Charlottesville, Va. police executed search warrants today of an apartment and car believed to be relevant to the search of missing University of Virginia student Hannah Elizabeth Graham, who has been missing since last Saturday.

According to WVIR, police's investigation led them to a car, which in turn led them to an apartment in the Hessian Hills apartment complex.

Chief Longo says search of car in #HannahGraham case developed probable cause leading to search of apt.

— NBC29 (@NBC29) September 19, 2014

BREAKING: police tell @HenryGraff they just started apartment search in #HannahGraham case. Looking for anything and everything.

— NBC29 (@NBC29) September 19, 2014

A person of interest in the case was identified by police yesterday using security footage in which a man can be seen putting his arm around Graham just past 1 a.m. Saturday.

Police have been piecing together the timeline of Graham's disappearance after leaving a party last weekend—in more security footage, she can be seen running past a gas station shortly before texting her friends that she gotten lost on her way home. http://gawker.com/uva-student-va...

[Image via WVIR]

Three backup dancers who took part in Cher's "Dressed to Kill" tour are now suing her, claiming they were wrongfully fired, the Telegraph reports.

Choreographer Kevin Wilson, who was fired July, claims Cher instructed him to refrain from hiring any more "dark skinned dancers," after claiming her tour had "too much color."

According to the Telegraph, Wilson and Suzanne Easter, who are both African American, along with their coworker Jacquelyn Dowsett Ballinger, claim their firing came after they complained to managers about another backup dancer allegedly assaulting a women in a hotel while on tour. Wilson and Easter are claiming racial discrimination, while Ballinger claims she was fired because of her age. According to their attorney, Perry C. Wander, all three toured with Cher for over a decade.

Cher's publicist Liz Rosenberg spoke to the Telegraph denying the charges, saying "They couldn't be further from the truth." The dancers were told they were fired to cut down on the cost of the tour.

The lawsuit reportedly seeks more than $10 million in damages.

[image via Getty]

The Intercept's Cora Currier just flagged a new trove of CIA documents that the agency declassified and dumped on its website. They come from an in-house publication for spooks, and man, are they silly.

Currier describes the collection of newly released articles from Studies in Intelligence Collection thusly:

Ostensibly a semi-academic review of spycraft, Studies emerges in the pieces, which date from the 1970s to the 2000s, as so much more, at turns mocking excessive secrecy and bad writing, dishing on problematic affairs, and bragging about press manipulation.

Of course, there is plenty of self-serious material in the journal too, including scholarly reviews, first-person memoirs, interviews and intellectual ruminations on everything from maps to "How We Are Perceived" and "Ethics and Clandestine Collection."

Currier has collected some of her favorite moments from a few of the hundreds of articles on the site. But she misses one of the best, a "review" of a clandestine international annual luncheon put on by the CIA, complete with the chef's recipe for "Nicaraguan shrimp salad." (Surprisingly, the recipe does not call for military aid to Contra rebels.)

I sort of like the missives complaining that CIA officers use too much purple prose and meaningless platitudes in their written evaluations of subordinates:

On the serious side, there's a tribute to women who have died in CIA service, tersely titled "TRIBUTE TO WOMEN WHO HAVE DIED." Good luck reading that one:

There's also a classic titled "Unconventional [REDACTED] History":

Although it's eight pages long, the article takes an abrupt jump on page two in the middle of this sentence:

The following six pages all look like this:

Anything in the collection catch your eye? Share it in the comments.

One of the most 'popular' features on the controversial F-35 is the jet's Distributed Aperture System (DAS). DAS creates an all-seeing sphere and classifies and relays data and video to the pilot's helmet and to the jet's mission computers. This game-changing system has now been adapted for the high seas, and it won't stop there.

How It Works

DAS accomplishes its unique task via a constellation of electro-optical cameras installed around the F-35, each staring in a separate direction. Then, a powerful computer processor "stitches" these video images together to create a continuous viewable video "sphere." When the DAS imagery is paired with an advanced helmet mounted display that is slaved to a spacial tracking system, the person wearing that helmet can look around and virtually "see" the environment around them relayed from the camera network, even in total darkness and, in some cases in otherwise blinding environmental conditions.

Because the DAS cameras are mounted around the outside of the vehicle, and the user is seated inside the vehicle while wearing a helmet mounted display with DAS's imagery being projected inside of it, the user can virtually "see through" the vehicle's structure as if it were never there in the first place. So if a F-35 pilot was flying at night, and his wingman disappeared below him, he could look down and see his wingman right through the floor of his jet.

Distributed Aperture technology does not only provide synthetic vision. When paired with high-speed computers loaded with the latest in image recognition and object tracking software, the system can provide missile launch detection and tracking, ground target tracking and recognition, infra-red search and track functions, and even ballistic missile tracking capabilities. When tied to high-end software and advanced computing hardware, the DAS system is very smart and very sensitive, and will only become more so as time goes on.

In the realm of air combat, a pilot flying an aircraft with DAS installed should almost always know where the enemy and friendlies are during a dogfight. The system really works as a smart optical search and tracker at longer ranges, notifying the pilot of interesting things it sees, both in the air and on the ground, and as a virtual "back-seater" born with x-ray vision during close-range combat.

In an age where cockpit workload increases even as automation takes over more tasks, DAS provides more than an extra pair of eyes always looking outside the cockpit. With the help of on-board automation, DAS can perform key tasks for the pilot while greatly enhancing his or her overall situational awareness. A much more capable, but less affable, "Goose" if you will.

As a mature F-35 and an enemy fighter merge during a theoretical dogfight, DAS will keep that enemy aircraft locked up without pointing the nose of the aircraft anywhere near them, and the pilot can fire a network-enabled AIM-9X Block II advanced Sidewinder at it. DAS would transmit the enemy aircraft's telemetry to the highly maneuverable missile in-flight, which has a high probability of destroying the enemy aircraft as it bleeds energy in a hard turn. Meanwhile, the F-35 has accelerated out of the fight or pressed the fight further, taking advantage of the fact that the enemy aircraft is now on the defensive (if not destroyed), and at a low energy state.

DAS is also totally integrated into the F-35's overall sensor suite, so that if the jet's super-capable APG-81 AESA radar, or digital radar homing receiver or electronic surveillance suite detects something of interest, the F-35's software can cue the DAS to closely analyze that location visually. If it ends up detecting something in that spot, the pilot would be notified, thus DAS would add to the pilot's situational awareness and help in expediting their decision cycle, as well as potentially providing enhanced targeting data as a byproduct.

DAS and the F-35′s Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS), basically an internal SNIPER XR targeting pod mounted under faceted windows below the F-35′s nose, also can work closely together. When it comes to long-range targets, the aircraft's radar may detect a possible contact, and the powerful telescopic vision of the EOTS will attempt lock onto it and relay its imagery to the pilot's displays. This will allow visual target identification from well beyond visual range.

As the target comes within the viewing range of DAS, the F-35's software should seamlessly "hand the contact off" if commanded to do so, thus freeing up the more powerful, but narrower field of view, EOTS for other tasks. In this manner, the system also offers some redundancy against electronic countermeasures and jamming, as optical systems are not susceptible to these types of tactics while tracking a potentially hostile aircraft.

The integrated nature of the F-35′s sensor suite, including its radar, EOTS, DAS, data-link, sensitive radar warning receiver and electronic surveillance measures, allows for the F-35 to go "electromagnetically silent" once a target is detected at long to medium ranges. It can then track that target using passive sensors (everything but radar). This allows for the F-35 to maneuver tactically without being detected by continuously "spiking" the enemy aircraft with its radar system. Even the F-35's missiles should be able to be guided using the aircraft's electo-optical systems alone, as well as from off-board sensors such as the data-link feed coming from an orbiting E-3 AWACS, other fighter aircraft such as F-15Cs operating well behind the F-35, ground radar stations and other sources.

How The Navy Is Going To Use It

DAS technology is pretty cool stuff that has massive implications not just for the future of air combat, but for the entire defense industry, and transportation as a whole. With all the incredible air combat capabilities DAS provides in mind, the creative folks over at Northrop Grumman have adapted the system for service at sea, and ominously named this new capability "Silent Watch."

Tactically, Silent Watch could break the narrow field of view limitations that currently exist on naval FLIR and other optical targeting systems, and provide a single-source, persistent, 360' electro-optical coverage. This could be used for situational awareness and surveillance or for targeting of the ships weapons systems.

Additionally, a single Silent Watch system, and its resulting video-data feed, could be used by different departments with different missions on a single vessel at a single time. For instance, a CIWS gunner could use Silent Watch for enhanced situatonal awareness and targeting, the combat information center on the ship could be using it to alert them of incoming missiles or fast boats, while another sailor uses the system to help direct air traffic coming and going from the ship's landing pad, while yet another sailor uses the system for navigating in a highly trafficked waterway.

Silent Watch makes a great deal of sense not just for US Navy destroyers, cruisers or Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) who live under the constant threat of everything from cruise missile attacks to swarms of high-speed enemy cigarette boats, but also for the commercial shipping market.

How Other Ships Could Use

Silent Watch, which has already been tested in a rudimentary form aboard Northrop Grumman's test yacht "Sperry Star III," is relevant for large commercial ships that have to sail into regions that have issues with piracy and terrorism. In fact, even for ships that do not sail into high-risk areas, the situational awareness gained by Silent Watch may be worth the investment for navigation purposes alone, especially considering that crew sizes continue to shrink on commercial ships.

Silent Watch may be even able to reliably detect, and immediately track, a man overboard, a capability that has never been effectively fielded to this very day. The ability to have a system that could do all these things and literally alert the crew when an object is on a collision course with, or in its vicinity of their ship, independent of radar, could be worth its cost in saved manpower and averted potential disasters alone. Even while docked in port, a time when a ship becomes a vulnerable fixed target and its manpower is at its lowest magnitude, Silent Watch could keep an eye on the ship's surroundings with minimal manpower requirements and near robot-like efficiency.

Also worth mentioning is the high-end private vessel marketplace and the potential Silent Watch has to proliferate within that marketplace. When a super wealthy individual blows $250M on a super yacht, hires a team of ex-special forces to guard their "steel island," and blows millions more on choppers, tenders, and mini-subs to play with, installing Silent Watch on their ship just makes sense and would seemingly be the very least of their budgetary concerns. This is especially true considering that many of the folks who own such large pleasure boats are usually security conscious and under some type of persistent security threat.

Oh, And It Could Work For Land Vehicles As Well

Silent Watch, or at least another, even simpler version of DAS, may find itself migrating to land vehicles in the not so distant future. Tanks, armored personnel carriers and other land combatants that traditionally offer less than stellar visibility could really benefit from such a system.

Currently, tank commanders must watch the outside world through their electro-optical imagers for situational awareness and target acquisition. These traditional FLIR systems have a field of view comparable to a soda straw. Tank drivers also usually have to rely on a panoramic pariscope, or similar device, to navigate during combat operations. By adapting DAS to a land vehicle platform, a tank commander and/or driver could literally see right through the skin of their tank while wearing a helmet mounted display, and could even access their traditional narrow field of view sight's video feed while wearing that same display. In other words, a tank commander could look virtually outside of their tank, and then just pull up the targeting FLIR's zoomed-in video feed on their helmet mounted display for target acquisition and engagement.

Eventually, armored vehicles may be able to cover their thick armored glass entirely with extra armor plates for added protection, with the vehicle being driven virtually through a 3D helmet mounted display system, that is fed with DAS-like imagery. This reality is even starting to come to pass in the commercial world, as the 3D Oculus Rift virtual reality motion tracking goggles continue to be developed and new avenues for its use are identified.

It is great to see new applications of DAS migrating their way out of the F-35 even before the aircraft is operational. This type of capability has the potential to literally change the way we interact and observe our environment. As bandwidth evolves, and more data can be piped quickly over long distances, "unmanned aircraft" may become "virtually manned" aircraft when the mission dictates it.

For instance, a stealthy autonomous unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) may hit fixed strategic targets and take down an enemy's air defense system on its own early on in campaign, but later, when close air support is needed, a pilot may be able to virtually 'fly' a DAS equipped UCAV from thousands of miles away.

This would not be the 'man in the loop flying' concept of operations like we have seen with the Predator or Reaper drones, where a pilot sits in front of a small flat screen. Instead it could be in a full-sized simulator like dome with an actual cockpit to interact with and the UCAV's DAS imagery projected for near-reality levels of situational awareness. This remote 'virtual' flying could even take place in a dark room with minimal infrastructure, with a pilot wearing 3D virtual reality goggles and sitting in a 'cockpit' that exists entirely within the virtual realm alone.

Such a capability would greatly enhance the value and adaptability of high-end UCAVs, allowing them to knock down the enemy's door during the opening stages of a campaign, and then provide a high-fidelity 'man in the loop' capability once combat troops are in harms way.

In the end, DAS is a game changing technology, and it will be just as at home at sea, and probably more plentiful there as well, as it is in the air. In time, don't be surprised to see the similar systems deployed on everything from US Navy AEGIS cruises to Carnival Cruise ships, and maybe even tanks and unmanned aircraft eventually as well.

Photos via Lockheed Martin, DoD, Northrop Grumman, public domain

Tyler Rogoway is a defense journalist and photographer that maintains the website Foxtrot Alpha for Jalopnik.com You can reach Tyler with story ideas or direct comments regarding this or any other defense topic via the email address Tyler@Jalopnik.com

A is for Asshole. Chris Brown is an asshole. Even if we summon all of the self-control needed to ignore his violent, petulant, destructive, unrepentant, homophobic conduct, and focus on his music, his on-record persona is consistently dickheaded in a way that is out-of-step with the contrived redemption arc devised to promote his new album X.

The first words we hear Brown say on X, in its title track, are, "If you're only as good as the company you keep / Then I'mma blame you for what they say about me," which is about as confessional as it gets. The compulsively catchy "Loyal" finds him gloating over economic disadvantage: "Just got rich / Took a broke nigga's bitch / I can make a broke bitch rich / But I don't fuck with broke bitches." His duet with Jhené Aiko, "Drunk Texting," concludes with the lines: "If by chance you're laying next to someone else right now / I hope it's the worst sex ever / Hope it's the worst sex ever."

B is for Beating. It is reasonable to dismiss Chris Brown outright for his 2009 beating of then-girlfriend Rihanna. This isn't a critical stance, but an emotional one, and I don't blame people at all for taking it.

C is for Caveat. In case your memory isn't quite ready to let go of Chris Brown's domestic abuse, X's first single "Fine China" offers a caveat: "I'm not dangerous." Well then, that's settled.

D is for Disco. In an attempt to do something classic-sounding, there are stabs at disco here, undoubtedly included because of the success of Daft Punk and Pharrell's "Get Lucky." The gift keeps on…well, it keeps on. Much of Brown's discoid dabbling sounds like attempts to recreate Off the Wall by an artist who had never heard that Michael Jackson album but instead once heard someone describe it, and that person neglected to mention the glorious orchestra. "Fine China" is an example. "Time for Love" also sounds like already been chewed "Juicy Fruit," Mtume's oft-referenced 1983 hit. In the ebullient "Lost in Ya Love," Brown sings, "Her fragrance turns me on / Her skin's so soft, oh," but it sounds like, "Her fragrance turns me on / Her Skin So Soft, oh," and it's funny to think about Brown getting horny via that Avon oil that people used to use as insect repellant. (Did you know, though, that it's not at all effective for that purpose?)

E is for EDM. Don't let the disco fool you, if you want loud, ugly EDM with big, dumb drops, there are plenty of those, too. There's the Diplo-assisted title-track and the acoustic-guitar driven "See You Around," which rips off Avicci's "Wake Me Up" with a twist of Brown's treacly 2007 hit "With You." In "Body Shots," Brown sings, "I'm about to do some body shots…" and then, just before the drop, a pitched-down voice notes, "…in the pussy, baby!" Yeah, baby!

F is for Fans. Every pop artist's fans are the worst, but really, Chris Brown's fans, Team Breezy, are the worst and easily impressed. Just a reminder.

G is for Grave. Aaliyah's proverbial grave was robbed for X's second single, "Don't Think They Know," which features previously unheard vocals from the deified diva. Also, the video shoehorns pseudo social consciousness in a song that's about fan appreciation. It opens with an on-screen statistic about children dying from gunshot wounds and a message [sic]: "Unity is what we are afraid of so fear is insanity, lets love each other." It is credited to "Not CB, just Christopher," whatever that means.

H is for Hook. Check out this fucking hook:

Here it is transcribed:

You know what I came to do, you
You know what I came to do
You know what I came to do, you
You know what I (Oh)
You know what I came to do, you
You know what I came to do
You know what I came to do, you
You know what I came to do
You know what I came to do, you
You know what I
(For all my ladies)
You know what I came to do, girl

I is for Interludes. The interludes on X, "101" and "Lady in a Glass Dress," are the best songs because they are understated and convincingly mimic Drake collaborator

Noah "40" Shebib's humid production style that defines contemporary R&B. It's not just because they are the shortest songs on the album, but certainly that helps.

J is for Joyce Hawkins. Joyce Hawkins is Chris Brown's mom, and probably the most entertaining thing about his career. She cultivated her excitable, ANGELS-loving persona via her Twitter, but has been quiet as of late. She came out of social media retirement to promote X, though, and the result was another classic Mombreezy tweet:

This album is amazing. Please go out to get it. I believe this one beats all the rest. pic.twitter.com/lt7AEjXxAF

— Joyce Hawkins (@mombreezy) September 12, 2014

"Beats."

K is for Kendrick Lamar. Kenrick Lamar, the most respected and probably best mainstream rapper alive right now guests on this mediocre album. Why is Kendrick Lamar on this shitty album (besides, you know, money)?

L is for "Loyal." "Loyal," the album's fourth and most successful single, is an outright jam, despite its despicable subject matter, which blasts people who turned out to be disloyal after you manipulated them via your money and used it as the basis of your bond. Nic Nac's crisp, percolating production, tho! (Which, by the way, is pretty much replicated verbatim in "Came To Do," excerpted above.) You can try to resist Chris Brown, even when he's being a jerk in his own song, and yet, sometimes his song choices are flat-out undeniable.

I do prefer Keyshia Cole's "Loyal" "freestyle," though:

M is for Math. There is some math on X, but it is not good math. The first verse of "Add Me In" goes:

Your body's an isosceles
And I'm just tryna try angles
Your love is trigonometry
Just tryna solve the whole equation

The second verse goes:

I'll calculate her home invasion (yeah, add it up)
Divide your legs and count to 3 (3,2,1, come on)
He's just not the answer baby
And that's just my hypotheses (real talk girl)

Who says you never use math later in life, once your schooling is over? This is why you make sure your child star gets a proper education.

There's also this, from "Time for Love":

I wanna see you putting it together like a number
Multiply the times we done took it, our love
Baby, we should just add up our love

N is for Negativity. Chris Brown, despite his own behavior, does not take kind to others' negativity. In a lobotomized recent interview with Billboard, he said:

As long as you're doing something good, people will always bring up old stuff or negative stuff because they don't want you to surpass a certain level or elevate. But as long as you have your head on straight, it shouldn't matter what people want to say.

Also:

Everybody gets caught up watching Instagram or whatever; they have jokes and all kinds of things. I can still engage in it but not participate in the negative side.

Last year, he had a seizure that was brought on, according to his rep, by "he continued onslaught of unfounded legal matters and the nonstop negativity."

O is for Overkill. X, in its deluxe edition format, has 21 songs on it. It is a slog. By the middle of it, I felt like I need to lie down, even when I was already lying down listening to it.

P is for "Put It Up." "Put It Up" is a duet with Rihanna that was considered for this album. Said Brown:

When we did "Nobody's Business" [their 2012 single] we actually did another song for my album called "Put It Up"...I wanted to do an R&B record with Rihanna. I didn't want to do the pop stuff, I wanted to do something that people aren't used to hearing.

We're used to hearing plenty from them already. Thank god this song didn't make the cut.

Q is for Quincy Jones. Legendary producer Quincy Jones—responsible for Michael Jackson's golden triology of Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad—was an alleged source of inspiration for X. Said Brown:

I tried to stay away from the Euro beats, and not go totally pop. Instead, I wanted to take the Quincy Jones approach. The record pays homage to the Stevie Wonders, the Michael Jacksons, the Sam Cookes: I wanted to put that classic essence of R&B and soul with the new age of music now. There's a lot of live instruments, and a lot less Auto-Tune. I really wanted to demonstrate my vocal ability, creating the vibe of me singing along with a band.

There are plenty of Euro beats, plenty of pop sounds, and there's plenty of Auto-Tune. Either, X turned out to be not what Brown wanted it to be, or he just says whatever about his music, regardless of whether it's true. At any rate, we can say objectively that this album is ill-conceived.

Also "new age?"

R is for R. Kelly. R. Kelly is rhapsodized in X's duet with Trey Songz, "Songs on 12 Play." This track is a straight rip-off of The-Dream's 2009 album cut "Kelly's 12 Play," and even worse, the Brown/Songz duet should be called "R. Kelly Songs," as it references plenty that are not on R. Kelly's solo debut 12 Play, including: "Feelin' on Yo Booty" (TP-2.com), "Half on a Baby" (R.), "Ignition" (Chocolate Factory), "You Remind Me of Something" and "Down Low (Nobody Has To Know)" (R. Kelly). The song can't even get its own simple and warmed-over concept right.

Additionally, R. Kelly also appears on X on a song called "Drown in It." In this song, R. Kelly who famously videotaped himself urinating on an underage girl a little over a decade ago, sings:

And I can feel your tide slowly rising
As I'm sipping from your water fountain
We gon' flood the bed, take it to the ground
While I'm in your ocean baby, hold my head down

This is either the most inconsiderate choice of material, or straight up trolling in response to a renewed interest in Kelly's life-destroying behavior. It reminds me of how, on Brown's first post-beating album, Graffiti, he used the phrase "hit it" to refer to sex. Plenty of people say "hit it," and they don't mean to invoke violence; if you were just arrested for brutalizing your very famous girlfriend, you should know better.

S is for Scissor Sisters. Scissor Sisters' Babydaddy helped produce X's Ariana Grande duet "Don't Be Gone Too Long." But don't get your hopes up—it just sounds like generic euro dance pop.

T is for Treatment. Chris Brown voluntarily sought treatment at a rehab facility last year, after allegedly punching a man who wanted to appear in a picture with him. Then Brown got kicked out two weeks later for "breaking program rules by acting violently." Then, for violating probation, he was sentenced to a mandatory 90 days in anger management rehab. Then he was sentenced to more time. Then he got kicked out again for breaking rules. It goes on and on. All of this would make interesting fodder for a song, if not an entire album. None of it is addressed on X.

U is for Usher. Usher appears on X's mediocre fifth single, "New Flame," a quasi-sequel/response to Usher's 2008 hit "Love In This Club" (which by the way, already had a wonderful sequel). Usher basically set the full-package template within modern R&B that Brown has applied himself to. That said, anything Chris Brown does, Usher can do better—especially sing. This is the sonic equivalent of that Vine of Brown getting dunked on by Andre Drummond.

V is for Voice. Chris Brown's voice has not matured much in the decade or so that he's been making music. He's still prone to whining, his falsetto is still too thin to be remarkable, he still comes dusted in Auto-Tune. You can hear a choppiness in some verses that results from lines sung separately being joined together, post recording. When he ventures out of his comfort zone, the results are even worse. He employs a weird bellow in "X," and sings in a croak a few octaves lower than Grande in "Don't Be Gone Too Long." To me, his lackluster voice is Brown's biggest debit as an artist. I don't hear soul; I hear an entertainer who's on the job. I guess that's enough for pop, but Brown works in an R&B/soul tradition (and claims to be honoring it). I've never believed a word that has come out of his mouth on a song—not an earnest one, at any rate—and X changes nothing in that respect.

W is for Why. Why even bother with Chris Brown at this point? Why discuss him at all? Well, the fact of the matter is that he is never not relevant via his headline-grabbing antics or his ability to turn out hits with relative regularity. He gets plenty of shit, but people like Chris Brown. He's a hard worker, a good dancer, can carry a tune, and is an utter spectacle. He has and consistently provides all that it takes to be a modern pop star.

X is for X. When Trace Adkins, Kylie Minogue, Def Leppard, Klaus Schulze, Spock's Beard, Royal Hunt, Fourplay, Gnags and the 69 Eyes named their albums X, it was because those albums represented their 10^th full-length release (sometimes including hits compilations, sometimes not). That is not why Chris Brown named this album, his sixth, X. He told Ebony:

It's the Roman numeral for 10. 5/5/89 is my birthday: 5 plus 5 is 10, and this is my tenth year since I got into music. "X" is the 24th letter in the alphabet, and I will turn 24 when this album comes out. "X" is also a metaphor, as in "ex-girlfriend": it implies you're progressing and moving on in life, not holding on to the past and your old ways.

He told The Guardian:

The album is called X because that's the Roman numeral for 10, he explains, so, "I just tried to give people something that would have more meaning, more depth", because his date of birth is 5.5.89, and if you add five plus five you get 10, "so it's like 8, 9, 10."

The delay of this album invalidated using the title to celebrate a decade in music. (Also, his debut wasn't released until 2005, which is where most acts start counting.) Also, that's not a metaphor. Also none of this is meaningful or deep.

Y is for Youth. Chris Brown is defined by his youth. He is 25! He's a baby! I would hate to have my mid-20's life blasted to the universe in the way his has been. That he got into this business so young, with clearly no real way to grasp implications or possible outcomes, is pretty sad. I'm not saying he's made the best of it, or that he's even done a particularly good job at navigating fame, but my sympathy to child stars extends even to him when I really think about it. This is not an excuse, but an explanation.

I do wonder when he's going to grow up and start acting like a responsible, accountable man. Or for how long he will be allowed by the music-buying public to creatively tread water. It might be forever.

Z is for Zzzzzzz. Because, I mean, over the course of 21 tracks and about 75 minutes of music, the guy says nothing of consequence. He's been doing this for about a decade, and his biggest, most memorable statements have not been in his music.

Busch Gardens amusement parks in Williamsburg, Va. and Tampa, Fla. have decided to remove headless props from their Howl-O-Scream Halloween attractions after customers complained that the displays reminded them of the beheadings carried out by Sunni militant group ISIS.

"Many of the scenes depicted at Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream are graphic in nature, but they are fictional and are not intended to provide commentary on current world events," Busch Gardens said in their statement announcing the props' removal from parks. "The props in this year's event were designed and purchased several months ago. In light of recent events, some of these props would have had the unintended consequence of appearing insensitive and will not be part of Howl-O-Scream."

The Virginia Gazette caught flack from readers for publishing photos of the headless figures on the front page of their Saturday edition. The paper's editor, Rusty Carter, was apparently forced to make a statement to explain the decision, writing, "The photo was taken last week as part of an assignment to preview a current exhibit. The figures are cartoonish in design, and do not look realistic. It is the job of our reporters and photographers to report and photograph the news, not censor it."

The headless props were part of the pirate-themed Cut Throat Cove section of the Howl-O-Scream attraction. "Cut Throat Cove™ is the haven for bloodthirsty, dangerous rogues—where the scurvy dogs, buccaneers and scoundrels go for shelter. Proceed with caution," the Busch Gardens' site warns.

"I think it was good that they pulled it," park goer Hartley Bond told WRIC. "I think it was out of order and insensitive to public sentiment. So I'm glad they responded."

[Image via Bush Gardens/Facebook]

Tech titans slowly began releasing their diversity numbers earlier this year as a well-intentioned conversation starter about the industry's troubling sameness. But as the disclosures pressed on, companies began burying their reports, hoping no one would notice how truly terrible their gender and racial breakdowns are. Why not? The tactic worked for Twitter.

Groupon—once the darling of the stock market, now the Zynga of e-commerce—is the latest firm to play down its public statistics. The company dumped their report earlier this morning, just before the biggest tech stock offering of the year and the new iPhone went on sale.

breaking: groupon does terrible diversity numbers news dump during BABA day

https://t.co/gp97mSdjJv

— ಠ_ಠ (@MikeIsaac) September 19, 2014

So far, it's working. Sites like TechCrunch are scrambling to pound out pieces on the lines of fanboys and resellers waiting for new iPhones, but there's not a word on Groupon.

But why even bother hiding the numbers? Dismal reports like these may bring a fleeting wave of middling press, but they are certainly no threat to the business. And none of these companies' numbers are any more awful than the others—Groupon included.

As Groupon's report notes, the company is 71 percent white and their tech team is 82 percent male. Those figures are within the margins of the industry's grim norm.

In typical fashion, Groupon goes on to mention that they could do a better job at making the 12,000 employee company more diverse:

Like many of our tech industry peers, we recognize that there is more we can do. As a company that is just six years old, our inclusion and diversity programs are evolving alongside our business.

They could start by not hiding the problem.

Screenshot: Groupon

As the Summer of Butts fades into golden autumn, a Bronx-born single mother has released her own "viral" butt YouTube in the hopes of capitalizing on a trend sweeping the nation like a butt abruptly dropped very low and skimmed lightly over a dance floor (or regular floor).

Also J. Lo made Iggy Azalea wear a dirty swimsuit.

On Friday, Jennifer Lopez released the video for her new single "Booty." The track features a guest verse by famously curvaceous rapper Iggy Azalea, who also co-stars in the video, which doesn't bother J. Lo at all. In the opening montage, the two women dance together like sisters, one of whom died tragically at a young age, and now they're reunited in heaven. J. Lo sits her butt on top of Iggy's butt, like it's a chair.

Because Iggy Azalea is hip and cool, she has the sense to look bored for the duration of the video, the bulk of which is made up of this and similar scenes. So bored she seems on the verge of slipping lithely from consciousness, in fact. One gets the sense that she is a participant in the project mostly out of politeness—a favor to her mom's friend, Ms. Lopez.

However, as the duo slickly writhe back and forth overtop one another's bodies like two snakes vying for the title of Coolest Snake, tragedy strikes Azalea.

The edges of her pristine white bathing suit—

—become discolored, stained, and filthy with bronzer.

As bronze as a quincunx in the pale hand of a Roman maiden,

as bronze as a decorative bowl displayed in a glass case at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

as bronze as the medals that preclude Team USA (women's gymnastics) from going to Friendly's for ice cream because Friendly's ice cream is for winners,

so were the edges—specifically top and sides—of Iggy Azalea's swimsuit.

Whose bronzer it was is not for us to know. What we can say for certain is that, despite or in defiance of their different natural skin tones, both women appear to be approximately the same color in their scenes, and that color is one that, if one desired to render them in crayon portrait, would have to be procured from Crayola's Mermaid Shimmer set, rather than a standard 64-count box.

But this is only the second most disturbing thing that happens in the "Booty" video which, true to name, is a bummer from start to finish.

Let's go back to the beginning.

Like most erotic exploits, "Booty" opens with a series of urgent disclaimers intended to steel the audience for the sequence of sexy images that will follow, or perhaps to dissuade them from watching altogether. "Warning!" says J. Lo, over a faint din of beeps and other computer sounds. "Standby for countdown. Prepare audience for maximum impact. Full immersion begins in 10...9..."

"8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...NOW!"

So far 25 seconds have passed, with not a single booty in sight. For 10 of them, the only thing on the screen was numbers. At this point, the audience could be forgiven for wondering if the "EPCOT Center presents Mission: SPACE"-esque disclaimer up top was, perhaps, a little exaggerated.

Then suddenly, the screen is aglow with butts. One butt, two butts; old butts, new butts.

Interspersed with Iggy Azalea's ruining of what is no doubt a very expensive piece of swimwear is a rapid fire series of clips of J. Lo smacking her buttocks and slapping her buttocks, and shaking them, and quaking them. Everything is round and wet, like a billiard ball covered in baby oil, or an orange in the sink. At times, sporting a lush ponytail of honey-colored extensions, Lopez is a dead ringer for an adult version of singer Ariana Grande. At other points, she seems to have no more hair on her head than a baby.

If the video has a message it is this: That J. Lo is very toned and has the means and the drive to amass a vast collection of leotards and swimsuits should not be questioned, by anyone.

The most unnerving segment of the video is the fantasy sequence we will call lip BLAM, which imagines a world in which it is possible to twist open an EOS lip balm with hands covered in oil. We open on a jarring close-up of J. Lo's fingers, the nails of which have been filed into trendy tan talons.

Then BLAM.

She applies it.

For the remainder of the video, J. Lo takes a shower while wearing a dress and stilettos. She dances in a hallway while holding a cigarette, because holding a cigarette is something she once saw someone do. She flips over her kids' report cards and, in the space reserved for the signature of a parent or guardian, writes "~*~THE BADDEST BITCH~*~," adding in parentheses on the following line "(Jennifer Lopez)."

"Shake that!" says J. Lo to the camera.

Iggy Azalea has long since removed herself.

[via YouTube]

Lately, reading the vast majority of the critics at many mainstream publications, I become paralyzingly depressed. This morning's bit of weltschmerz comes courtesy of the error-prone television critic of Our Paper of Record, Alessandra Stanley.

The offending item is about a new show debuting this fall called How To Get Away With Murder. The lead paragraph is a master-class of contextual cluelessness:

When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called "How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman."

I want to believe that Stanley meant to compliment Rhimes, as in, "Congratulations on being a more complicated version of a racist stereotype!" Later Stanley writes that Rhimes has been breaking the mold of that archetype, calls that an "achievement," and salts even that word with "admirable." And yet: It's very telling Stanley doesn't bother justifying her position that Rhimes is an "Angry Black Woman" from the get-go. She simply assumes that hers is an obvious position, that when the rest of us look at Rhimes that's what we see. Also that that's what Rhimes sees when she looks at herself and her work.

That Stanley cannot see the stupidity of that assumption is really... sad.

For one thing, Shonda Rhimes herself does not agree, not least because Stanley's assumption that she "created" Viola Davis' character in How to Get Away With Murder is, factually, untrue (the show was created by Pete Nowalk, as Rhimes points out here):

Confused why @nytimes critic doesn't know identity of CREATOR of show she's reviewing. @petenowa did u know u were "an angry black woman"?

— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) September 19, 2014

Apparently we can be "angry black women" together, because I didn't know I was one either! @petenowa #LearnSomethingNewEveryday

— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) September 19, 2014

Final thing: (then I am gonna do some yoga): how come I am not "an angry black woman" the many times Meredith (or Addison!) rants? @nytimes

— shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) September 19, 2014

When the ostensible target of your compliment is driven to a response like this, it is safe to say you should get on your knees and beg forgiveness. When the ostensible target of your compliment is a gigantically powerful and influential television producer and she reacts like this, you're in real trouble.

It's not that journalism has to flatter, but it has some responsibility to facts and reality, and a misjudgment of this magnitude suggests you are not aware of what it means, right now, to call someone an "Angry Black Woman" in the pages of a national newspaper. If you're going to write about the explosion of a stereotype your piece should at least display some understanding of how that stereotype has been wielded in the past. (Also, don't bizarrely term Clair Huxtable "benign and reassuring.") Otherwise, you have a failing of journalism, not just politics.

Why, you might be wondering, does a television critic who screws up this much (and so often) continue to occupy so high a post as "television critic at the New York Times"? As an empirical matter of why her bosses continue to employ her, it is a mysterious question. At this point it is obvious to everyone paying attention to the byline how many errors she makes.

But as a matter of the general state of critics right now, it's par for the course.

Critics have been losing ground to the Goodreadses and RottenTomatoeses of the world for some time now. Some critics have seen this as a wake-up call and stopped writing every review as thought their critical judgment were handed down from Mount Olympus. (Pauline Kael, of course, was championing that approach long before the internet came along but the call has been more urgent lately.) Others, apparently, have decided to live in a prison of their own making, paying no attention to the culture around them or what's happening in it and then professing surprise when their writing is met with cries of "BUT WHYYYYYYY???" on the internet.

Stanley seems to be of the latter sort, and something about her position insulates her from properly considering the criticism. Which means nothing will change, and the Times will continue to enjoy a reputation for not knowing what it's talking about where popular culture is concerned.

Downton Abbey, have you heard of it? Yes, Kim Kardashian would like to be on it, please. Thanks!

The Sun spoke to Kim Kardashian, a big fan of Downton Abbey, who reportedly said, "I'd love to be on [Downton Abbey] if they asked." Adding, "I love things like that."

If you're worried that a line in The Sun wasn't enough to nab Kardashian a spot on the hit British drama, you can relax! Kardashian, hoping to follow in George Clooney's footsteps, has reportedly already reached out to Laura Carmichael, who plays Lady Edith Crawley, about securing a guest spot (or a recurring role? Laura, anything you can do would be great).

Good luck to Kim Kardashian, and, of course, God bless the Crawleys.

[image via Getty, h/t PageSix]

Rich and famous people have all the time in the world. What to do in a given afternoon? Shop? Get a smoothie? Get sushi? Walk the dog? Go to the gym? Go to the park? Go to the beach? Swim? Get on a plane? Rent a yacht? Talk to ghosts? Talk to ghosts. Kate Hudson talks to ghosts.

In an interview with the British talk show host Alan Carr set to air tonight, Hudson says that she and her mother Goldie Hawn communicate with summoned spirits. Here are some quotes from that interview via The Independent:

"Me and my mum Goldie can see dead people."

"It is not really seeing, it is feeling a spirit; a fifth energy."

"I believe in energy. I believe our brains can manifest into visual things."

"When you see something, you are supposed to tell the energy what year it is and that they don't belong there."

"When your brain is freaking out on you, you may have to remind it. Why is being dead funny?"

It's unclear if Hudson said "mum" in the interview or if the British decided to transcribe it that way anyway. In any event, that's not important: what's important is that Kate Hudson and Goldie Hawn sit around conversing with dead people conjured from their brains, none of whom have instructed Kate Hudson to act in a good movie at any point in the last decade.

[image via Getty]

A writer wrote a thing about black women. It is bad. Very bad. Do not read this article. It will make your face do that thing where your eyebrows pinch together and your left eye starts twitching uncontrollably. Below are the keywords from this article, ranked from Bad to The Fuck You Say About Me?!

15. Bossy

14. Sharp-tongued

13. Sexual

12. Intimidating

11. Angry

10. Volcanic (used to describe the type of "meltdown" black women have occasionally)

9. Dark-skinned

8. Flawed (as in "extravagantly flawed")

7. Menacing

6. Potent (as in "potent libidos")

5. Highhanded

4. Less (as in "less classically beautiful")

3. Haughty

2. Sassy

1. Kooky (but only "slightly")

You may have heard that the sea levels are rising. You may have heard that over the next several decades, rising seas will threaten major coastal cities. You may have surmised that it's dumb, then, to build houses right by the water. Not Florida!

If public policy were run by rational people, there would now be some huge but orderly program to not only dissuade developers from building new houses on Florida's beaches, but also to encourage residents who do live directly on the beach to start seeking shelter elsewhere some time in the reasonably near future. That is not what Florida does at all, because Florida is very "Floridian" (dumb, and run by Republicans). If you appreciate Florida's natural beauty and enjoy developing a sick, sinking feeling in your gut, I invite you to peruse this week's excellent Reuters report on the depths of the arrogance and stupidity that are present in Florida's official approach to coastal development. You can't find a plainer slow motion disaster in the making anywhere this side of a ticking time bomb in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Between 1990 – when warnings were already being sounded on rising sea levels – and 2010, the United States added about 2.2 million new housing units to Census areas, known as block groups, with boundaries near the shore, a Reuters analysis found... Florida's 1,350 miles (2,173 km) of shoreline – the longest in the contiguous 48 states – accounted for a third of new coastal housing built.

