Going through the door: too much money

The Bellend of the Month for November 2014 is Josh Hodgson, an English rugby league star who ran through and destroyed a door in a student flat for a party trick. Hodgson faces disciplinary action after being filmed running into and crashing through a closed internal door early on the 9th at a party attended by some English players after being knocked out of the 2014 Four Nations tournament by New Zealand the night before. In the video, which has gone viral, partygoers can be heard chanting, "Go through the door", just before the player smashes through it. After the stunt, Hodgson emerges grinning to cheers from the group. But that's where the fun and games end because there's the issue of a NZ$400-500 repair bill. So be careful next time you choose to host a party in rented accommodation, because the damage may well be on your head.

It's a backpack loaded up with Grants and Benjies too, any dough that you might need it's all inside for you

In the decade since he bought a small Burger King franchise on North Bascom Avenue, Altaf Chaus has rarely grappled with questions more existentially challenging than, "Would you like fries with that?" But this week, Chaus found himself at the center of a debate that was such an ethical whopper it quickly went national: What would you do if somebody walked out of your fast food restaurant $100,000 lighter, and never came back for the money? Just as Chaus was about to leave work Wednesday to celebrate his birthday, two employees brought him a backpack that had been abandoned in a booth, where it sat for hours under a sign that reminded diners to SAVOR EACH MOMENT. Eager to get to his Hayward home, Chaus unzipped the blue bag with brown piping, hoping to find a phone number so he could contact the rightful owner. "And then, whoosh," he said, "the money." The backpack contained US$100,000 in corpulent bundles of $100 and $50 bills. Only two weeks earlier, customers had stuck Chaus with three counterfeit $100 bills, so he had put up another sign - in his own handwriting - on the milkshake machine next to the cash register: NO $100 BILLS PLEASE. Now, suddenly, he was holding a bag full of them. The nearly universal first thought was, What would you do if you were him? Chaus was him, and he knew exactly what to do. He called the police. The owner should be lucky it wasn't me who found the bag, because if I had found $100,000, I wouldn't be turning it into the cops. My dad found NZ$10 on the ground one time before I was born, back when according to him, $10 was a lot of money. He made the mistake of turning it into the cop shop, but lucky for him nobody claimed it and it became his. Instead of making that same mistake, I would savour that moment like Chaus's sign says to and I would splurge like never before - one of the first things would be to take my niece and nephew to Peppa Pig World, which is a Peppa Pig-themed attraction at a theme park in England called Paultons Park. Also on my list, I would buy Sony's new e-paper watch, which was hiding in plain sight all along while rumors were circling about the new device. The wearable e-paper device, called the FES Watch, was under development through a company called Fashion Entertainments, which turned out to be associated with the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant, reports the Wall Street Journal. The wearable uses e-paper technology, such as the kind present on the $99 Pebble and the Amazon Kindle tablet. But instead of using e-paper just for the watch face, it uses it for both the face and its wristband surface. This lets the watch take on multiple designs and appearances with just the tap of a button. Though rumors of the device have surfaced only recently, it was sitting on a Japanese crowdfunding site as early as September, with the project raising more than US$23,000. Sony hasn’t confirmed a launch date for the watch, but the project’s crowdfunding site currently targets May 2015 for a release date, by which time if I had found that $100,000, I would've pretty much spent it all, and the small quantity of pot the cops also found in that bag would've been smoked long before then.

