I didn’t have anything on me and and no-one asked me for anything. I did what I asked and just carried on walking.11-year-old Liam Corcoran-Fort • Discussing the security process he went through when he boarded a flight from Manchester to Rome — despite the fact he didn’t have any sort of identification or a boarding pass and was really just trying to use the bathroom. ”I just wanted to go to the toilet. I wasn’t trying to go anywhere I wasn’t allowed,” Corcoran-Fort, who has learning difficulties, said. ”But it was easier than my homework, even easier than computer games.” For what it’s worth, he did go through a metal detector and body scanner, the airport says.
It’s not technically a breach of security. The boy posed no threat to the aircraft. He went through a security process.Manchester airport spokesperson Russell Craig • Discussing an 11-year-old boy’s trip from England to Italy, where the boy took a Jet2.com plane from Manchester to Rome despite not having a boarding pass or passport. His trip may not have technically been a breach of security, but a ton of people got suspended from their jobs over it. Oops.
For some people, cabs can simply suck. In big cities, trying to tag down a cab can be annoying or (if you live in a bad or far-away neighborhood) an exercise in futility. One startup, Uber (which, via an app, sends a private sedan right to wherever you’re standing), cuts through the annoyingness of cabs — you pay a little more, sure, but it’s much less frustrating. However, it’s also disruptive, which is why Washington DC’s City Council is considering a new taxi modernization bill that would effectively limit Uber’s future ability to expand — by preventing the company from offering a low-cost service. The company actually rolled out one recently, but because of the proposed new law (which also, to be fair, does such things as force DC cabs to have GPS devices and take credit cards), couldn’t launch it in the District. Understandably, the company is kind of upset about this. Though, on the other hand, DCist points out that the amendment effectively legalizes the more-expensive service in the District, too. source
integrity won’t pay the mortgages I will ask all of u how many of u would do your job for no pay?R&B singer Brian McKnight • Discussing on Twitter why he chose to make a theme song for an adult Web site, roughly a month after another sexually-explicit song of his gave the singer some late-career notoriety. The Washington Post’s Sarah Anne Hughes smartly gets past the weirdness of a guy known for wedding songs shilling for a porn site, and instead focuses on what this means for R&B in general: “It’s hard to fault McKnight for writing explicit songs if they pay the bills and allow him to keep creating R&B,” she says, noting that McKnight’s style of R&B rarely shows up on the radio these days.
Uhm. Yikes. This seems like a story with the words “bad idea” written all over it.
Video of the day: In which the terrorists win by convincing the U.S. government to terrorize a three-year-old boy in a wheelchair, all in the name of counterterrorism.
The National Enquirer isn’t above running photos of famous celebrities in their coffin at a private funeral. (Go find it yourself if you wanna see it.) Should they have run a photo of Whitney Houston from her funeral?
Mississippi Bill Changes Name of ‘Gulf of Mexico’ to ‘Gulf of America’
I want out of this life, how did I do?
While we’re at it, let’s change the name of New Mexico to New America. And Mexican food to Southwestern American food. (On the plus side, the proposed name change it would only change the name of the portion of the Gulf of Mexico that touches Mississippi, which is extremely small.)
EDIT: Great news, everyone! Fox News presented this satirical bill as a straight news story.
I think the Republicans are very concerned that I [may] run as an independent. I could also possibly win as an independent, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I’m not doing it for any other reason. I like winning.Donald Trump • Suggesting he would pull a Ross Perot and run for president independently if he doesn’t win the GOP nomination. With a little Charlie Sheen at the end. Oh God. Will ol’ Sideshow Don quit it? source (via • follow)
Yahoo wants to buy Hulu now too. They’re going on an “I...
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
Back in November, a 575-pound 29-year-old was hired to be the spokesperson for the “Heart Attack Grill” in Chandler, Arizona. In a controversial offering, the restaurant offered a free meal to anyone who weighed more than 300 pounds.
Thursday evening, the website AZCentral.com reported the plus-sized spokesperson had died. The cause of death wasn’t immediately known, though friends of spokesperson Blair River speculated it was complications from pneumonia brought on by a case of the flu.
Reblogging because we want to give ProducerMatthew credit for this one as well.
We’ve had conversations with UberMedia, the developer of these applications, about policy violations since April 2010, when they first launched under the name TweetUp – a term commonly used by Twitter users and a trademark violation. We continue to be in contact with UberMedia and hope that they will bring the suspended applications into compliance with our policies soon.A message from Twitter • Revealing that they had temporarily banned some of the most popular third-party apps on their system – Twidroid, UberTwitter and UberCurrent – for their unauthorized usage of Twitter copyright in their apps. UberMedia, which owns all three of these apps, has quickly become the most-powerful third-party developer in the Twitter ecosystem, and recently bought the also-offending Tweetdeck (which hasn’t been shut down). While UberMedia is working hard to fix the problems, the real question is why Twitter had to do this in the first place. These apps helped make Twitter popular. Now that Twitter is huge, all of a sudden they’re going to be the heavies? Not sure how we feel about this, honestly. source (via • follow)
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