Dear Kids of America:
YOU ARE STOOPID!
Look, I know that it's "cool" to read newspapers and all your friends are doing it. But facts are facts: By the time you get to college, there won't even BE newspapers! That's why you should pick up on this "internet" tip and fast. Besides… wait. What the fuck am I doing? There aren't even any kids reading this because they're too fucking stupid to learn how to surf the web! PARENTS AND ADULTS! Can you puh-leeze show the following video to the child in your household or windowless cargo van? Thanks.
Fucking kids.

For those of you worried that the massive chunk of the US budget given over to the military is being frittered away, heartening news! According to various sources, the Pentagon is currently working on developing remote controlled solar-powered cyborg beetle spies:

The Pentagon has funded a project at UC Berkley in which scientists have successfully grafted electrodes and tiny radio antennae to flying beetles—allowing researchers to steer the beetles by remote control.... According to robotics professor Noel Sharkey of UK's Sheffield University, there's not too much that the Pentagon could with the beetles right now. GPS systems or other tracking devices are too heavy and cumbersome to fit on beetles' backs. But he notes that the cyborg beetles could feasibly carry chemical weapons and could be effective assassins, though this would be highly illegal.

Two thoughts:
1) WTF?
2) Is this what happens when kids raised on Disney grow up to work for the government? The last time I recall seeing a menacing cyborg beetle was in the first scene of Aladdin, when Jafar uses one to open the Cave of Wonders. (right?)
2a) In that case, when is the Pentagon going to get cracking on implanting Eddie Murphy voiceboxes into lizards?

Okay, that's it. Rather than watching the liveblog of the healthcare debate, I'm going to spend the rest of the day listening to "I'm Proud to Be an American."

… That is, unless you retire your old-timey, ridiculous looking unicycle in favor of this extremely awesome new-timey personal mobility device built by Honda.

It is a compact experimental device that fits comfortably between the riders legs, to provide free movement in all directions just as in human walking forward, backward, side-to-side, and diagonally.

So it's a cross between a Segway and a unicycle—for either the uber-nerd, or the morbidly lazy. And that's you, right?

Futuristic aluminum hat tips to The Presurfer.

According to neatorama, British scientists are in the process of developing a chip that goes inside of your brain to turn on the TV with your mind.

The tiny sensor would sit on the surface of the brain, picking up the electrical activity of nerve cells and passing the signal wirelessly to a receiver on the skull.

The signal would then be used to control a cursor on a computer screen, operate electronic gadgets or steer an electric wheelchair.

Sure, they're introducing this to benefit the disabled, but that's obviously not going to last. Soon anyone too lazy to dig under the cushions to find their remote will be able to get one, which will make for an excellent new spin on domestic arguments about leaving lights on and which show to watch. And what happens if a chip owner is high or blacked out drunk? This could be good for YouTube.

Maureen Dowd has an interesting column today about people being mean on the internet. Also, she has apparently always dreamed of being a cocktail waitress? Dowd starts her column, "If I read all the vile stuff about me on the Internet, I’d never come to work. I’d scamper off and live my dream of being a cocktail waitress in a militia bar in Wyoming."

Her column talks about some interesting incidents where the mean internet world has crossed over into the real world—once leading to the much-discussed suicide of a young girl and the another time when a supermodel sued Google to reveal the email of a blogger who called her a "skank." Dowd quotes the court decision (which, btw, would have been hilarious to hear read aloud by a somber judge):

“The words ‘skank,’ ‘skanky’ and ‘ho’ carry a negative implication of sexual promiscuity,” wrote Justice Joan Madden of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, rejecting the Anonymous Blogger’s assertion that blogs are a modern soapbox designed for opinions, rants and invective.

The judge cited a Virginia court decision that the Internet’s “virtually unlimited, inexpensive and almost immediate means of communication” with the masses means “the dangers of its misuse cannot be ignored. The protection of the right to communicate anonymously must be balanced against the need to assure that those persons who choose to abuse the opportunities presented by this medium can be made to answer for such transgressions.”

There are not a lot of court cases testing the protected anonymity of bloggers and commentors, but the Mercury and WW fought out a similar case in Oregon courts last year. In that case, the court decided in favor of protecting the anonymity of "Ronald", a commentor who described the subject of the post as a "cantakerous obnoxious dishonest new money pig self proclaimed god." Because we're a newspaper and Ronald's comment was about the topic of the post, the judge decided he was protected under the same shield law that keep anonymous news sources safe.

So it seems like the rules are this:
Starting up hoblog.com just to call people skanks - NO.
Referring to a public figure featured in a news article as a "cantakerous obnoxious dishonest new money pig self proclaimed god... skank." - CONTINUE AS USUAL!

The following video features a demonstration of the iGun application for iPhone, as performed by the most perfect person in the most perfect scenario. (Note: In this particular situation, one can substitute "perfect" with "fucked up." Audio NSFW, headphones up!)

Hat tips to Buzzfeed!

Get a load of the nerd! Okay, I agree this is moderately—MODERATELY—cool… but c'mon. He either needs to find a girlfriend, or raise some money on the internet to buy one.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 (if you believe in that sort of thing—and Patrick Coleman, I'm looking at you).

Apollo 11 is one of the most staggering achievements in human history, and The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog takes a look back in the way they do best—with gorgeous, giant photographs.

Note that Command Module pilot Michael Collins—the man who drew the shortest straw ever—is the only human being who ever lived up to that time who is not in front of the lens in this shot. Freaky.

I also particularly like this photo of Neil Armstrong's face, hours after he became the first human to walk on the moon.

NASA has also posted some restored moonwalk video from the mission, and the real-time audio feed of the mission. It has a lot of stuff like, "Plus zero, zero, zero, zero, option zero zero one-niner seven, zero three. LEM wait, three-three, two-niner zero, over." It's surprisingly riveting.

I don't know, guys… I realize these new "DVD machines" are expensive, but this commercial makes a very convincing argument!

Hat tips to Everything is Terrible!

Have you tried the brand new Wonder Wheel feature for your Google search results? Google announced the new visual feature today at a press event. Here's how it works: After you get your search results, click on "Show options" and select the multi-colored "Wonder Wheel" option. For this search (as for almost every Google search I do), I selected the keyword "Wonderwall." And after selecting the Wonder Wheel option, this is what I get.

Cool. This allows me to quickly sidestep the Oasis song, which I am not interested in—and quickly leap to results pertaining to the pseudo-Indian soundtrack George Harrison did for the 1968 film Wonderwall. So I click on "wonderwall george harrison," and I get a whole new wheel of vaguely pertinent information: