Mars rocks! Skinny gene! Saffron cancer! Body odor! Beetle drones! Intergalactic traffic! Antibiotic resistance! Old fossils! And a whole new theory of prehistoric hand axe timing! It's your Friday Science Watch, where we watch science—coleopteristically!
Being a Gawker commenter is a privilege, not a right. As such, we expect our esteemed commenters to display certain skills. They must be smart, witty, capable of making a sound argument, and they should also be able to find the shift key.
Remember the KFC Double Down? Sure you do. It was that terrible and probably delicious monstrosity that replaced bread with fried chicken and your arteries with chaos. Well, welcome to 2011, where the Double Down is a thing of the past. Denny's has launched their new, "Let's Get Cheesy" menu, and nary a calorie was spared. Eight of the nine items on the menu have more calories than the Double Down and all can be ordered with "extra ooze." Two oozes on the side, please.
Fall's the time for sitting on the couch with an overflowing snack bowl and dogs in your lap, sunning yourself in the bright lamp light that helps you to manage your Seasonal Affective Disorder, and trying not to think of winter. In other words, a perfect time for reading—and this fall brings the release of so many intriguing-sounding books that narrowing down the options was so hard. But we did it, and now here you go.
The Scottish government recently imported 14 sea eagles from Norway, to reintroduce the giant bird of prey into the wilds of Scotland. Unfortunately, they chose areas not quite wild enough, according to the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, which is calling for an inquiry into the feathered monsters with wingspans of up to eight feet:
It gets boring and tedious typing mean things about celebrities and what they're wearing. So we decided to give our fingers a rest for a change. Welcome to Gawkerazzi, where we talk shit about famous people in paparazzi pictures, magazine spreads, and other fashiony situations.
Oprah is the Queen of All Media, except the internet, apparently. Traffic on her website has plummeted since she quit her TV show in May, and now she's seeking help from Facebook and Twitter to boost her stats.
Yuppie haven Whole Foods has yanked reality star Bethenny Frankel's $120 million concoction, the Skinnygirl Margarita, from the shelves because one of the ingredients might cause cancer. And now Bethenny is on the attack.
CouchSurfing, the room-sharing service of choice for Burning Man attendees, free-spirited geeks and backpacking college students, just announced it's selling out and going corporate with $7.6 million in venture funding. Now users are in open revolt.
President Obama, like he does with all top sports teams or athletes, has invited last year's NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson and the 11 other drivers who competed for the championship to a White House reception next week. Usually this is an invitation that you accept, always, unless you're deathly ill in bed with athlete's butt or whatever it is people catch these days. And yet only seven of the 12 will be attending. Hmm.
Kate Winslet's kids love it when mommy upchucks. Taylor Swift thinks Jake Gyllenhaal is "vain." New mom Mel B "laughed so hard the baby popped out." Kellan Lutz has a roommate named Dick. TGIFriday gossip.
This music man missed the birth of his baby because he was getting naughty with a nurse. This director has a feud within the cast and this couple is really serving as beards for each other. What, there's no staff involved?
The most sought-after paparazzi shot in Southern California at the moment is not, in fact, one of Kim Kardashian getting into a public shouting match with her own ass (though such a photo would still command quite a price on the open market), but rather any visual evidence of the great white sharks spotted recently near San Diego beaches. Two were seen last week off Mission Beach — we told you about one of them — and a third was sighted on Wednesday off the shores of La Jolla. All of this shark activity has led locals to develop Great White Fever, with the LA Times remarking how "dozens of people stood on the bluffs with cameras and binoculars" on Thursday trying to get just a glimpse of one of the deadly creatures, as "television and military helicopters hovered overhead."
Everyone loves people watching, and there aren't many better places to do so than in a New York City subway station. But what if you could witness all the action anonymously from beyond the public access points? As this short film by Sean Vegezzi shows, it's what we'd imagine a voyeur's slightly creepy dream to look like. [via Doobybrain]
If there's one thing we can agree on, it's that Bruce Springsteen is a national treasure and all-around awesome human being who everyone loves, except maybe Michele and Marcus Bachmann, because she's an awful person and Marcus is also an awful person who prefers Pet Shop Boys and maybe some early Erasure. Sweet. Glad that's all settled. So here's some video of Bruce just hanging out on Thursday in the Boston Public Gardens, strumming on a guitar he'd borrowed from a local busker. The Boston Herald hypothesizes that Springsteen was in town to drop his son Evan off at Boston College. To which I say "Cool! Bruce! You're the best!" And also: "Hey, guy who keeps talking? Shut the hell up! We're trying to hear Bruce Springsteen play the guitar over here." [bostonherald.com]
The upsetting trial over the killing of gay teen Larry King, who was shot point blank in the back of the head in computer lab class by fellow student Brandon McInerney, has resulted in a mistrial. The jury voted seven to five in favor of finding McInerney guilty of voluntary manslaughter, not first- or second-degree murder, which meant that seven jurors sided with the defense's version of events: that King brought his death upon himself by acting and dressing effeminately and making sexual overtures (apparently the breaking point came when he asked his tormentor, "What's up, baby?") towards McInerney.
Remember the awkward girl in pink who made a memorable appearance dancing next to Rebecca Black in her "Friday" music video? Well, her name is Benni Cinkle, she's a real life friend of Rebecca, and yesterday she released a music video for her debut single, "Can You See Me Now." Here it is in all its auto-tuned, melodramatic, teens-in-crisis glory. [via ONTD]
