jiro's son). After her group showed up 40 minutes late and failed to apologize, it turned out that two of them found raw fish "tough to swallow," so they took a couple of bites and then left to eat deep-fried pork at another restaurant.

The rest of the group then tried to cancel their entire order and get "cooked sushi" to go instead.

The chef was understandably irked. According to Lin, he said, "Is sushi served cooked in your country? If you can't handle raw food, you should have informed us when you made the reservation!"

In her rant on the hugely popular Chinese microblogging service Weibo, Lin retorted, "Who knew!? I didn't make the reservation! If we were Abe! If we were Obama! Would he dare to show such an attitude?"

Her Weibo followers took the sushi chef's side, and soon she was being flamed across the Chinese internet for her rude behavior. Things eventually got so bad that she decided to take down her Weibo post and return to Jiro to make things right.

After she explained that she only tried to change the order to minimize wasted food, she got a lesson in how top sushi places allocate their freshest ingredients based on the number of customers they expect. The restaurant's sushi master invited her to visit again if she ever develops a taste for sushi.

If she takes him up on it, she'll definitely show up on time.

[H/T RocketNews24, Photo: AP Images]

Today, Fox announced a one-hour "crossover" episode of The Simpsons and Family Guy called... The Simpsons Guy. Hopefully they spent more time on the episode than they did on the name.

Admittedly, The Simpsons Guy isn't the absolute worst name they could have picked for the episode, which features characters from both shows interacting with each other. (The above promo photo shows Homer and Peter Griffin in some sort of fight.) For instance, they could have picked... The Family Simpsons. Family The? Here is the blog of a man named "Guy Simpson."

Also, this will be one episode where Family Guy won't be able to be accused of stealing The Simpsons' jokes.

[image via Fox]

Children are monsters. They're moody and fickle, untethered by personal morality or greater accountability, and, most of all, they have an instinctual sense for weakness that's just terrifying. When I'm walking around my hometown, a shady Boston suburb with a high density of good public schools, I actively cross the street to avoid any contact with children of any age, for fear of some tween callously calling out my deepest insecurities right there on the sidewalk.

It's no surprise, then, that when Richard leaves Kevin, the mildly pubescent superhacker the Pied Piper team employs to shore up their Cloud architecture, alone with their system, he manages to deftly wreck it, nearly destroying Richard along with it. See, Richard's a very good hacker (the jury's still out on the rest of the team, I guess; given their incidental incorporation into PP I've never known whether we're supposed to understand them as being any better than competent), but at the beginning of "Third Party Insourcing," he's been banging his head against Cloud, to the point that, according to Andy Daly's awful doctoring, it's physically aged him 40 years in seven weeks. With a week to go before TechCrunch, he lets the team convince him to hire "The Carver," an infamous black hat hacker known for crashing Bank of America's systems.

The Carver turns out to be (very) young, smug, and full of Mellow Yellow, Oreos, and Adderall. He fits them in around his "Model UN thing" and right away becomes a source of anxiety for Richard, making him self-conscious about his abilities as a hacker at the same time as his habit of lip-pursing. I could really watch hours of Thomas Middleditch try to figure out what to do with his lips, like some kind of twitchy yule log.

Even when Richard finds him crying under the table, having wrecked Pied Piper's platform like he admits he did when he was working for–not hacking–Bank of America, he gets no satisfaction, since he's now tasked with shaking down the neighborhood kids for Adderall, who easily burn him on the deal and slap and abuse him when he comes back to argue. The confrontation ends up setting up one of the show's best moments to date, though, when Erlich, on finding Richard reduced to tears, goes enforcer on his friend's behalf. And, yeah, there's definitely some fantasy fulfillment there, when he hollers "You just brought piss to a shit fight, you little cock!", slaps Richard's bully across the face, and hurls his shitty little BMX bike over a hedge, but his immediately coming to Richard's defense is weirdly heartwarming. There's a real friendship forming between these guys, and I'm really excited to see them continue to get each other's backs.

Of course, Erlich's using the opportunity to let off frustration he's pent up in his competition for Tara, Gilfoyle's improbably hot Satanist girlfriend with an "Amy Winehouse thing going on." Turns out, according to Gilfoyle, she's got hots for the Pakistani Denzel, Dinesh, and in keeping with Laveyan doctrine, he's willing to let Dinesh do as he wilt with her. Erlich, naturally, refuses to believe he's not the obvious choice, concluding from the back of a cheery Satanic baptism that Tara must be attracted to ugliness, despite Dinesh's excellent facial symmetry. When Dinesh finally works up the courage to proposition Tara (constructing an sublime board of con's, all relating to Gilfoyle, and pro's, just, "Ejaculation"), it turns out Gilfoyle had been fucking with him. Oh, well.

