Archive for February, 2012

Congressman duped by Onion story

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La. Rep. John Fleming (AP file photo)

Sometimes the truth is funnier than satire.

Rep. John Fleming, R-La., alerted fans of his Facebook page on Friday to the opening of an “abortionplex” until followers noted that the article that he linked on his wall was from the satirical news site the Onion, according to Politico.

A screen shot of the Congressman’s original post was picked up by the site Literally Unbelievable, showing a snarky comment on the original post that said “The Onion is satire. How exactly did you get elected?” The link has since been deleted from the Congressman’s page.

Hudson Hongo, the blogger who runs Literally Unbelievable, said a “keen-eyed reader” sent in Fleming’s Facebook status after the Onion re-posted the “Abortionplex” article on Friday in response to the Susan G. Komen controversy. “It seems that Rep. Fleming, like many others, has given the nearly year-old article a second life,” Hongo said.

–Anna Gallegos

NEA says ‘no thanks’ to donation from former porn star Sasha Grey

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Sasha Grey arrives at HBO’s post-Golden Globes party on Jan. 15, 2012 in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

The National Education Association wants nothing to do with former adult film star Sasha Grey or the money made from her films.

Assence Films sought to donate a portion of the profits from Grey’s upcoming movie as part of her “recent efforts to expose children to the world of literature,” according to the Huffington Post.

But in a statement Monday to The Huffington Post, NEA officials said “no, thanks.”

“Sasha Grey is not affiliated with the National Education Association’s Read Across America program nor has she been invited or endorsed by NEA to read at any of the association’s Read Across America Day events, and NEA will not accept any proceeds from her latest, or any of her films,” the statement reads. The NEA is the nation’s largest teachers’ union.

Grey, who appeared in HBO’s “Entourage,” previously made headlines for her educational efforts when she read to first- and third-grade students at a Compton, Calif., elementary school.

–Anna Gallegos

You probably didn’t see Will Ferrell’s Old Milwaukee Super Bowl ad

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You probably thought you saw all the Super Bowl commercials on Sunday. Sadly, you missed out on seeing Will Ferrell’s ad for Old Milwaukee.

The bizarre TV spot aired in exactly one television market on Sunday — North Platte, Nebraska. It has an estimated 15,180 television homes, making it the second-smallest television market in the U.S.

This isn’t the first time Ferrell has made an ad for Old Milwaukee.

Order up a bacon milkshake today at Jack in the Box

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In either a moment of insanity or a flash of brilliance, Jack in the Box will begin to sell a bacon-flavored milkshake at their fast food joints.

It might sound unsavory to some, but sinfully delicious to others. Bacon – much like butter – does tend to make everything taste better, right?

The milkshake is part of an ad campaign, dubbed “Marry Bacon.” The chain, which has more than 2,100 locations, said the beverage would be in limited supply so interested parties should act quickly.

“The shake is not listed on our menus in the restaurants, so it’s more of a ‘secret item’ that people can order,” a Jack in the Box spokesperson told The Huffington Post. “Each restaurant is getting a very limited quantity, so we don’t know how long they will last.”

Granted, this isn’t the first time that bacon – a typical breakfast item – has made its way into the dessert cart.

Denny’s rolled out a maple bacon sundae in April, and several companies have made bacon flavored chocolate.

So who are we to judge?

America might just fall in love with a bacon-flavored milkshake.

Chrysler edits protesters’ signs in Super Bowl ad

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In the top shot are the original signs; at bottom are the signs edited by Chrysler. (YouTube/Vimeo)

One of the most powerful Super Bowl ads from Sunday is one from Chrysler about America’s comeback, complete with Clint Eastwood and a catch phrase: “It’s halftime in America.” The message is that we’re coming back from the financial precipice, like Detroit.

One little nagging thing though, according to The Nation. In one of the clips (at the :50 mark in the first video), which they used with permission from a filmmaker, they’ve altered the content of protest signs from pro-union protests in Wisconsin last year:

The images from Madison were taken from a historic video by Matt Wisniewski, a Madison photographer whose chronicling of the protests drew international attention and praise.

Wisniewski’s original video, from an evening rally at the King Street entrance to the Wisconsin Capitol, features images (at the 2:17 mark in last video) of signs raised by members of Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI), the local education union that played a pivotal role in the protests. One sign features the MTI logo, another reads: “Care About Educators Like They Care for Your Child.”

In the Chrysler ad, the MTI logo is missing and the “Care About Educators…” sign is replaced with one featuring an image of an alarm clock. Several other union signs are simply whited out.