That seems like an unwise pattern of development.

The oceans have risen about eight inches on average over the past century worldwide. The rise is two to three times greater in spots along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean... Hurricanes slam into Florida more than anywhere else in the nation

But... all those houses... surely there must be... changes?

Out of 3,302 applications for permits to build residential structures on Florida's 825 miles of beaches since Jan. 1, 2000, just 114 have been denied, a Reuters analysis of state records shows.

I guess we can always just pump more sand onto the beaches, constantly, forever, as they continue to wash away?

Last year alone, the corps spent $150 million to replenish sand on 39 miles of Florida beaches.

At that rate, we can replenish all 1,350 miles of Florida's coastline for only $5.2 billion per year, each year.

All this development is clearly an affront to common sense. At least we're not all on the hook for these morons and their brand new beachfront palaces...

And many of the houses, condominiums and resorts that line the storm-battered beach are covered by federal flood insurance, a subsidized program that took up the slack when private insurers fled the state after Hurricane Andrew inflicted huge losses in 1992. Florida is the program's top customer among states. It has two million policies, many of them charging below-market rates, insuring $484 billion in property.

It won't be long now before the entire federal budget of the United States of America is earmarked for rebuilding Florida's beachfront homes that have been blown away in hurricanes, so that they can be swallowed by the rising sea the following year.

[Photo: Flickr]

Until the day he died, physicist Samuel Cohen declared that his invention, the neutron bomb, was a "moral" and "sane" weapon that would kill enemy combatants, while sparing civilians and cities. But, despite the support of fans like Ronald Reagan, this weapon of not-as-much mass destruction proved to be a hard sell.

Although Samuel Cohen never achieved the fame of Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, he had been part of the U.S. nuclear weapons program from its very inception. He had worked on the Manhattan Project, where he performed calculations related to the atomic bomb's yield of neutrons. After the war, he was a consultant at the Rand Corporation.

According to his memoir, Shame: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb, he hit upon his idea during a 1951 visit to Seoul, where he witnessed the devastation of the Korean War: "The question I asked of myself was something like: If we're going to go on fighting these damned fool wars in the future, shelling and bombing cities to smithereens and wrecking the lives of their surviving inhabitants, might there be some kind of nuclear weapon that could avoid all this?"

A Kinder, Gentler Nuke

Cohen's invention was, essentially, a smaller, "fun-sized" version of a hydrogen bomb with a few simple modifications under the hood.

Since a hydrogen bomb utilizes fusion as well as fission, it releases much more of its energy in the form of prompt radiation—especially neutrons—than a fission bomb does. Most of those neutrons, however, are absorbed by a "jacket" of uranium-238 that encases the fusion-fission device, in order to further increase the explosive yield of the bomb.

A neutron bomb is a hydrogen bomb without the uranium-238. This lowers the explosive yield while letting the neutrons bust out all over.

So, when a fission bomb explodes, the released energy is distributed as:

• 50% blast
• 35% thermal radiation (heat)
• 10% residual radiation (fallout)
• 5 % prompt radiation (gamma rays, neutrons, X-rays)

Cohen believed that he could increase the output of prompt radiation to as high as 80%, while scaling back on the amount of energy released in the form of blast, heat and fallout.

As such, the neutron bomb would provide less bang for the buck. It would be a tactical nuke, explicitly used to kill enemy combatants on the battlefield while, supposedly, minimizing the amount of physical collateral damage. The official name for the bomb was an "Enhanced Radiation Weapon" (ERW).

In order to be effective militarily, a neutron bomb would have to incapacitate its victims quickly. This requires a very high dose, in the neighborhood of 8,000 rems. For a one-kiloton ERW detonated at 1,500 feet, the required lethal dose would cover an area of about 0.8 square miles. Anyone in this kill zone would die in a particularly gruesome manner, as neutrons collided with protons inside living tissue. The ionization would break down chromosomes, cause nuclei to swell and destroy all types of cells, especially those in the central nervous system.

A Political Explosion

Cohen and his colleagues at the nuclear weapons labs spent years lobbying government and military officials to develop the neutron bomb, arguing that it was a more discriminating weapon with both moral and military advantages.

Finally, they found support from President Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, who was seeking the capability to conduct limited nuclear warfare "so that if deterrence were to fail…the use of nuclear weapons would not result in [an] orgy of destruction." This might be possible, he believed, through the use of "a sufficient accuracy-yield combination to destroy only the intended target and to avoid widespread collateral damage."

The neutron bomb offered Schlesinger what he wanted. He remained the Secretary of Defense after Nixon's resignation and, in 1975, the Ford administration authorized development of the weapon, which would be overseen by the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). The neutron bomb would be designed for tactical use to offset the Warsaw Pact's three-to-one advantage in tank forces. The army requested neutron warheads for its Lance short-to-medium-range tactical missile and its 8-inch and 155 mm artillery pieces.

But, it was President Jimmy Carter who would inherit the program and make the final decision about deployment. There was just one small problem: nobody had bothered to tell Carter that the weapon was being built. The president found out about it the same way as the rest of the world….he read about it in the Washington Post.

Reporter Walter Pincus had learned about the neutron bomb when he saw a congressional committee report that included testimony about its development. On June 6, 1977, he published an article with the dramatic headline, "Neutron Killer Warhead Buried in ERDA Budget." The article described the weapon as "specifically designed to kill people through the release of neutrons rather than to destroy military installations through heat and blast."

Most of the Carter administration had not been aware of the neutron bomb project. Those who had known about, including Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and James Schlesinger (who was now the Secretary of Energy), never imagined that it would be controversial.

Carter's aides knew differently—not least, because the president had made it a point to pledge in his inaugural address, "we will move this year a step toward our ultimate goal—the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth."

Domestic critics saw the neutron bomb as an escalation of the arms race. Others charged that, by making nuclear weapons less destructive, it made nuclear war easier to wage. Leftists even called it a "capitalist" bomb because it killed people while protecting property.

But criticism in the U.S. was calm compared to the backlash in Europe. The neutron bomb wasn't a strategic weapon to serve as a deterrent; it was a tactical weapon intended for actual use on the battlefield—and that battlefield happened to be located on European soil.

Ironically, the supporters of the bomb had thought that it would ease European fears, by promising a technological breakthrough that would limit the worst effects of nuclear war. Instead it had the opposite effect and served as a rallying issue for Europe's growing anti-nuclear weapon movement, which had become increasingly convinced that the nuclear powers, despite their lip service to work toward disarmament, would continue to expand and modernize their arsenals.

The extent of the opposition across Europe was stunning. A "Halt the Neutron Bomb" campaign in the Netherlands brought out 50,000 protesters, and delivered a petition to the Dutch parliament signed by 1.2 million. Polls in the UK found that 72% of voters who had heard of the neutron bomb opposed its deployment.

But, while there was widespread grassroots opposition, some European governments felt differently. On July 22, 1977, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told Carter that, although NATO officials wanted the new weapon, "they are terrified by the political consequences of seeming to approve nuclear warfare on their territory and endorsing a weapon which seems to have acquired a particularly odious image."

Brzezinski later organized a compromise strategy: the U.S. announced that it would be willing to forego deployment if the Soviet Union, in turn, would forego deployment of its SS-20 intermediate range ballistic missile, and NATO publicly approved the plan.

But then, without any warning, in April 1978, Carter announced that he was deferring production of the neutron bomb—a position that meant, in effect, he was canceling the program. The president had privately reached the conclusion that European governments would be unable to muster support. Carter told his advisors "that the burden and political liability for this weapon, which as far as he could see nobody wanted, was being placed on his shoulders instead of being shared by the whole alliance."

Carter's surprise decision frustrated European leaders who had spent political capital to support the deployment of a weapons system that would not be produced. The administration was widely criticized domestically for its handling of the entire affair. The Washington Post ran a cartoon depicting the president as an out-of-control missile. The caption read: "It's the Cartron bomb—it knocks down supporters without damaging opponents."

Reagan's Raygun

Ronald Reagan also criticized Carter's decision to halt production of the neutron bomb. He was excited about its potential, saying that:

"Very simply, it is the dreamed of death ray weapon of science fiction. It kills enemy soldiers but doesn't blow up the surrounding countryside or destroy villages, towns and cities…..Here is a deterrent weapon available to us at much lower cost than trying to match the enemy gun for gun, tank for tank, plane for plane."

After Reagan was elected president, he announced that he was reviving the neutron bomb program. But, in Europe, opposition against deploying the weapon had hardened even further.

Security experts openly warned against the potential consequences of using the neutron bomb. Some were convinced that, if the U.S. used tactical nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union would escalate the conflict and respond with strategic nuclear weapons.

Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, a former Chairman of the Military Committee of NATO wrote in The Times on August 18, 1980:

"Once you cross the nuclear threshold you have taken an irreversible step which is almost bound to lead to a strategic nuclear exchange, which in turn is almost bound to lead to the end of civilization…I will go to my grave being certain that if you let off a neutron bomb anywhere in Europe you have gone 90% of the way toward triggering a strategic nuclear exchange."

Another concern was that the decision to use the weapon would be placed in the hands of field officers. Brigadier Michael Harbottle, a retired British army officer, wrote in 1981 that:

"Because it is a close combat weapon with an immediate response capability, the decision to use it is likely to be delegated to the tactical field commander at the point of attack. The decision to fire will be tactical not strategic, and is unlikely to take into account the wider repercussions."

And then, there was the claim that civilians would be spared from the "collateral" effects of the weapon. Although the "kill zone" was, in theory, limited to 0.8 square miles, there was also a considerably larger area (about 2.5 square miles) within which the dose, though not enough to incapacitate quickly, could still cause radiation sickness. Hence, 2.5 square miles would need to be considered the lethal area of the weapon as far as civilians were concerned.

That posed a big problem, since Western Europe was such a densely populated region. In Germany, the average distance between populated places was only a little over a mile, so there were simply not many areas in the prospective battle zone where 2.5 square miles would not contain substantial numbers of noncombatants.

Indeed, a large-scale Warsaw Pact invasion would have involved something like 20,000 tanks. And those tanks would not be conveniently deployed in closely-packed formations. Surveillance of Warsaw Pact field exercises suggested that no more than 10 to 20 tanks would likely be within the effective area of a single weapon. Western forces, therefore, would have to detonate hundreds of neutron bombs.

And, finally, the ultimate kicker. The warheads being built by the U.S. had not achieved the efficiency that physicist Samuel Cohen had envisioned decades earlier. They didn't yield 80% neutron radiation, but only 30%, while the blast and thermal energy yields had been reduced only marginally, to 40% and 25%. Under those circumstances, it was viewed as folly to believe that Western forces could minimize collateral physical damage in Europe.

Confronted with European refusal to allow deployment of the weapons, the bombs never left the U.S. and were dismantled during the first Bush administration. As precision-guided weaponry continued to mature and become more sophisticated, the rationale for building a neutron bomb faded.

Samuel Cohen never forgave Ronald Reagan for what he deemed was a betrayal against him and his country. In 2006, the embittered physicist completed the third revision of his memoirs and published them for free on the Internet. This edition of the book had a new title: Fuck You! Mr. President.

Spartanburg, SC police arrested Shane Gregory, 22, for shoplifting at a Priscilla McCall's store. After setting the store's front door security alarms off, he was asked to remove the contents of his pockets by a store employee. He obliged, and allegedly removed: one (1) condom and one (1) pocket pussy belonging to the store.

According to the police report obtained by the Smoking Gun, store employee Mary Jane McGraw thought Gregory—whom she remembered from the time he applied for a job at the store—was behaving strangely. Gregory apparently asked her questions about some of the store's products (Priscilla McCall's bills itself as "[catering] to customers wishing to enhance their relationship or to those just wanting to have a fun") and then attempted to leave, setting off alarms.

From the Smoking Gun:

McGraw confronted Gregory and asked him to empty his pockets.

Gregory initially fished out a condom from his pocket, which prompted McGraw to ask what else he had. The employee told police that, "he then pulled a pocket pussy out of his pants."

McGraw then called police to the store, who arrested Gregory for shoplifting and took him to county jail. He was released six hours later.

[H/T Smoking Gun // Image via Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office]

It looks like the weather over the United States will briefly get interesting again over the next few days, and as with all interesting weather, it spells danger for millions of people. Areas from Chicago to Detroit are at risk for large hail, damaging winds, and possibly an isolated tornado tomorrow.

Severe Weather Threatens the Midwest Tomorrow

There are two areas at risk for severe weather on Saturday; the first covers much of northern Minnesota and small parts of North Dakota and Wisconsin, with the second covering a swath of real estate from Illinois to Michigan, including the entire Chicago metro area and the extreme western Detroit metro.

The Storm Prediction Center issued the northernmost slight risk—including Duluth—based on the potential for thunderstorms that could reach "marginal" severe levels, with hail to the size of quarters and 60 MPH wind gusts possible.

The slight risk for severe weather exists in anticipation of strong thunderstorms developing along the leading edge of a cold front as it dips through the area during the day on Saturday. The agency warns that storms that do form have the potential to produce large hail (quarter size or larger) and some bowing segments may produce wind gusts of 60+ MPH. The SPC also notes that a tornado or two is possible if storms can tap into any low-level rotation present across the area.

Cold Canadian Air Politely Invades U.S.

The good news (or bad news, if you're a warm weather person) is that the cold front will bring a much more autumnal airmass, with Sunday's highs expected to reach the 70s and lows in the 50s in Illinois, with highs in the 50s and lows in the 30s closer to Lake Superior.

If you need another sign that fall is here and the (lack of) summer warmth is on its way out, it dipped below freezing in the northeast this morning, and some ski resorts are starting to produce snow.

Odile's Ghost, Pining for Swan Lake, Creates Texas Lake

Meanwhile, flooding rains are occurring across the southern United States thanks to both the remnants of Hurricane Odile and a trough digging across the northern Gulf of Mexico. The remnants of Odile thankfully weren't as bad as they were originally forecast, with the Tucson area escaping the major flooding that was expected. However, flash flooding did occur (and is ongoing) across parts of New Mexico and Texas as the late Odile's moisture moves through the area. Some parts of western Texas and extreme southeastern New Mexico have seen more than six inches of rain.

Conga Line of Heavy Rain

A different scenario is playing out along the Gulf Coast, as a trough currently located over the northern Gulf of Mexico is causing a conga line of heavy rain to stretch from Texas to Florida. It's hard to see the near-contiguous shield of rain on radar since the beam stops a few dozen miles off the coast, but it's pretty easy to see on satellite (above). The Houston area has seen flash flooding as a result of the heavy rain over the past couple of days, with parts of the western Houston metro seeing six inches of rain since midnight.

Have a good weekend, and keep an eye on the weather if you're under the gun for severe storms on Saturday.

[images: author, WeatherBELL, NWS, NASA]

You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

The drug mephedrone, commonly referred to as "Meow Meow," has been driving teens to all kinds of destruction lately. Connor Scott, a 19-year-old Meow Meow addict, reportedly admitted this week to holding up two different British clothing stores with a machete. According to the police report, when cops caught up to him, Scott said, "Get me off the streets."

Scott didn't manage to make off with any cash in the robberies, however, as both times he got flustered and confused when cashiers didn't immediately hand him money. The police report notes that Scott ran home later to grab an air pistol, which he waved at police before surrendering. Cops say he was "walking in a strange manner."

Scott was sentenced to four years in a "young offenders' institution."

[Photo via Grimsby Telegraph]

For the first time in a long time, some of venture capital's biggest names are openly worried. Sky-high valuations, easy money, and mounting burn rates are on everyone's mind (and in everyone's blog posts). But what's the private reaction?

The following email chain was sent my way by a friend of its author, David Hirsch. Hirsch is a managing partner at Metamorphic Ventures, a man our tipster describes as "without a doubt the dumbest VC on the planet." This is Valleywag, and we're not in the business of unsubstantiated snap judgments, but he does tweet things like this:

@pmarca the smartphone is the sonogram of sports and life but it's not opt in or opt out.

— David Hirsch (@startupman) September 15, 2014

Below is an unsolicited (and unedited) email he sent to his friends, opining on the state of venture capital in The Bubble:

From: "David Hirsch" <david@mv.vc>

To: "David Hirsch" <david@mv.vc>

Cc: "Tara Eckert" <teckert@metamorphic.vc>

Subject: Fwd: Gurley's take on excessive VC risk in the WSJ

MV Founders and Friends -

Many investors , media and entrepreneurs have been pinging me on my take of gurley's article. Was waiting for later in the week to organize my thoughts. However , thought I'd send out my good friend and MV advisor note as I believe in much of what Wes articulates. The good news to most on this email is that much of what is below is deep in our/your DNA as we started as a small scrappy operational fund that believes in mega growth but also has always valued being capital efficient . While our roots have been focused on Monitization ,commerce , revenue , b2b we have also diversified categorically through the years to what's it all about : rock star teams in massive categories . By definition , rock star teams are mindful of the content below and for those companies that are more growth oriented by nature , consumer driven , etc you have heard this song from us before. We have a very bullish view on the future and innovation but with that as bob marley had sung " in this great future ; you can't forget your past " and let's all be humble and mindful and use this opportunity to seize market share and win big. Also have copied our CFO , Tara who has great experience in working w teams around burn , projections , etc and we are available for a checkup if needed. Have a great day....dlh

David L Hirsch

Metamorphic Ventures LLC

257 Park Ave. South, Floor 5

New York 10010

DH@mv.vc<mailto:DH@mv.vc>

http://www.metamorphic.vc

@startupman

Hirsch's email was itself a sort of reply to this longer, better spelled private email by Wesley Chan, an advisor at Google Ventures:

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Wesley Chan" <weschan@gmail.com<mailto:weschan@gmail.com>>

To: "David Hirsch" <david@mv.vc<mailto:david@mv.vc>>

Subject: Fwd: Gurley's take on excessive VC risk in the WSJ

I sent this to all the ceos (wael, andrew) that I've been working

with...my thoughts on Gurley's email...enjoy!

-Wes

————— Forwarded message —————

From: Wesley Chan

<weschan@gmail.com<mailto:weschan@gmail.com><mailto:weschan@gmail.com>>

Date: Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 1:57 PM

Subject: Gurley's take on excessive VC risk in the WSJ

To: Wesley Chan

<weschan@gmail.com<mailto:weschan@gmail.com><mailto:weschan@gmail.com>>,

Pat Blute <pblute@gmail.com<mailto:pblute@gmail.com><mailto:pblute@gmail.com>>

Hi-

I don't often forward things around but I saw this in the WSJ this weekend and read it twice. If you haven't seen it, you should read thru it as well. I agree with many of his points, and hope that it will give you some time to think thru the implications it may have on on everything you're doing from fundraising, to hiring, to finding office space. Specifically, I think there are a few things (and my take below) to think about as you monitor your burn and decide on when to raise your next round:

-It's going to probably get more difficult to raise your next round without either proof that you are gaining large market share AND/OR have a strong & believable revenue/economic upside model in place AND/OR having a long/deep relationship with an investor who deeply believes you can mint cash for them in the future (usually based on you making them rich previously). Think carefully about what metrics you need to prove out for your next round and whether you can achieve them in a timely manner (e.g. before things get too tight or you run out of cash).

-Raising at a seed level is still relatively easy (as there's still a lot of hobby investors out there fueled by crowdfunding sites and YC demo days), as is raising late stage growth rounds at high valuations (but only if you're already crushing it and have a rocket ship trajectory). You're likely going to see investors pulling back at everything in between in the next 9 months or so, as the correction that Gurley talks about will likely start playing out then.

-Conserve cash, but not at the expense of taking market significant share or not hiring superb engineers that could accelerate your execution. What this means: try not to sign 10 year leases for office space from greedy landlords or fall in the trap of over-hiring in your non-technical roles, especially if you haven't figured out your monetization economics or product-market fit yet. And this also means you should avoid spending lots of money on non-essential things like big launch parties, PR consultants, or travel expensive conferences that don't yield you a lot of new partnerships/customers and ROI despite what others may be doing. Stuff like this killed a lot of companies in 1999 and 2008, so don't repeat history. Happy to talk more about this with you if you want, but the key takeaways is to be wise with your burn— hope for the best but plan for the worst. As both Buffet and Gurley point out, "be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful."

-Wes

There you have it. Nine months—set your boutique calendar apps!

It's a tragedy for me to see the dream is over: TMZ is reporting that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo matriarch June Thompson and her fairly beta other half Mike "Sugar Bear" Thompson are no more. It seems that Sugar Bear has been trolling online for a new partner, and Mama June is convinced that he's been cheating on her. Total coincidence: They just happen to be filming Season 5 of their TLC reality show as this is happening.

"We're told the producers of the show are scrambling to try and figure out what's next," writes TMZ, whose piece cites "sources."

Bull. Shit.

Reality TV producers scramble to devise things for their subjects to do, especially when said subjects' favorite activity is sitting around their living room and farting. When real life happens, all they need to do is point their damn cameras and let it unfurl. This development would be a boon to a show that, after almost 60 episodes, is feeling pretty inert, much less discussed now than it was when it debuted two years ago, and suffering from a ratings decline.

In fact, it would be such a boon that it's reasonable to believe this whole estrangement is being orchestrated for the sake of the show, much like how Season 2 focused on the potential Mama June-Sugar Bear nuptials and ended on their camo-clad commitment ceremony.

In a joint statement, June and Sugar Bear told TMZ:

Sugar Bear and I have decided to take some time apart to figure out some things in our relationship. We are taking things day by day but regardless of what happens the girls will always be our #1 priority. We want to thank ya'll for your support.

Is it real? Is it fake? How much farting will occur on the road to answers? Tune in next season for the most gut-wrenching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo episodes ever. My interest in the show is renewed, so at least for one increasingly fickle viewer, this quite possibly planted story is working. That's showbiz!

[Image via Splash]

A Supergirl series is coming to a TV screen near you, Deadline Hollywood reports. The catch: It won't be on the CW alongside Arrow and The Flash. Supergirl is going to be on America's most mature network, CBS.

Are you thinking, "But Moms don't care about Supergirl!" CBS is here to prove you wrong.

Born on the planet Krypton, Kara Zor-El escaped amid its destruction years ago. Since arriving on Earth, she's been hiding the powers she shares with her famous cousin. But now at age 24, she decides to embrace her superhuman abilities and be the hero she was always meant to be. Berlanti and Adler will write the script and executive produce with Berlanti Prods.' Sarah Schechter.

This will be Greg Berlanti's third DC superhero drama to make it to the air, with both Arrow and The Flash making the CW their homes.

Based on this series order, it looks like Supergirl got lost on the way to the big lime green network in the TV sky, but this wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened. CBS originally picked up Sarah Michelle Gellar's magnum opus, Ringer—known for such classic episodes as "What Are You Doing Here, Ho-Bag?" and "It's Called Improvising, Bitch!"—only to move the series to the CW, where its trashy goodness and groundbreaking greenscreen could truly be appreciated, before its untimely demise.

While it makes sense for CBS to pick up the series based on the fact that every other major network has or is developing a comic book-based superhero series, the elephant in the room is why the network known for NCIS and Life Alert commercials would order this particular superhero series. She's not called Superwoman.

Given NBC's take on Wonder Woman ("Can she have it all? Probably not!"), along with CBS' more mature audience, there's every chance that this could become a series about just how hard it is to be a woman (or girl), super or otherwise. Who really wants that in a superhero show? Show me Supergirl on a salmon ladder, and we'll talk.

Then again, Smallville—which was on the WB and CW—dedicated an entire episode to having its version of Supergirl obsess over a beauty pageant, because that's just what girls do, so...

[Images and videos via DC Comics, The CW]

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