Scientists have just discovered a tiny planet, a little planet, the li'lest planet, warm as toast, smaller than most, with a hot, rocky coast, circling a star far, far away.

The little rock planet is the size of our moon and every 13 days it celebrates New Year's as it completes an orbit of a star slightly smaller than our sun. Scientists say it's too hostile to support life (in terms of angry hotness, it's a lot like our mercury), though most likely the planet is just shy and would not be unfriendly once you got to know it. Any water on its surface would disappear very quickly, due to its close proximity to its sun. The planet's name is Kepler-37b, but you can call it Keppy.

NASA scientists were very excited to discover the little rock planet, not because they'd never seen one before, but because it's smaller than any planet they've ever discovered, either inside our solar system or out. They didn't even realize they could find such small planets so far away from Earth until they found this one; normally their telescopes only pick up big Jupiter-sized monsters.

Wee planets like the little rock planet obscure such a small amount of light from their stars when they pass in front of them, that most of the time, the resulting dimming could be mistaken for natural variability in the star's burning. The little rock planet dims its star's light by 0.002% every time it passes in front of it. It is the doll clothes of planets.

The little rock planet was discovered as a result of NASA's Kepler Mission, which explores other solar systems to locate planets comparable to Earth (Earth-sized or smaller) in the "habitable zone" of their suns, where liquid water (and possibly life) could exist.

The scientists say they can report with "a confidence of 99.95 percent" that the little rock planet is actually a planet and not just a mistake they made.

[Scientific American // Artist's rendering of The Little Rock Planet via NASA]

Users of the internet culture behemoth Reddit are not famous for their level-headedness or discretion. So it was a bit discomfiting to spot this AR15 assault rifle—the same kind of gun used by Newtown shooter Adam Lanza—with a cute little Reddit alien logo engraved into it for sale on the site. Minnesota-based Redditor "x—-x—x-x" listed the gun for $1150 last week on Reddit's Gunsforsale section, where fans of memes and viral videos have been loading up on firearms before Obama orders FEMA to confiscate them all. (Online gun sales between individuals are generally legal, as long as they are shipped to a federally licensed firearms dealer.)

Reddit's gun-swapping board, /r/Gunsforsale, is a little-known section of Reddit which nonetheless boasts over 3,000 subscribers and a daily rotation of firearms listsings. Unsurprisingly, the libertarian-leaning Reddit has a strong gun culture, anchored by the /r/guns subreddit, with over 100,000 subscribers. This has earned the ire of some anti-gun Redditors, who have appealed to administrators to ban gun sales on Reddit in the wake of the Newtown massacre. This hasn't happened, yet. We know how Reddit administrators feel about the 1st amendment; we may soon learn their thoughts on the 2nd.

One good way to fix America's vastly bloated and expensive health care system would be to make our health care system public like lots of other civilized nations with higher stands of living than us. [PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER]. Haha. But seriously—until then, here are some medical procedures you don't need.

The ABIM Foundation, working with a laundry list of medical societies, has released a new report on medical procedures that are COMMONLY DONE, but which you probably DON'T need, they are just big wastes of money. Just a few of the things your doctor should NOT do to you:

• "Don't schedule elective, non-medically indicated inductions of labor or Cesarean deliveries before 39 weeks, 0 days gestational age."
• "Don't screen women younger than 30 years of age for cervical cancer with HPV testing, alone or in combination with cytology."
• "Don't perform electroencephalography (EEG) for headaches."
• "Don't order antibiotics for adenoviral conjunctivitis (pink eye)."
• "Cough and cold medicines should not be prescribed or recommended for respiratory illnesses in children under four years of age."
• "Don't prescribe testosterone to men with erectile dysfunction who have normal testosterone levels."

[Choosing Wisely. Photo: Shutterstock]

Stereotype.fm has discovered (and curated) a series of very strange connections between music taste, habits, and personality types. The website is the brainchild of the crew at Tastebuds and is the result of a "hack weekend" project, taking them less than 48 hours to create and launch.

The facts were gathered using survey answers collected from over 100,000 users on the Tastebud website, who created over 6 million unique data points available for analysis. Here, for your judging pleasure, are some highlights:

• Kelly Clarkson Fans: Most Likely to Have Multiple Tattoos
• R. Kelly Fans: Most Likely to Pick Their Noses When No One is Around (100% said yes)
• John Mayer Fans: Most Likely to CLAIM They Have Broken Someone's Heart
• Alanis Morissette Fans: Most Likely to Have Had a Threesome (22% have)
• One Direction Fans: Most Likely to Pee in a Pool (88% said yes)
• The Kooks Fans: Most Likely to be Bullies (8% said yes)
• Hilary Duff Fans: Least Likely to Have Ever Smoked Weed
• Katy Perry Fans: Least Likely to Kiss on the First Date (19% said no)

[Via The AV Club and Buzzfeed / Image via Getty]

As part of a new interactive marketing campaign, telecommunications firm Qualcomm set up a wish-fulfilling bus stop that instantly rewarded impatient commuters with increasingly unconventional rides.

"In a hurry?" asks a seemingly pedestrian ad poster with a link to a nondescript mobile site. Those who were bored enough to answer "yes" were whisked away in a Lamborghini.

"Seen it all?" inquired another ad. Risk-takers who took a chance on the URL were granted a ride to their destination aboard a dog-driven sled.

And so on.

Best bus stop ever? Not exactly hard-earned title, but sure.

[H/T: Tastefully Offensive]

Jessica Powell and her partner Crystal Craven were married recently in what is believed to be Jones County, Mississippi's first same-sex wedding.

A local newspaper, The Laurel Leader-Call, which serves the county where the wedding took place, covered the ceremony and splashed its report on the front page under the headline "Historic Wedding."

Penned by reporter Cassidi Bush, a "self-proclaimed conservative," the article talks about Craven's Stage IV brain cancer diagnosis, and Powell's dress, and quotes the couple as saying "love is love, it knows no gender." Typical heartwarming wedding stuff.

Laurel Leader-Call readers were outraged.

Nasty calls and emails flooded the newspaper's offices, and subscription cancellations followed suit. The paper's Facebook page received more angry comments over this story than on any story in its history.

Last Saturday, Leader-Call owner Jim Cegielski published a powerful op-ed responding to the brouhaha.

He and the rest of the paper are "well aware" that most of the residents of Jones County "are not in favor of gay marriage," Cegielski says, but "any decent newspaper with a backbone" has an obligation to "inform readers what is going on" and can't base its editorial decisions "on whether the story will make people angry."

He continues:

I took the bulk of the irate phone calls from people who called the paper to complain. Most of the complaints seem to revolve around the headline, "Historic Wedding," and the fact that we chose to put the story on the front page. My answer to the "Historic Wedding" headline is pretty simple. You don't have like something for it to be historic.

The holocaust, bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Black Sox scandal are all historic. I'm in no way comparing the downtown wedding of two females to any of those events (even though some of you made it quite clear that you think gay marriage is much worse).

Cegielski goes on to note that many of those who took issue with the article expressed concern for their children or the children of others.

To those people he had this to say:

We have stories about child molesters, murders and all kinds of vicious, barbaric acts of evil committed by heinous criminals on our front page and yet we never receive a call from anyone saying 'I don't need my children reading this.' Never. Ever. However, a story about two women exchanging marriage vows and we get swamped with people worried about their children.

On a personal note, Cegielski confessed that he was "saddened by the hate-filled viciousness of many of the comments directed toward our staff."

Cancel your subscription all you want, he wrote, "but you have no right to berate and belittle anyone on our staff."

UPDATE: The Leader-Call reports gaining over twice as many new subscribers as subscribers lost to the controversy — with "almost all of them" coming from outside Mississippi. "We've probably had 400 phone calls [this week] and 99% of them have been supportive," Cegielski told Jim Romenesko.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the Powell-Craven
wedding was the first same-sex wedding in the state. It is the first same-sex wedding in Jones County.

[H/T: Wonkette]

According to an analysis of Twitter messages from researchers at the University of Vermont, Times Square is the happiest part of New York City. We are maybe not OK and it's time to move.

Perhaps the best part of this survey was the carefully selected "happy words" and "sad words" used to analyze the meaning of the 10 million tweets examined for the survey. Sun, Restaurant, Yoga, Delicious, Coffee, Cafe, Forest, Pasta, Spa, and Bike are among the ten happiest words. Hell, Hate, Lie, lead the pack of the saddest words, followed by Bored, Bitch, Never, Can't, Nothin' [sic], Don't, Mortgage.

Manhattan is also the happiest borough, or at least does the most yoga, coffee drinking, pasta-eating, spa-going.

[Via New York Post/ Image via Getty Images]

Like a pioneer frontiersman, award-winning blogger Andrew Sullivan struck out last year from the civilized climes of Washington D.C. to settle amidst the ill-mannered squalor of New York City. Unsurprisingly for a man used to the refined urban atmosphere of our nation's capital, Sullivan has found himself repeatedly disappointed—in the manners of his fellow city dwellers, in the city's response to Hurricane Sandy, in his cell-phone reception, in Best Buy, in UPS, in the delivery service that brought his couch, and, perhaps worst of all, in the water temperature at the offices of the Daily Beast. And yet his travails continue. In a searing dispatch today, Sullivan addresses the latest New York City failing to try his patience and test his faith: his new home's barbershop infrastructure.

"Yes, another of my waxing and waning complaints about NYC is the absence of decent, professional barbershops," he writes.

His first attempt at haircare, at a "Yelp-recommended" barber, is thwarted by an impossibly long wait; his second dampened when the shop proprietor, attempting to give Sullivan wi-fi access ("so I could blog while I waited"), drops his iPad; his third, "recommended by a friend," results in a "lopsided brick" of a beard.

"Maybe I'm just unlucky, but it amazes me that New Yorkers have such an attitude about good service when they are not in the city," he moans. "Where do their expectations come from? This city has the worst service I've ever experienced.

Yes, it remains impossible to use Time Warner wifi to listen to music on our sound system without it breaking up every few seconds. Yes, AT&T is still a nightmare. No, it doesn't really get much better, you just get used to living in one of the least competent, self-loving cities I've ever known. Maybe over the years, you slowly develop your known competent individuals. From pharmacists bound by Bloomberg's nannying to a super-intendent who cannot show up to fix a broken doorlock to even UPS (one of my meds was just "found" on the sidewalk outside my apartment by a neighbor), you just find it harder to live here, even as you're fleeced everywhere you move. The sidewalks almost suck the money from your pockets and give back attitude in return.

[The Dish]

Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Getty.

After passing through the security checkpoint at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport without incident earlier this month, the youngest member of the Forck family — 3-year-old Lucy — was suddenly singled out by TSA agents for additional screening.

"They specifically told me that they were singling her out for this special treatment because she's in a wheelchair," Lucy's dad Nathan told Fox News. "They are specifically singling out disabled people for this special scrutiny. It's rather offensive to me as a father of a disabled child."

Lucy suffers from Spina bifida, and in addition to being wheelchair-bound, she is also forced to endure an exposed spinal cord in the small of her back.

But TSA agents insisted on patting Lucy down, so her mother pulled out a video camera and began recording the scene.

"It is against the law for you to record," an agent tells her at one point during the video, but Nathan, being an attorney, knew that statement was false, so his wife kept right on filming.

"You can't do touch my daughter unless I record it," she tells the agent.

The entire ordeal lasted some 45 minutes, during which an agent took away Lucy's beloved stuffed animal Lamby, causing her to become inconsolable.

Worse still, Lucy was ready to call the whole family trip to Disney World off. "I don't want to go Disney World," she can be seen saying through sobs.

The TSA has since released a statement saying it "regrets inaccurate guidance was provided to this family during screening and offers its apology."

The statement makes clear that it's fine to film TSA agents at work, and notes that no pat down eventually took place but admits that ordering a pat down of a child as young as Lucy was "not proper procedure."

The Forcks say they are content with the TSA's apology and have no plans to take legal action. "Our goal was to draw people's attention to it — to effect change," Nathan told the Riverfront Times.

As for Lucy, her dad reports that she "had an awesome time in Disney World."

[photo via @elderfirmllc]

"Sex on the Beach" was an entirely different kind of cocktail for a pair of young Brazilian lovers and the large crowd of onlookers who witnessed their unabashed water sports on Carnival Saturday.

Local news outlet O Dia reports that hundreds of beachgoers in the Atlantic Ocean-adjacent city of Rio das Ostras got an eyeful of sea saltiness when an unidentified couple started getting wet and wild in full view of "elderly people and children."

Though a few party poopers attempted to halt the hardcore PDA by demanding that someone call the cops, they were ultimately allowed to conclude their business, and even received a rousing round of applause from their fellow bathers upon finishing.

But because no sexy deed goes unpunished, the two were eventually hauled into the local police precinct and charged with indecent exposure. They were ordered to pay a fine, and were released shortly thereafter.

Word is it was totally worth it.

[obrigado Victor!]

Welcome to Thatz Not Okay, a regular column in which I school inquiring readers on what is and is not okay. Please send your questions (max: 200 words) to caity@gawker.com with the subject "Thatz Not Okay."

While leaving a function at our synagogue the other night, my wife revealed that she's had her eye on a "vintage" coat that's been hanging in the synagogue coatroom for the last three months. She feels that, after all this time, it should be considered abandoned and that it's OK for her to take it home. But I think that would be wrong. First, the coat clearly belongs to someone else. Second, the coat is in a synagogue of all places, and you just can't take something that isn't yours from a House of God. Plus, what if the true owner recognizes the coat when my wife wears it out to dinner or in the supermarket, etc? My wife even mentioned asking the rabbi for his blessing to take the coat, but I think that's wrong too – he'll always look at her as "the coat-stealer". But she seems determined to take it. Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

Here is the conversation your wife is setting herself up for:

"Cute coat! Where did you get it?"

"This? I just fuckin' found it and stole it. I take what I want. It's called livin' off the land. I like your coat too. I'm going to take it because I want it."

Just so we're clear, your wife is proposing that she go to your temple's rabbi and ask him specifically to approve an act that is not only immoral but also illegal because she would like a coat for free?

I think she should do this. As a test of your rabbi. If your rabbi gives his blessing to an act of calculated theft, you should find a new temple because your current one plays fast and loose with laws of both God and the state.

Under what circumstances would your rabbi ever give your wife his blessing to steal a coat from anyone, let alone another member of his congregation? Is your wife impoverished? Is she reduced to stealing because she can afford no coat of her own? You know what the rabbi would do in that case? Probably give her the coat off his back. Start a collection for your family. Perhaps organize a temple rummage sale with profits benefitting the needy (your wife.)

"Just a reminder, any articles left unclaimed in the coatroom after today's service will be donated to the rummage sale," he will say one Friday evening, and the coat's owner, a quiet old woman, who keeps to herself mostly will pick up the coat on the way out. She can't imagine anyone would have wanted it anyway—it was a gift from her husband, not really in the modern style—but it's of great sentimental value to her.

Coats don't have an expiration date. A coat doesn't stop being yours because you've had it for three months.

In another twelve years and nine months, that coat will have a bat mitzvah. It will become a woman and then it can choose for itself where it wants to live.

Until then, your wife should leave it alone.

(By the way, is she sure it's left behind every week and not just hung on the same rack by a woman who always happens to be at temple when she is?)

Last night around 9:30, I passed by a well-known national chain bridal store. It was closed for the night, and as I got closer I saw the security guard sitting on one a chair by the front window BAREFOOT & FEET UP on the guest waiting area chairs. His boots and balled up socks were just strewn about on the carpet. Bleeechhhhh!!! What could I do? Other than stand there for a few minutes pretending to text while I actually snapped a picture of his on-the-clock staycation.

Part of me wants to email the pic to the company in the interest of public health. Those chairs are there for moms and bridesmaids to sit on and SQUEEE when the bride-to-be emerges from the dressing room. This might not be the type of shop that serves champagne while you browse, but I'm pretty sure no ones expecting a hearty serving of sweaty foot juice either. And who knows what else he does while he's there alone? He saw me standing there for at least 10 minutes and made no moves to kennel his dogs.

The other part of me is worried if I drop a dime on this guy, he'll get fired which I don't think really think is warranted. Times are tough, & I assume he needs this job, because overnight security is not a super fun gig. Also, to be fair, he was holding some sort of binder which may have been full of security-guard-work things. And I guess, the store is being protected, because really- who wants to break in and wrassle with a barefoot guy in polyester pants?

I'm thinking about sending an email to the corporate address letting them know what I saw, but not including the photo or which store it was. Is that okay?

Thatz not okay.

I know the posters say "If you see something, say something," but that doesn't mean you should feel compelled to report literally every something you see.

I saw…A COMPUTER.
I saw…FOUR TREES AND THEN ANOTHER TREE BRINGING THE TOTAL TO FIVE: FIVE TREES.
I saw…MY HANDS.

All of these fall under the "anything" subheading of something. Another example of anything is a security guard resting with his feet up.

Sending an email to corporate to report that you saw a security guard in one of their stores sitting with his feet up is equivalent to calling a police station with the tip "Someone somewhere stole something." What are they supposed to do with that information? Host a shoe-keeping-on training session for all security guards? The gentleman you saw presumably knows that his employer would prefer he did not remove his shoes on the job. That's why he does it at night, when no one's around.

Unless you suspect the bridal salon in question is infested with hookworms, someone being barefoot in the store probably does not pose a significant public health risk. You know who else often goes barefoot inside a bridal salon? Brides, when they're trying on dresses.

So he's putting his feet on a chair—the throne of the butt. Have you ever sat on a couch? Someone's feet have probably been there. What about on the floor? You may be surprised to learn that many people do not remove their feet before climbing into bed but instead sleep with them there, resting perilously close to rest of their body.

And why do you assume he's doing other terrible things in the store just because you saw him with his shoes off once? If someone is a liar are they also a killer? If someone puts his feet in a butt place, does he also put his butt in a mouth place? Did you neglect to mention that you also saw him rubbing his genitals on all the doorknobs? If you saw him doing that, you should definitely report it: to the store, to the company and, most importantly, to tips@gawker.com.

Feet on a chair, though, is not as pressing. Maybe mention it on the Yelp page.

As for this:

He saw me standing there for at least 10 minutes and made no moves to kennel his dogs.

Did you really stand there for no fewer and perhaps more than 10 minutes lookin' at him lookin' at you lookin' at him lookin' at you lookin' at him doing his job? That must have been uncomfortable for you. Did you feel awkward at any point? Did you ever step out of your body for even a second of the 10+ minute time freeze to consider that it was slightly odd of you to be lurking on a sidewalk staring into a darkened bridal shop?

If I had been that security guard and I had noticed someone staring at me unwaveringly for a full ten minutes, you know what I would have done?

Called the cops.

If you see something, say something.

Submit your "Thatz Not Okay" questions (max: 200 words) here. Source photo from Shutterstock/image by Jim Cooke.

It's been happening for a whilllee, texters lengthening their verbage, and linguists are here to analyze. Using nearly 4 million words from students' digital-communications data, a linguist at the University of Toronto has discovered this word elongating practice is a trend most common among female twenty-somethings (though it extends to different ages and across both genders as well). Vowels are the most frequently duplicated letters, and often words are only elongated by two or three letters at a time.

Author of Babel No More, Michael Erard, told the Atlantic that this might be an attempt to integrate the nuance of our verbalization into our digital communication. "When people talk, they use intonation in a number of varied and subtle ways," he said.

Meanwhile, New York Magazine has provided a nuanced analysis of all this nuance:

"The extra letters acknowledge that, though his message may only require six letters, his care is worth at least eight."

But more letters don't always mean more affection: sometimes the extra "a" in thaanks can be passive-aggressive. An extra vowel here or there can be whiney or baleful; an extra constant can be curt or demanding.

Or sometimes, it can just be a barometer of margarita intake.

[Via The Atlantic /Image via Monkey Business Images, Shutterstock]

After a long week of people compromising corporations' Twitter presences—specifically here and here—some real-deal hackers have gone into NBC's homepage and turned it into a mine field full of malware traps.

According to Sucuri, a malware-monitoring service, anyone visiting NBC.com and its sub-pages "will have malicious iframes loaded as well redirecting the user to exploit kits." NBC.com may look fine at first, but if you click around the page in the Chrome browser, you'll see the following:


An NBC representative confirmed to Mashable that "there is definitely a situation," but refused to say anything more. For the next few hours at least, probably just consult the TV Guide website if you're really desperate to find out when Community's on.

[Image via AP]

You know that old saying, "don't store your bullets in the oven?"

Well, one Florida man had apparently never heard it — and his waffle-making friend ended up paying the price.

While visiting her friend Javarski "JJ" Sandy earlier this week, 18-year-old Aalaya Walker was suddenly struck by a craving for some nighttime waffles.

Walker headed into the kitchen and began preheating the oven when an explosion occurred and she was struck by something entirely different: Bullets.

It seems Sandy, 25, had been storing the high-capacity magazine from his .45-caliber Glock 21 in the oven for reasons that remain unclear.

At least two bullet fragments embedded themselves in Walker's chest and leg, but the injuries were not severe, and the teen was able to hop on a bus to the hospital by herself.

Sandy later showed officers the melted magazine and noted that it had four rounds in it at the time of the incident.

In the official police report, an officer wrote that Sandy "stated that he does not have a temperature gauge on the oven so he estimates the temperature based on how far the knob is turned."

No charged were filed against Sandy because he has a valid concealed weapons permit.

[photo via Shutterstock]

This horse meat scandal is sweeping Western Europe and quivering even the stiffest of upper lips in Britain. Some people are concerned that the horse meat in their microwaveable pasta dinners may be tainted with an equine anti-inflammatory called phenylbutazone, which in huge doses can cause health risks. But let's get real: Most people are just grossed out at the thought of eating horse meat instead of cow meat. That's stupid.

A disclosure: I don't eat meat, so I don't really—as they say—have a horse in this race. But I ate a bit of horse once in the days when I used to be an omnivore. I was in France, where citizens consumed about 20,000 tons of viande chevaline in 2008, and the piece of horse I ate atop a handful of crusty bread tasted how most people describe it: a bit sweet, a bit gamey, not too unlike beef. It would be especially hard to tell the difference if it were covered in the sugary tomato sauce and gluey cheese generally found in frozen dinners. I can all but guarantee that if Papa John's or any other pizza chain people love to frequent while drinking beer and watching football were to replace its ground-beef topping with ground horse, the lion's share of eaters wouldn't notice. Nobody in the UK was complaining about the horse meat in their food until DNA tests, not taste tests, showed there was horse meat in their food.

There are two very valid reasons to be upset at the thought of someone switching your beef with horse. The first is that consumers have a right to purchase food whose labels don't lie to them. Secondly, not all horse meat is created equal. While some horses killed for food, particularly those in Europe, are safe for human consumption, many of the more than 100,000 American horses shipped outside our borders to be eaten annually are former racing animals whose flesh is laced with steroids and other chemicals as harmful as phenylbutazone. European food-safety officials started turning away American horse meat last year for fear it was too full of dangerous drugs, but this horse-as-beef scandal now calls into question how effective those officials actually are.

But with unadulterated meat, health should not be a concern. If the horse meat you eat is only laden with the same kinds of antibiotics and hormones farmers pump into a vast majority of cattle, pigs, and chickens in America, it is actually downright healthful. Horse meat is quite comparable to lean cuts of beef in the way of calories and protein, but it also contains twice the iron and more than 10 times the concentration of cholesterol-lowering omega-3 fatty acids.

Horse meat is also cheaper than beef, meaning anyone who has a taste for flesh can sate their hunger for less. In America, where the average person eats more than 270 pounds of meat a year, that could amount to a significant savings on food costs.

Horse: A healthy, inexpensive meat that goes fine in pastas, on pizza, sliced into thin strips for a protein boost on salads. A New York Times writer living in France in 2008 even reported overhearing an American couple "happily" scarf down horse burgers while under the impression they were eating old-fashioned, Uncle Sam-approved hamburgers.

So why the repelled sense of dread in everyone at the thought of eating horse meat? In a poll conducted in late 2011, CNN's Eatocracy blog found that more than 42 percent of its readers would outright refuse to eat horse if given the option. What a bunch of misguided snobs.

If Americans are being honest with themselves—if anyone who eats meat is being honest—there is absolutely no reason killing horses and eating the yielded meat is intrinsically worse than the thousands of other animal killings that happen in slaughterhouses around the country every day. If you're alarmed that the wrong meat was slipped into your frozen lasagna, that's reasonable. (Vegetarians, of all people, can appreciate the perils.) But if the very thought of killing horses disgusts you in a way that killing cows or pigs does not, you are entertaining an odd delusion that eating a big steak cut from a cow is elegant while eating similar meat cut from a horse is low-class and vile.

The Western hierarchy of beasts is obviously not any individual eater's fault, as centuries of cultural indoctrination about what animals are and aren't food is hard to shake: cows are food, house pets like cats are not food, goats are sometimes food if you're at an ethnic restaurant, and on like this. But tradition has its limits. There was a time when lobster was considered a poor man's meal in America, fed to New England prisoners and servants, who, folklore says, would occasionally stipulate in their contracts that there would be a limit to how many times they were forced to eat lobster dinners. Now wealthy people will pay a handsome fee for the opportunity to dip those sea cockroaches into big ramekins of clarified butter. Our ancestors' slave food is now our luxury, and all it took was 200 years.

2013 is a year for a similar maturation. The so-called "foodie" movement is rife with some of the most irritating tweeness yet devised, but one development worth keeping is the impulse to eat indiscriminately when it comes to meat. Head cheese, pigs feet, and other offal are now standard offerings on many of America's most expensive menus, brought to you by superfamous chefs like Chris Cosentino and Mario Batali. When Newsweek asked Batali in 2009 why he so loves using odd cuts of meat, he responded, "[A]nyone can put a steak on the grill; this was a bit of a provocation."

If asking people to eat tripe is just "a bit of a provocation," then asking them to eat horse is a punch in the face. Still, if you eat steer meat, you should probably also be eating horse, and dog and cat and donkey and turtle and anything else from which people around the world and through time have been turning into delicious stews and sandwiches. There's really no rational reason why an organic, small-yield slaughterhouse shouldn't be butchering dogs and cats for adventurous consumers. Pigs are close in intelligence to dogs, and dogs eat their own poop and vomit, but one of those we turn into bacon and one of those we let lick us on the face, and all out of a reverence for historical ways and means that mean nothing anymore.

Long gone are the days when everyone needed horses for transportation and therefore looked at them as necessary companion animals. Horses are now mostly for betting on, rich kids who ride English, and the ever-shrinking population of rural families who keep them as labor animals and pets. Only 1.9 million Americans own horses anymore, according to the US Equestrian Foundation [PDF]. Horse meat tastes good and can be a healthy part of a balanced diet. If Americans (and other horse-meat abstainers in the West) can figure out how to manufacture horse meat in a way not reliant on slouched, abused, drug-injected racehorses, there is no reason why you shouldn't one day be able to go down the frozen-food aisle and have a choice between beef lasagna and horse lasagna, no deception necessary.

[Image by Jim Cooke.]

A 10-year-old boy in Brockton, Massachusetts recently had oh, I don't know, THE BEST NIGHT EVER when he called the cops on his mom so he wouldn't have to go to bed and then got to meet a police officer.

The Brockton Enterprise reports that the boy dialed 911 after being sent to bed at the uncool time of 8:00 p.m., and informed the dispatcher that he was calling to report his mother for murder…ING HIS GOOD TIME. (Actually, he just said he was calling because he didn't want to go to bed.)

After he hung up, the operator called back and spoke to the boy's mother, who explained that she had goaded the boy into telephoning the police. You can download audio of the call at the paper's website:

"I told him to go to bed. He doesn't want to go to bed, so he was like ‘I'm gonna call the cops on you.' I said ‘Go ahead!' Y'know? I'm like ‘Go ahead and call the cops on me then!'"

After that, the little boy may not have been asleep, but he certainly was living a dream because the next thing he knew, he was staying up even later than he planned waiting for a cop—a real live cop with a gun and a badge who catches bad guys—to come visit him IN HIS HOUSE. WHERE HE LIVES.

The officer explained to the boy when you should call 911 (Anytime you want to meet a cool cop? If you need to stay up late? Who knows, he wasn't really listening – too excited!), then left.

No word on what time the boy actually made it into bed.

[The Enterprise h/t AP // Image via Shutterstock]

Beauty Gurus: YouTube is lousy with them.

If there is one thing most of these gurus have in common it's that they really like starting their videos with the words "hey guys."

Oh, and, also the fact that they probably don't know much more than the average beauty product consumer, they just happen to enjoy pretending they do.

Case in point, YouTuber Tori Locklear, who was attempting to teach her viewers how to curl their hair, but ended up burning off some of her own hair instead.

To her credit, she did put this on the Internet for all to see. And there is no doubt it's worth every last beauty guru video combined.

[H/T: Reddit]

According to a document found by the Associated Press in Timbuktu, members of al-Qaeda in North Africa were in possession of a fairly detailed instruction manual for avoiding drone attacks. The document, which includes an easy-to-use list, is a copy of a paper reportedly penned by Abdallah bin Muhammad, a senior commander of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It was apparently left behind by the North African group as they fled French troops last month.

The list features some basic, common sense tips ("Hide from being directly or indirectly spotted, especially at night."), some more complex ones ("Form anti-spy groups to look for spies and agents.") and a few that don't make much sense ("Jamming of and confusing of electronic communication using the ordinary water-lifting dynamo fitted with a 30-metre copper pole"). Altogether, though, the list probably comes in handy when being hunted by killer robot planes.

The full list [sic throughout]:

• 1 – It is possible to know the intention and the mission of the drone by using the Russianmade "sky grabber" device to infiltrate the drone's waves and the frequencies. The device is available in the market for $2,595 and the one who operates it should be a computerknow-how.
• 2 – Using devices that broadcast frequencies or pack of frequencies to disconnect the contacts and confuse the frequencies used to control the drone. The Mujahideen have had successful experiments using the Russian-made "Racal."
• 3 – Spreading the reflective pieces of glass on a car or on the roof of the building.
• 4 – Placing a group of skilled snipers to hunt the drone, especially the reconnaissance ones because they fly low, about six kilometers or less.
• 5 – Jamming of and confusing of electronic communication using the ordinary water-lifting dynamo fitted with a 30-meter copper pole.
• 6 – Jamming of and confusing of electronic communication using old equipment and keeping them 24 hour running because of their strong frequencies and it is possible using simple ideas of deception of equipment to attract the electronic waves devices similar to that used by the Yugoslav army when they used the microwave (oven) in attracting and confusing the NATO missiles fitted with electromagnetic searching devices.
• 7 – Using general confusion methods and not to use permanent headquarters.
• 8 – Discovering the presence of a drone through well-placed reconnaissance networks and to warn all the formations to halt any movement in the area.
• 9 – To hide from being directly or indirectly spotted, especially at night.
• 10 – To hide under thick trees because they are the best cover against the planes.
• 11 – To stay in places unlit by the sun such as the shadows of the buildings or the trees.
• 12 – Maintain complete silence of all wireless contacts.
• 13 – Disembark of vehicles and keep away from them especially when being chased or
  during combat.
• 14 – To deceive the drone by entering places of multiple entrances and exits.
• 15 – Using underground shelters because the missiles fired by these planes are usually of
  the fragmented anti-personnel and not anti-buildings type.
• 16 – To avoid gathering in open areas and in urgent cases, use building of multiple doors or exits.
• 17 – Forming anti-spies groups to look for spies and agents.
• 18 – Formation of fake gatherings such as using dolls and statutes to be placed outside
  false ditches to mislead the enemy.
• 19 – When discovering that a drone is after a car, leave the car immediately and everyone should go in different direction because the planes are unable to get after everyone.
• 20 – Using natural barricades like forests and caves when there is an urgent need for training or gathering.
• 21 – In frequently targeted areas, use smoke as cover by burning tires.
• 22 – As for the leaders or those sought after, they should not use communications equipment because the enemy usually keeps a voice tag through which they can identify the speaking person and then locate him.

• Al Qaida Papers Drones

  [Image via AP]

Math is obviously an important skill for elementary students to learn, and we support creative methods for teaching what, for some, is a boring subject. But, as we noted last year, there are much better ways to teach math than by using word problems about slavery. Alas, a fourth grade teacher at Manhattan's P.S. 59 failed to heed our warning and thought it would be a good idea to distribute a worksheet titled "Slavery Word Problems Homework," which included questions such as:

"In a slave ship, there can be 3,799 slaves. One day, the slaves took over the ship. 1,897 are dead. How many slaves are alive?"

And:

"One slave got whipped five times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month (31 days)? Another slave got whipped nine times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month? How many times did the two slaves get whipped together in one month?"

Aziza Harding, a student teacher asked to make copies of the assignment, was shocked when she read the worksheet. "I'm just like, 'Wow, this is really inappropriate,'" she told NY1. "It shouldn't be a homework assignment, and I did not want to make copies of this."

So she didn't. The teacher was in a meeting, so Harding made the reasonable decision to distribute another worksheet instead. She later told her professor at NYU about the incident. He then contacted the NY1, which showed the sheet to the school's principal. The principal told NY1's reporter she was "appalled" and that she'd meet with families and staff members to discuss the incident. The Department of Education quickly apologized as well, saying in a statement, "This is obviously unacceptable and we will take appropriate disciplinary action against these teachers."

But the most bizarre part of the story isn't the obviously offensive questions; it's that the questions were actually written by another fourth grade class at P.S. 59 as part of their history project about slavery, meaning at least two veteran teachers at the school thought the assignment was a good idea.

What's the worst thing about chief New York Times pop sociologist David Brooks' new column, which is titled "The D.C. Dubstep" in a vague approximation of cleverness? Is it the insipid central metaphor, by which Brooks has each party doing "dance moves" in advance of the coming sequester and its accompanying deep budget cuts? Is it the names of those dance moves, names so embarrassing my hands are actively attempting to prevent me from typing them out? (For the record: the Democrats are doing the "P.C. Shimmy"—P.C. as in "permanent campaign"—the Republicans, the "Suicide Stage Dive.") Is it his misguided, near-religious belief that Both Parties Are At Fault? Or is it this sentence: "The president hasn't actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration, let alone one that is politically plausible." David. He has. It's right here. It's a banger, I promise. [NYT]

Image by Jim Cooke