It’s not clear why this was done officially, but it’s not hard to connect the dots about Chrysler’s delicate relationship with unions.

The Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch website said Cheeseheads in Wisconsin went wild on Facebook and Twitter when the ad ran:

Apparently,  Chrysler was comfortable using the Wisconsin Capitol shot as a symbol of the nation’s discontent, but actually using pro-union signs was too much for the bailed-out car company. Somewhere along the line, red hearts and text were removed from the “Care for your educators like they care for your kids” signs. Plus, Madison Teachers Inc. signs — MTI in a circle — were weirdly written over

Wisconsin “Budget Repair Bill” Protest from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

Facebook acknowledges deleted photos not removed for up to three years

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Need an embarrassing photo deleted? He’s working on it. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

Have you ever posted a photo to Facebook and then regretted it? Well, turns out deleting it doesn’t actually remove it.

Ars Technica first reported in 2009 the glitch that means a photo deleted from Facebook may disappear from the main site, but is still visible to users with a direct link for as many as three years after the fact. The site reports that even a photo of a naked toddler, deleted in May of 2008, is still visible as of 2012. Jacqui Cheng writes:

I reached out to Facebook once again, looking for an answer as to why this is still going on nearly three years after the company first promised it was “working” on the issue.

“The systems we used for photo storage a few years ago did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time even though they were immediately removed from the site,” Facebook spokesperson Frederic Wolens told Ars via e-mail.

Wolens explained that photos remaining online are stuck in a legacy system that was apparently never operating properly, but said the company is working on a new system that will delete the photos in a mere month and a half. For really real this time.

“We have been working hard to move our photo storage to newer systems which do ensure photos are fully deleted within 45 days of the removal request being received,” Wolens said. “This process is nearly complete and there is only a very small percentage of user photos still on the old system awaiting migration, the URL you provided was stored on this legacy system. We expect this process to be completed within the next month or two, at which point we will verify the migration is complete and we will disable all the old content.”

You can read the rest of Cheng’s odyssey to confirm deleted photos are actually deleted here.

For now just consider this another friendly reminder that anything and everything you post to the internet never really goes away.

Country singer Randy Travis arrested outside of church

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Country singer Randy Travis was arrested Monday morning for public intoxication. (Photo: Denton County Sheriff’s Department)

Country singer Randy Travis was arrested for public intoxication outside of a Baptist church on Monday morning, according to a Dallas Morning News story.

Travis, who owns a ranch in nearby Tioga, was arrested outside of Sanger Baptist Church in Sanger, Texas, a city about 55 miles north of Dallas, according to the newspaper.

He was booked into the Denton County Sheriff’s Department jail on Class C misdemeanor charges at 1:30 a.m. and released this morning.

Travis made news in September when he collapsed during a performance in Fort Worth.

When life gives you ice and snow, go out and play

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Chisinau, Moldova, Monday, Feb. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/John McConnico)

The ice and snow covering Europe and beyond is creating problems for almost everyone. There is a baby elephant in Amsterdam, though, who seems quite thrilled to just play in the white stuff.

If only more people took the elephant’s point of view in Eastern Europe today, where record snow and harsh temperatures have closed schools and clogged public transportation in Serbia and Bosnia and trapped thousands in the region’s remote mountain villages.

Europeans across the continent were continuing to dig out from heavy snow after a week of bitter cold in which the death toll, mostly homeless people, continues to rise into the hundreds, the Associated Press reports:

Temperatures have fallen as low as minus 33 Fahrenheit (minus 36 Celsius) in Ukraine, the hardest-hit country.

The big freeze has caused traffic chaos throughout Europe, blocking roads, and shutting down airports from the U.K. to Russia.

But it has also offered opportunities for snowy fun: Ice skaters in the Netherlands were hopeful they could stage a race that hasn’t happened in more than a decade; children in Rome and along the usually temperate Adriatic coast in Croatia frolicked in rare snow; and Bosnians in the capital, Sarajevo, spontaneously organized a winter “Olympics” in which they boarded down main streets and leapt out of windows into deep snow banks.

A lion cub plays with a snowball at the Belgrade Zoo on Feb. 5, 2012, in Serbia, where almost 70,000 people are cut off from their villages and 32 municipalities have declared a state of emergency. (ALEXA STANKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images)

Here is a scene from Overtoom Westzaan en de Gouw in the north of Holland in a video uploaded Feb. 4: