Once you realize this isn’t parody it really starts getting weird.

*cough*

[Quote]:

The late and much missed Douglas Adams threw some spectacular parties, triggering complaints about noise from sentient beings all over the Milky Way.

Now family, friends and fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are marking what would have been his 60th birthday this Sunday with another bash, this time at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, which will celebrate the author’s diverse talents and passionate interests via sketches, music, tributes and a rhino raffle.

[..]

As Adams’s 42nd birthday present, David Gilmour invited him to play guitar with Pink Floyd at Earls Court. Subsequently Adams’s younger half-brother, James Thrift, heard a rumour that a film existed of this one-off moment from rock history. “I found it a month ago,” he rejoices. The clip will get its first public screening.

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Federal decision makers need access to the best available science in order to craft policies that protect our health, safety, and environment.

Unfortunately, censorship of scientists and the manipulation, distortion, and suppression of scientific information have threatened federal science in recent years.

This problem has sparked much debate, but few have identified the key driver of political interference in federal science: the inappropriate influence of companies with a financial stake in the outcome.

[Full Report (PDF)] [Executive Summary (PDF)]

[Quote]:

School lunch programs have been in the spotlight recently. Just last week, the Blaze posted two stories about a North Carolina school where the food police were aggressively monitoring lunches that parents give to their children. Earlier this year, First Lady Michelle Obama lead a very public campaign to announce that healthier foods would be coming to school cafeterias and military mess halls.

Today, many parents will be questioning the wisdom of a government-controlled school lunch program. Why? Because the Feds have announced that the USDA is buying seven million pounds of something that is affectionately known as “pink slime.”

[Quote]:

The Giottos Rocket is a popular tool used by photographers to remove dust from cameras and glass, but if you’re in love with yours, you might want to think twice about flying with it. Reddit user gynoceros found out the hard way that some TSA airport screeners aren’t too enthusiastic about the Rocket’s shape. He writes,

FYI — If you attempt to fly with a Giottos Rocket Blower (you know, rubber bulb you squeeze to force air down a nozzle to blow dust off your sensor — no metal, no moving parts), the TSA may confiscate it because it “looks like a bomb”, no questions asked.

Just f**king happened to me in Newark. I knew I’d get robbed in Newark one day.

To be fair, it does have an uncanny resemblance to “Fat Man“…

[Quote]:

Graham Rayman at the Village Voice brings us more on officer Adrian Schoolcraft, the modern day Serpico who was sent to a psych ward for reporting on corruption in the NYPD. While working out of the 81st precinct in Brooklyn, Schoolcraft became aware of a pattern of crime victims getting caught up in bureaucratic hurdles that seemed to have purposely been set up to make it hard to report serious crimes. Schoolcraft reported a number of these incidents to investigators. That’s where things take a turn for the insane:

In October 2009, Schoolcraft met with NYPD investigators for three hours and detailed more than a dozen cases of crime reports being manipulated in the district. Three weeks after that meeting-which was supposed to have been kept secret from Schoolcraft’s superiors-his precinct commander and a deputy chief ordered Schoolcraft to be dragged from his apartment and forced into the Jamaica Hospital psychiatric ward for six days.

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Scientists have announced that they have completed the genome sequence for the gorilla.

The gorilla is the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded.

While confirming that mankind’s closest relative is the chimpanzee, the team shows that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome.

This is the first time scientists have been able to compare the genomes of all four living great apes: humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.

[Quote]:

A Minnesota middle school student, with the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union, is suing her school district over a search of her Facebook and e-mail accounts by school employees.

The 12-year-old sixth grade student, identified in court documents only as R.S., was on two occasions punished for statements she made on her Facebook account, and was also pressured to divulge her password to school officials, the complaint states.

“R.S. was intimidated, frightened, humiliated and sobbing while she was detained in the small school room” as she watched a counselor, a deputy, and another school employee pore over her private communications.