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Whether or not you believe this is up to you, but the BBC has a video about a group of friends in Pennsylvania who claim they got emails from their deceased buddy. The friends say Jack Froese, 32, died suddenly of a heart arrhythmia in June 2011, and then started sending notes with unique info.
Here’s the video:
Angel Rodriguez (AP)
Well this is just all kinds of wrong: Southern Miss band members taunted a Kansas State player with chants of “Where’s your green card?” during the teams’ second-round NCAA tournament game in Pittsburgh today.
The player in question, Wildcats freshman guard Angel Rodriguez, is from Puerto Rico, so he’s a U.S. citizen.
Southern Miss released a statement, and misspelled “Rodriguez,” though later corrected it. The statement attributed to president Martha Saunders originally was:
“We deeply regret the remarks made by a few students at today’s game. The words of these individuals do not represent the sentiments of our pep band, athletic department or university. We apologize to Mr. Rodriquez and will take quick and appropriate disciplinary action against the students involved in this isolated incident.”
Here’s the video, courtesy of Buzzfeed:
Perhaps it was inevitable in the e-reader age: The latest literary sensation is a steamy erotic novel called “Fifty Shades of Grey.” While the book is raising eyebrows for its wild themes, it’s almost as shocking the admitted “Twilight” connections aren’t drawing more ire.
Author E L James, a former London television executive, first published “Grey” through a small Australian press. But it’s currently No. 1 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the New York Times (combo print and e-book) lists, and a division of Random House recently won a bidding war for rights to a trilogy of books. Expect to see a new run of 750,000 “Grey” paperbacks in stores soon.
The book has strong sexual themes, summed up by one reviewer: “‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is pornography, plain and simple.” The violent BDSM themes drew a reprimand by Dr. Drew Pinsky on The Today Show, but readers are still downloading.
Both James and her publisher have been open about the fact that the story originally appeared on the site fanfiction.net as a raunchy take on “Twilight,” with characters from Stephenie Meyer’s series. Publishers say “Grey” is a new work and James changed characters and situations. But NPR has more, including a link to a thorough analysis concluding the novel is a close reproduction of the original story, “Master of the Universe.” That makes “Grey” a thinly veiled work of fan fiction.
So while plagiarism is quickly condemned in modern society, blatant derivation is profitable. It’s hard to find people against fan fiction other than some authors (Anne Rice says on her site “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly…”) and the sales of “Grey” haven’t exactly plummeted on the news.
Where’s the line? Why don’t we care when an author admits to spinning a novel from another? Sure, nothing is truly original, and “Twilight” owes its debt to vampires and werewolves from Dracula to Michael J. Fox. But now we’ve reached a saturation point where we’re just admitting to being borrowers.
What do you think? Does it bother you if the origins of a piece are unoriginal, or do you only care if it’s plagiarized word-for-word?
Not just for North Dakotans: Michelle Obama enjoys the Olive Garden in Fort Worth, Texas, on Feb. 9. (AP)
In medium-town America, hype over incoming chain restaurants can dominate the local conversation. “Did you hear there’s a Red Lobster coming?” “Can’t wait for that Applebees!”
Non-middle-America is getting a taste with the latest viral sensation: A newspaper’s Olive Garden review that reads like an Onion article. But luckily for us, it’s most certainly real, and quite serious.
The review comes from Grand Forks, N.D., a city of about 50,000 on the eastern border with Minnesota. Grand Forks Herald columnist Marilyn Hagerty, left, decided to check in on the “novelty” of the new Olive Garden and notes “The place is impressive. It’s fashioned in Tuscan farmhouse style with a welcoming entryway.” As for the food: “At length, I asked my server what she would recommend. She suggested chicken Alfredo, and I went with that.”
She later notes the chicken Alfredo “was warm and comforting on a cold day. The portion was generous.” Sadly or not, she concludes “All in all, it is the largest and most beautiful restaurant now operating in Grand Forks.”
The review hit Boing Boing, Gawker, and other big sites today, prompting the Grand Forks Herald to post a follow-up article. The review got 107,000 page views in 36 hours after it was posted, compared to 5,000 for the next-most-popular story. Hagerty’s other reviews also went viral, with one Twitter user exclaiming “How am I supposed to work when there is an entire archive of Marilyn Hagerty articles to read?”
In case you want to kill some time, here’s that “Eatbeat” archive. Although, of course, you won’t find a restaurant better than the Olive Garden.
If you’ve been on Twitter or Facebook in the last few days, you’ve probably seen the references to “KONY 2012.”
The leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, shown in 2006. (Stuart Price / Associated Press)
It’s all part of a viral meme by a group called Invisible Children, calling for the capture of Joseph Kony, an elusive Ugandan warlord known to kidnap children to fight for his Lord’s Resistance Army.
The movement intends to target 20 celebrities (George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Oprah among them) and a dozen policymakers to keep U.S. advisers in Africa and to help the Uganda government find Kony.
The group solicits donations, and offers an “action kit” with a unique bracelet and other supplies geared for the big, “Cover the Night” event on April 20. At sundown, activists are to gather “on every street corner in every city” and blanket areas with campaign literature.
The group’s goal “aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.”
And a big part of that campaign is a 30-minute online movie narrated by Jason Russell.
Russell talks about meeting a boy named Jacob in Uganda in 2003. And Russell attempts to explain the Lord’s Resistance Army and Kony to a worldwide online audience, and to his young son, Gavin.
Then he introduces the meat of the movie with this message: “The next 27 minutes are an experiment. But in order for it to work, you have to pay attention.” Here it is:
Since posted March 5, the film has drawn around 10 million views, with about 680,000 “likes” and 17,000 “dislikes” on YouTube as of Wednesday evening.
The movement does have detractors.
Jezebel.com, for example, warns readers to “think twice” before donating to the cause, citing “dubious finances,” exaggerated claims, support for military action, marketing tactics, and recommends donating to other groups, such as Doctors Without Borders.
A Google search shows other reports, both pro and con, on the issue.
There’s something unusual about this model.
Kudos for Simply Be for hiring online models with disabilities that might make less enlightened fashion retailers balk.
Take this woman showing an Anna Scholz Kimono Sleeve Dress, for example. Nice smile, inviting eyes, lovely figure, and, upon closer inspection – hideous multi-pronged rake hand.
Her finger diet seems to be working.
Fortunately, her deformity was not the result of a tragic garbage disposal accident but rather a major Photoshop fail. We’re happy to report that the model has since been healed, or repixelated anyway, back to normalcy.
Thanks to Jezebel for pointing it out in a very funny post.
Alex Morgan was honored to be body-painted by Sports Illustrated. (PRNewsFoto/GNC Holdings, Inc., Victor Wang Studios)
You might not recognize her without her cleats on, but one of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition beauties is none other than U.S. women’s soccer star and former Cal Bear Alex Morgan.
Only she’s not wearing a swimsuit.
Here’s sneak peek of her photo for the “bodypaint” feature in the issue.
Morgan says she was nervous at first to be photographed with nothing on but pigment, but her jitters disappeared with the excitement of shooting.
“It was a completely new experience and definitely took some getting used to before I felt comfortable in bodypaint,” she told SI.com.
While Sports Illustrated apparently has no plans to run photos of male athletes in Swimsuit, SI.com asked Morgan whom she would pick for such a feature.
“I’d say some athletes like Rafael Nadal, Blake Griffin, or C.J. Wilson would be great candidates for Swimsuit. But I also have to add Ryan Gosling after seeing all the movies he was in this past year.”
Alex leaps after scoring the game winner in extra time in the U.S.’ 2-1 victory Saturday over New Zealand. She scored the first goal with time running out in regulation.
Crews filming a commercial for Scion in Northern California had a near miss early this month with a deer who just wanted a little screen time.
A professional driver was cruising along winding roads in the new car when a deer jumped out in front of him.
“As I come across this left hand turn, over a crest and onto a straight, I’m minding my own business driving, trying to navigate through these unknown roads and all of a sudden I see this black figure just prancing around … at that moment I knew, ‘Oh sh*t, something’s wrong,’” said Ken Gushi, a professional driver.
“As I got on the brakes, I see this deer pop out of the mountain, run in front of the car, probably as close as two-to-three feet,” Gushi continued.
The deer scampered off, the shoot continued. The video was posted early this month, but hasn’t attracted much attention until now.
Copyright © 2013 Hearst Communications Inc.
