The World Wide Weird
LinkedIn Gets Serious
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007
Quite a choice, huh?
(Hat tip: Steve Walsh)
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The OJ story gets weirder
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007Back in November, I blogged about a book OJ Simpson was writing called If I Did It, in which he described how he would have gone about murdering his ex-wife and her boyfriend, if he had, in fact, committed the crime.
Well, as it turns out, this very strange story was only just starting to get strange. Fasten your seat belts, this is a doozy:
It seems HarperCollins, the would-be publishers of this book, gave OJ a $630,000 advance for the book. Simpson then went and setup a shell corporation to keep the money away from the Goldman and Brown families (who are supposed to receive a portion of his earnings as part of the civil suit they won after the murders).
Last month, a Florida judge awarded the rights of the (completed) manuscript to the Goldman family. Let’s review that again: a judge awarded the right to sell the book describing how OJ Simpson would have killed Ron Goldman to the surviving family of Ron Goldman, who had decried the entire project as “immoral” when it first happened. But wait, you say, maybe by winning legal rights to the manuscript, their goal is simply to ensure that no one ever publishes such trash? No such luck:
The Goldmans are responsible for the costs of getting the book out there, but will be entitled to 90 percent of any proceeds, with the remaining 10 percent being split among the Brown family and the bankruptcy trustee that took charge of Simpson’s bogus enterprise, Lorraine Brooke Associates.
After they won the book rights, the Goldmans’ attorney said they were planning to change the name of the ghostwritten tome to Confessions of a Double Murderer and market it as a confessional.
“The family and publisher have pledged to leave Simpson’s manuscript entirely intact, but they will also add key commentary,” [a spokesman for the publisher] said in a statement. “The Goldmans, the publisher and [the Goldman’s literary agent, Sharlene Martin] will all contribute portions of sales proceeds to the Ron Goldman Foundation for Justice.”
So Ron Goldman’s family is now going to profit from his murder, by publishing what they call a confessional, when the author says it isn’t, even though the whole thing was ghost-written to begin with.
Here’s the capper – OJ Simpson is outraged:
Simpson claimed in a streamed online interview that he only agreed to include one chapter about the murders after his original publisher, Judith Regan, swore that it would be labeled as purely hypothetical.
“I find it sort of hypocritical that they talked everybody in America to boycott the book: It was ‘immoral,’ it was ‘blood money,'” he said, referring to the Goldmans’ acquisition of the publishing rights. “But we now see it wasn’t ‘blood money’ if they got the money.”
Not that OJ has the moral high ground here, but I gotta say – in this case, the man’s got a point.
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The 13-year old Finnish Fact Checker Strikes Again…
Sunday, August 12th, 2007Gotta love this:
News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.
The images were reproduced around the world – including by the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited – alongside the story of Russia planting its flag below the North Pole on Thursday last week. But it has now emerged that the footage actually showed two Finnish-made Mir submersibles that were employed on location filming at the scene of the wreck of the RMS Titanic ship in the north Atlantic some 10 years ago. This footage was used in sequences in James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster about the 1912 disaster.
The mistake was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.
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The Latest Unbelievable OJ Thing…
Thursday, August 9th, 2007OK, here’s the picture:
The address is 360 North Rockingham Avenue in Los Angeles. That’s OJ Simpson’s house.
The van says “Knife Sharpening Service” on the side. Seriously.
(Hat tip: Instapundit)
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Painting with Sound…
Saturday, July 21st, 2007This guy is really cool. Watch the video all the way to the end…
Here’s more, and more still. For the complete collection, go to paintjam.com.
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I’m Sure Someone Else is Curing Cancer – Part Two
Thursday, July 5th, 2007So everyone’s heard of beer goggles, right? The woman you picked up at the bar last night looked gorgeous, until you saw her the next morning. Must have been all that beer.
So, what do you think? Infantile, misogynistic college prattle or scientifically proven physiological phenomenon?
Here, for those who are interested, is the beer goggles formula, as per researchers at Manchester University:
An = number of units of alcohol consumed
S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky)
L = luminance of ‘person of interest’ (candelas per square metre; typically 1 pitch black; 150 as seen in normal room lighting)
Vo = Snellen visual acuity (6/6 normal; 6/12 just meets driving standard)
d = distance from ‘person of interest’ (metres; 0.5 to 3 metres)
Seriously, there must be something else to spend your time studying, no? But wait, here’s the kicker (or should I say “chaser?”):
The research was commissioned by eyecare firm Bausch & Lomb PureVision
Please Lord, please tell me they’re not making a contact lens that actually corrects for this problem! I think I just thought of another use for Tylenol…
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Bulletin: Dick Cheney is actually *NOT* Dick Cheney…
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007OK, so Dick Cheney’s assertion that he’s not in the executive branch will rightly receive a ton of airplay over the next few weeks and months (years?), possibly replacing the “shot a guy in the face” line as the most popular disparaging remark about the Vice President. What can I say – he made his own bed on this one…
Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, on the other hand, points out the funniest thing about the whole affair by far:
IMPEACH CHENEY IF YOU WANT, but do bear in mind that he’ll preside over his own impeachment trial.
No, really. The Senate has the sole power to try impeachments. The Vice President is the President of the Senate. He presides. The Constitution provides for only one exception in cases of impeachment: “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” That’s because of the obvious conflict-of-interest of having the VP preside when the President is tried. But there’s no similar provision for having someone else preside if the Vice President is impeached.
(Hat tip: Scalzi)
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Babies….in…..SPAAAAAACE!
Thursday, June 14th, 2007Today is apparently kid-blogging day here at I Should Be Sleeping. Check out this story about a woman in Illinois whose baby monitor has started picking up live video from the Space Shuttle Atlantis:
Since Sunday, one of the two channels on Natalie Meilinger’s baby monitor has been picking up black-and-white video from inside the space shuttle Atlantis. The other still lets her keep an eye on her baby.
Live video of the mission is available on NASA’s Web site, so it’s possible the monitor is picking up a signal from somewhere. “It’s not coming straight from the shuttle,” NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said.
Summer Infant, the monitor’s manufacturer, is investigating what could be causing the transmission, communications director Cindy Barlow said. She said she’s never heard of anything similar happening. “Not even close,” she said. “Gotta love technology.”
Gotta love it, indeed…
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Life Imitates Art…
Thursday, May 24th, 2007Snakes! On a Plane! Seriously!
CAIRO, Egypt – Customs officers at Cairo’s airport on Thursday detained a man bound for Saudi Arabia who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes on a plane, airport authorities said.
The officers were stunned when a passenger, identified as Yahia Rahim Tulba, after being asked to open his carryon bag, told them it contained live snakes.
The Egyptian said he had hoped to sell the snakes in Saudi Arabia. Police confiscated the snakes and turned Tulba over to the prosecutor’s office, accusing him of violating export laws and endangering the lives of other passengers.
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Clemson University and The New York Times Comment on the Five-Second Rule
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007More proof that nothing is beyond scientific study:
Prof. Paul L. Dawson and his colleagues at Clemson have now put some numbers on floor-to-food contamination.
First the researchers measured how long bacteria could survive on the surfaces. They applied salmonella broth in doses of several million bacteria per square centimeter, a number typical of badly contaminated food. On surfaces that had been contaminated eight hours earlier, slices of bologna and bread left for five seconds took up from 150 to 8,000 bacteria. Left for a full minute, slices collected about 10 times more than that from the tile and carpet, though a lower number from the wood.
What do these numbers tell us about the five-second rule? Quick retrieval does mean fewer bacteria, but it’s no guarantee of safety.
Next up for Dr. Dawson: “Liar, Liar, pants on fire.” Volunteer test subjects may contact Dr. Dawson directly. Qualification involves a weak sense of morality, a high tolerance for pain, and flammable pants.
(Hat tip: Will Fenton, Penn Band Alum)
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