Neither of these plotlines really amount to much. Apart from the Richard/Erlich tag team, and a vague sense that Richard's learned something about the limits of knowing your limits, the Carver arc basically turns out as "fine" and inconsequentially status quo as the Tara arc, which seems to serve only to put a girl on screen (the very funny Milana Vayntrub), though Silicon Valley doesn't make much use of her once she's there; she barely even has anything to do with her own plotline, which might be an inadvertent statement if this particular sitcom trope wasn't already worn pretty thin.

And then there's Jared, who accepts a ride to the Incubator in Peter Gregory's car (not his tiny van, tragically), which turns out to be self-driving and, moreover, self-directing. Mid-drive, it opts to change course to drive to Arralon, Gregory's private island on the international dateline, a two days' ride in a shipping container away. With no JohnnyCab driver to tear out, Jared's stuck pitifully exhorting "Mister Car" to change course, finally staggering out to discover the island's solely populated by robotic vehicles, Gregory's ideal, complete with levels marked by QR code. We get a gesture, too, towards the show's send-off for Gregory, who calls Monica in what sounds like a state of anaphylaxis.

It's a smaller episode, on the whole, likely in preparation for the blowout of TechCrunch, but its narrower scope (no Hooli, no Gavin, minimal Peter) makes its unambitious plotting feel like a missed opportunity to lay some still-necessary character groundwork, especially with Dinesh and Gilfoyle, who continue to be totally funny but seem to entirely define each other. Jared's plotline kept the episode vital, but I'm not sure his presence there balances what the ensemble lost in his absence. And "Third Party Insourcing" only put a finer point on the already-glaring absence of any real female characters. Silicon Valley has so much going for it, and I'm really pulling for it to soar into the season finale. It would be a real pity if the adolescents got the upper hand.

[Image via HBO]

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According to a report in New York Magazine, HarperCollins kept secret for months a new book by a man who claims to have irrefutable evidence that the never-captured Zodiac Killer is his father.

HarperCollins acquired story more than a year ago but kept the Zodiac Killer details quiet until today. The book, The Most Dangerous Animal of All, hits shelves tomorrow.

The new claim comes from Gary Stewart, a vice president at a Baton Rouge construction company, who apparently discovered the gruesome connection while searching for his birth father.

Fifteen months ago he approached the publishing house with his story and began co-writing the book with true-crime writer Susan Mustafa.

It's not the first time someone has publicly claimed they were fathered by the Zodiac Killer, but a HarperCollins publicist told New York Magazine that the company's lawyers vetted Stewart's claims and found them "legally sound."

She didn't share many details of the book, but told me that Stewart's father had a criminal record in San Francisco ("forgeries, bad checks"), and there was a strong resemblance between his father's mug shot and the police sketch.

Apparently, the police sketch was a good one. Said Andreadis: "If you look at Gary's photo next to the sketch of the Zodiac next to his father's mug shot, you can see that there is very clearly more than just a passing resemblance. They look alike."

The book's official description also cites the existence of forensic evidence.

[image via AP]

Lawsuits and federal investigations against tech companies tend to end one of three ways. Corporations pay a pittance of a settlement, swear they'll do better without admitting guilt, or the whole ordeal is over before it starts. But one plaintiff in the class action wage-fixing case against Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe has declined to roll over.

The New York Times reports that Michael Devine, one of the four plaintiffs named in the suit, wrote a letter to Judge Lucy H. Koh "asking her to reject the deal that his own lawyers negotiated." The 46-year-old freelance programmer said a meager $324 million settlement from corporations who conspired to artificially depress salaries was inadequate:

"The class wants a chance at real justice," he wrote. "We want our day in court."

He noted that the settlement amount was about one-tenth of the estimated $3 billion lost in compensation by the 64,000 class members. In a successful trial, antitrust laws would triple that sum.

"As an analogy," Mr. Devine wrote, "if a shoplifter is caught on video stealing a $400 iPad from the Apple Store, would a fair and just resolution be for the shoplifter to pay Apple $40, keep the iPad, and walk away with no record or admission of wrongdoing? Of course not."

According to the Times, this kind of dissent in a class action case is rare. However, Devine thinks he can sway the court if other class members join his plea. He set up a website called Tech Worker Justice and is seeking new legal representation.

If Devine succeeds, it would be a colorful trial:

"There was such embarrassing evidence about the pacts being orchestrated from the very top, and there was such hubris from Jobs and the other chief executives," including Eric E. Schmidt of Google and Paul S. Otellini of Intel, said Orly Lobel, a professor of employment law at the University of San Diego. "It would have been very unpleasant for the companies to reopen all those emails in court."

Unpleasant—and likely more expensive.

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Morning After wants to know: What kind of TV makes you laugh? If you like to laugh at horrible things, come watch The Real Housewives Of Orange County with us at 9/8c! Or if you prefer legitimately funny, occasionally ponderous things, let's talk about tonight's Louie double-header at 10/9c.

Beyoncé and Jay Z did a quick photo-op at the Nets-Heat game tonight after a totally normal day without much going on.

Jay and Bey have been stiffly smiling and joking with LeBron James since they took their seats in front of the cameras in the middle of the second quarter.

[images via TNT]

The rest of Donald Sterling's "I'm not a Racist" interview with Anderson Cooper aired tonight, and it was terrible.

When the topic of Magic Johnson came up, Sterling had a few choice comments, accusing the former player of tricking him in an attempt to buy the Clippers.

Sterling: What has he done, can you tell me? Big Magic Johnson, what has he done?

Cooper: Well, he's a business person...

Sterling: He's got AIDS. Did he do any business? Did he help anyone in South LA?

Cooper: Well I think he has HIV. He doesn't actually have full-blown AIDS.

Sterling: Well, what kind of a guy goes to every city, has sex with every girl, then he catches HIV? Is that someone we want to respect and tell our kids about? I think he should be ashamed of himself. I think he should go into the background. But what does he do for the black people? He doesn't do anything.

The interview does mark some improvement for Sterling, who is able to stop himself as he starts to say, "There's no African-American," ending the sentence with, "Never mind. I'm sorry."

Only one person knows where legendary DJ Casey Kasem is, and she's not telling anyone.

A Los Angeles judge ordered an investigation into his disappearance this week, part of a long-running court battle between Kasem's wife, Jean, and several of his children from previous marriages.

Kasem, who is 82, can no longer speak or eat on his own due to advanced Parkinson's. Over the past few years, he has apparently been living in different medical facilities chosen by his wife, Jean.

Kasem's children have been fighting for access to their father, claiming Jean's behavior has amounted to elder abuse. But things further escalated this week when Kasem's children told a judge they heard Kasem had been hidden on an Indian reservation in Washington state or in Canada.

Murphy's order came after Craig Marcus, an attorney who appeared on Jean Kasem's behalf at Monday's hearing, said he did not know where the radio personality was but knew that he had been removed from the country.

"I have no idea where he is," Marcus said.

After ordering the investigation, the judge appointed Kasem's daughter as Kasem's temporary conservator. Jean's lawyer says she has the right to move her husband as she sees fit.

[image via AP]

A source (not 50 Cent) tells the New York Daily News that Solange Knowles' infamous elevator attack on brother-in-law Jay Z happened after Jay made plans to head to Rihanna's Met Ball after-party without bringing Beyoncé.

The tension between the two started earlier in the night, when a group of Solange's "non-famous" friends reportedly crashed the gala and started dropping Jay Z's name.

"They were pretending they were guests of his and not hers. Management went to Julius (Beyonce's bodyguard) and said there's a problem," the source said.

Shortly afterward, Jay Z apparently confronted Solange and told her "don't use my name."

At that point, Solange decided she wanted to leave, another source told the Daily News, and Jay Z decided to take off for Rihanna's party on his own, calling ahead to say he wouldn't need extra security.

Solange reportedly lost it. Here's the second source's account of the conversation that took place in the elevator video:

"She said, 'Why can't you go home?' and to Beyonce 'Why does your husband need to go to the club right now?'"

"You're one to talk," Jay replied.

That's when the punching, kicking, and purse-swinging started.

Jay Z, Beyoncé, and Solange have yet to comment on what happened that night, but the sisters have been subtly throwing shade at each other on Instagram since then.

[Photo: AP Images]

Columbia University has come under serious scrutiny for its handling of campus sexual-assault allegations lately. Legal complaints have been filed. Tell-alls have been written. And now, unsatisfied students are taking to the school's walls, sharing the names of alleged assaulters.

In recent weeks, 23 students at Columbia and sister institution Barnard College have filed federal complaints saying that the university mishandled their sexual-assault cases. Almost 100 faculty members have signed on to a letter demanding reforms of the school's conduct system to better accommodate victims. And several students have related their horrible stories—of being raped by an acquaintance, then grilled by a university panel on sexual mechanics—in school publications.

But beginning last Thursday, unknown parties on Columbia's campus took matters into their own hands, slipping into bathrooms in three different buildings and scrawling lists of accused students across the walls.

It began in Hamilton Hall, a prominent classroom building near the dorms, last Thursday. A list of four students was found in a stall with the heading "Sexual Assault Violators on Campus." According to the Columbia Lion, which broke the news, "There were four distinct styles of handwriting, which suggests multiple authors."

Custodians quickly erased the graffiti artists' handiwork. But last night the same list popped up in a women's-room stall in a first-floor eatery in Lerner Hall, the campus student center. Its heading was "Rapists on Campus."

This morning, similar graffiti with the same list was found in two bathrooms on different floors in Butler Library, the main study center on campus. Bwog, another campus publication, also states that flyers with the information were found in several of the buildings' bathrooms:

An open debate as to who could be responsible for the writings—and how legitimate their tactics are—has opened up in those publications' comments, and I imagine we'll have another such lively discussion below. For its part, the university administration has said only that the wall-writers could potentially face simple conduct discipline for undertaking property damage.

Former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade has just published a book about race and genetics that has stirred up debates over scientific racism that go back over 250 years. Where did his ideas come from? Here are nine major works of scientific racism that are still influencing thinkers today.

First, a definition. By "scientific racism," I mean any argument that relies on allegedly scientific ideas — whether genetics or phrenology — to claim that some racial groups are naturally superior to others. Often the scientific ideas of one generation are discovered to be racist dogma by the next. But scientific racism has persisted for almost 200 hundred years in the way we frame debates over race, with terms like "eugenics" replaced by new ones. Here are some major works that have helped create a scientific frame for racist ideas.

1. A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, by Nicholas Wade (2014)

Right now, it's undeniable that Wade's work is the most influential work of scientific racism circulating today. His argument is that racial groups have genetic predispositions to certain kinds of mental skills, some of which evolved only over the past few hundred years. As a result, some races are more creative or intelligent than others. The Chinese, he argues, are more prone to obedience, while people from tribal societies in Africa are impulsive and quick to consume everything they have. Meanwhile, Europeans are good at becoming prosperous due to their thoughtful, forward-thinking natures.

Wade's work is a classic example of using the idea of genetics to explain social inequalities. He believes that the citizens of nations share genetic qualities, and that political events such as the rise of centralized banking can be traced to a shift in the European genome. This is a form of scientific racism because it justifies racial inequality as "rational" — after all, Africans are biologically incapable of consolidating their wealth. Meanwhile, Europeans are great at it.

2. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua (2011)

Like Wade, Chua argues that there are certain racial groups who are just plain superior — though she would probably disagree with Wade on the specifics. While Wade thinks that the Chinese are sheeplike followers, Chua believes that her cultural inheritance has filled her with a fire of assertiveness. She's raised her daughters strictly, "the Chinese way," pushing them as hard as possible to succeed in the future. Chua contrasts her parenting with typical American parenting, which she believes is all about nurturing individuality. Though she doesn't explicitly describe the difference between Chinese and Americans in genetic terms, she does a kind of pop sociological analysis that suggests Chinese culture is superior and explains why Asian kids often succeed while their Western counterparts become aimless flakes.

3. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994)

In this incredibly influential work of economics and sociology, researchers Herrnstein and Murray argue that class differences between whites and blacks in America can be traced back to differences in IQ. Blacks, they write, are simply not as intelligent as whites (and, to a certain extent, Asians — though mostly they're talking just about blacks and whites). Because many studies show that IQ is a very strong indicator of economic success, they believe that IQ differences are at the root of racial differences. They use "scientific" data about IQ scores to dismiss the idea that political inequalities and the history of slavery in the U.S. are causes of racial inequality.

4. Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, by Francis Galton (1883)

Galton was a nineteenth century statistician who is widely credited with popularizing the idea of eugenics. He helped shape our modern understanding of population genetics, and did it partly by looking at the genetic backgrounds of people with what he considered to be good and bad traits. He was related to Charles Darwin and a strong supporter of the idea of evolution, which helped him come up with the idea that human behavior was the result of a conflict between "nature" and "nurture." In Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, he suggests that people need to plan marriages based on eugenics, seeking spouses from prominent or successful families. Like many scientific racists, he believed that some families were more intelligent than others and that they were more economically and politically successful. It just so happened that most of these intelligent families were among Britain's ruling class.

Galton believed that as long as these people were encouraged to have children, the population would undergo a eugenic trend, with humanity becoming smarter and more successful. While many of Galton's followers in the twentieth century applied the theory of eugenics to racial groups, Galton was more interested in proving there were genetic differences between class groups.

5. Systema Naturae, by Carl Linnaeus (1767)

Linnaeus created the system we still use today for categorizing life forms into species, genus, family, and so forth. His contributions to the life sciences are tremendous. He was a great scientist, and yet he also believed that humans came in five distinct species, which corresponded mainly to racial groups. They were Americanus, Europeanus, Asiaticus, and Africanus — you can probably figure out the groups he meant. The fifth category he called Monstrosus, and referred mostly to people born with visible disabilities. In many ways, Linnaeus' system of categorizing races as species has never really left us. Many people, like Wade and Chua, still believe that there is a fundamental difference between the humans who are categorized into these racial groups. In the twenty-first century, however, population genetics studies show that these groups don't necessarily share genetic traits, even if they share culture or a phenotype.

6. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization, Margaret Mead (1928)

Mead's famous work of anthropology is an example of scientific racism that explores racial differences through the "noble savage" stereotype rather than the "dumb savage" stereotype that haunts the work of everyone from Galton to Wade. As a young anthropologist, Mead went to live among the Ta'u on the Samoan Islands. While there, she became convinced that their "simple" way of life was superior to that of "civilized" people in Europe and the Americas. She described the sexual openness and communal culture of the Ta'u as a kind of beautiful innocence, and argued that American culture had become unhealthy because it had suppressed a more primitive way of life. Though Mead meant her work to champion the Ta'u, she represented their lives in a very biased fashion, molding them to fit her own wishes about what she wished American life could be like. She also suggested there was a cultural uniformity to the Ta'u that didn't exist. Today, Mead's work remains controversial because it is considered foundational to anthropology as well as foundational to anthropological racism.

7. Preface to The Origin of Species, by Clémence Royer (1862)

Royer was an evolutionary scientist who translated Darwin's great work of evolutionary theory into French, while also adding a lot of footnotes and a lengthy preface to advance her own theories about race. Her translation was incredibly popular. Though she was a fierce feminist who believed that women and men were cognitive equals, she didn't have the same beliefs about racial groups. In her Preface, she wrote that the races are "not distinct species" but "quite unequal varieties." She claimed that natural selection made it clear that:

Superior races are destined to supplant inferior ones ... One needs to think carefully before claiming political and civic equality among people composed of an Indo-European minority and a Mongolian or Negro majority.

Amusingly, her detractors claimed that Royer's racist ideas couldn't be taken seriously because as a woman she didn't understand the big picture.

8. Crania Americana, by Samuel Morton (1839)

In this illustrated work, Morton advanced the popular nineteenth century idea that you could use skull shapes to determine personality characteristics. This book became one of the leading examples of then-scientific theory of craniology, especially as applied to racial groups. Morton went all over America, drawing the skulls of people that Linneus would have classified as the species "Americanus." The book became enormously influential in its time, and created a "scientific" foundation for one justification that slave-owners used, which was that some racial groups were naturally passive, obedient, and unintelligent — and thus perfectly content to be slaves. Though craniology (and its sister "science" phrenology) have become completely discredited, their legacy lives on in the work of people like Murray and Wade, who use IQ tests to argue that racial groups are cognitively unlike each other.

9. "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race," by Samuel Cartwright (1851)

Physician Cartwright used his medical expertise to justify his beliefs about the inferiority of Africans in this pamphlet that was extremely popular among slave-owners. Perhaps Cartwright's most widely-discussed idea was the disease "Drapetomania," which cast as mental illness black slaves' efforts to run away and escape servitude. Because Cartwright believed that Africans were mentally unfit for self-determination, he argued that they only try to escape when they go crazy. Today Cartwright's work has been assigned the status of pseudoscience among medical professionals. But there remains a widely-held stereotype that when blacks are assertive that they are "crazy" or "dangerous," whereas when whites are assertive they are simply "commanding" and "good leaders."

And as you can see from this list, there are still many people who are using science to justify the claim that there are cognitive differences between racial groups. And in the genre of scientific racism, those differences are said to make white people more intelligent, Chinese people more ambitious, islanders more open-minded, and many other things that have nothing to do with actual, verifiable scientific evidence — but have everything to do with racism.

Racist cattle rustler, impressionist historian and de facto warlord Cliven Bundy emailed his faithful disciples this afternoon to inform them that even though the federal government is evil and terrible, they won't be suing the feds for not shooting him, because of some incoherent reasons:

On the heels of Bundy's new avocations as a defiant commander of armed wahoos and a purveyor of error-ridden historical blather on YouTube, his announcement not to antagonize the Bureau of Land Management seems a bit surprising. "The Bundy family has been approached many times by well known, highly effective lawyers from all over the country offering their services free of charge," the family's letter to supporters reads. "This case, they say; 'has the makings of greatness'. The crimes and civil rights violations committed by the BLM are a lawyers [sic] playground."

Nevertheless, the man behind The Shot Heard Round Nevada has decided not to sue because, apparently, he believes people are fallible, and also because they expect the state governor and local sheriff to get off their fallible asses and do something.

What that something is isn't exactly clear from the letter, pasted below. But the Bundys hint that they're starting some kind of a legal fund/organization to hold politicians accountable to the PEOPLE, you know, in some way other than an election or a campaign contribution.

Hopefully guns won't be involved, although it may take some effort to convince some of Bundy's Praetorian Guards to lay down their arms. Like, maybe they'll need some money, for starters.

Bundy Family Statement

It has been several weeks since the BLM's special forces came into the valley with guns raised, barricading our lands, stealing and destroying our property, and terrorizing the community. Their original plan was to occupy the land for seven weeks.

They would still be in the valley today if the people did not stand and demand departure. We can only imagine what would have happen if they were allowed to remain.

In the six days they were present on the land, people from the community were threatened and interrogated for simply being on there public lands, others were beat to the ground, boot on head, hauled off while their families watched in desperation with guns to their faces.

Others were violently thrown to the pavement, gang tackled to the rocks, tasered, threatened by guard dogs, and ultimately hundreds of lives balanced on the triggers of the BLM's special army. The people took the right action by standing up to these trained mercenaries.

If allowed to remain for the seven planned weeks, lives most assuredly would have been taken and the freedom we enjoy on this land would have been forever lost.

The Bundy family has been approached many times by well known, highly effective lawyers from all over the country offering their services free of charge. This case, they say; "has the makings of greatness".

The crimes and civil rights violations committed by the BLM are a lawyers playground.

We have chosen not to engage in legal action up to this point for two reasons. First, is simply because we have not felt impressed to do so. We understand that as humans we are limited to knowledge and understanding. We believe that the creator of this world possesses all knowledge and understanding.

We also know that if we seek this knowledge he will share it with us. Until recently, legal action has shown no benefit to this cause. The second, is time based, the people expected Sheriff Gillespie and Governor Sandoval to take action.

We felt it was important to give them ample time to do what is right, time enough to start investigating the crimes that were committed upon their constituents. The primary purpose of both their positions is to protect the lives & liberties of the people they serve, and be a buffer against outside threats.

It is disheartening to see them betray and run with open arms to the very entities that mock the constitution and threatened the peoples lives. Our governor and sheriff should have been our heroes, but yet they remain corrupted.

It is first and foremost the responsibility of the PEOPLE of the State of Nevada and Clark County to correct Governor Sandoval and Sheriff Gillespie, they work for us, not the federal government.

With a sense of sadness and duty we announce that we are assembling a team of legal advisers and will be seeking the wisest action in assisting the PEOPLE in re-establishing individual protection through government.

Our action will not be for the benefit of person or family. Any action taken will be an effort to protect individual rights and to restore the principles of the Constitution. As always; we will continue to seek the Lord's guidance in these matters.

We need Your Help!

Call to Action: Two Fridays ago around 30 people went to the Sheriff precinct and filed CRIME REPORTS on the action of the BLM agents, many others since then have done the same. The Sheriffs has taken no action in investigating these crimes.

We need everyone to contact the County Commissioners and insist that they put pressure on the Sheriff to protect the people. This fight will be won by the people.

Your voice is the difference.

Youth culture moves so fast. One day, kids are throwing shovels at each other. The next week its scooters. And they say young people don't go outside anymore.

I have no idea what's going on in this fight, except to note that many greater things have been accomplished under the name of Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard than "being hit by a flying scooter."

Here is a Vine, for the six-second inclined.