FRIDAY FILM BEAT: Mockingjay Part 1

Not as long as the last two but of course this is only the first part of the final book - it's where the trilogy really starts to get good. So if you haven't seen this movie yet, WHY THE !*$%^@#%*&%&^#$%*^$%!@#$^$#@#$%^&&*&%@%#%$^%&^#$%^#@%$$*^%$%#!*#$%@^$%*!#@#%$$#^@!%@^#!@#$!%*$%%$#*!%$##~@%&^$#%!~@*^*^!#*@$#@!^%$%$@*#!#^%#^$!*&@$!~~!@$#@*^#$%~&@#$%~*#~*!@^>$~#$$$$!@#~#$@@!%%$^^^###!#$^$&*~!%$*^&#$%!@##$*~#%%*$#~!&@#$^!~~#$^&*~@<$&">!^$"*%^$@~<@>"%*^<>"~*%@#$~$!#$^@*~$#@~!%@#$^*#@@##%$*&$%$#!@~$#@#$%*#%#~$~!*&#^$~@#!@$!~@%#!~~"!~#<">~<<>~@>&~!%@!!@*<>%^&~ NOT? The cast and crew put a lot of hard work in to get this out to us. You should really go see this before everyone stops talking about it.

Barr takes on Bill

Roseanne Barr has tweeted and deleted a disturbing photo of her bloody face and joked that she got into a "tussle" with Bill Cosby, who has faced a series of sexual assault allegations recently. The 62-year-old actress posted a selfie of her face looking swollen and bloody under the caption: “tussle w bill cosby,” before swiftly deleting it. She then followed that up with the same image alongside a new caption. “Got a chemical peel to look more sexier. Joked about tussling cosby,” she wrote. This comes after the comedian’s lawyer denied the allegations made against Cosby. In a statement released last Friday Marty Singer said the allegations are “becoming increasingly ridiculous”, and said that news organisations should stop vilifying the Cosby Show actor. But if you think Barr's attempt to get in on the action was bad, just imagine the sort of Bill Cosby-related material Robin Williams would be coming up with had he not hung himself.

#gigatowndunedin wins #gigaspeedinternet

Dunedin has been announced as the winner of Chorus' Gigatown competition, winning New Zealand's fastest broadband. As the winning town, Dunedin (or #gigatowndunedin as it was known during the competition period) will receive access to one gigabit per second internet, a NZ$200,000 development fund to support entrepreneurs and innovators taking new services using the gigabit fibre to market, and a NZ$500,000 community fund to kick start community related developments. But enough about that because Samsung has recently unveiled an eye-tracking mouse, dubbed as EYECAN+, which allows people with disabilities to control their computers with a blink of an eye. The EYECAN+ doesn't require the user to wear any equipment or be in any specific position, it works when users are positioned approximately 2 feet away from the monitor. It is a portable box that is positioned below a computer monitor and it allows users to surf the Internet, write, and edit documents. Samsung stated that they do not plan to sell the system and instead will donate the limited quantity to charity organizations. However, the technology and design will soon be made open source, allowing other groups and companies free rein to commercialize the eye mouse.

BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK: Having an all-white grand jury

Protests have erupted across America after a grand jury decided not to indict a white Missouri police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, with several hundred people storming onto a New York City bridge, 500 demonstrators blocking traffic on a major highway in California and others lying down outside the White House and on a street in Beverly Hills, California. Some demonstrations turned violent, with people looting a store in Chicago; protesters throwing large fireworks, rocks, bottles, and canned food at police in Seattle; and a police car being vandalized in Oakland. The protests broke out after St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch announced that the grand jury had not indicted Officer Darren Wilson, who gunned down Michael Brown on a street in Ferguson on Aug. 9. The grand jury had options ranging from first-degree murder to no charge at all, but being the racist pigs they are, they chose no charge at all. This is why they shouldn't be using all-white grand juries. The decision seems to underscore an unwritten rule that black lives hold no value and one may kill black men without consequences or repercussions. Seriously, Bob McCulloch, you and that grand jury need to reconsider that stupid verdict. It's enough to make Patrick Stewart swear. Speaking of which, here's a clip from the gag reel for the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is coming out on Blu-ray next week:

They let the cat-like thing out of the bag

One bright yellow and cat-like, with a green leaf-haired brother, the mascots for the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro were launched by organisers late on Sunday, their backstory being they were born out of the joy of the Brazilian people at having been awarded the games. The mascots, who are said to represent the animals and plants of Brazil, are a key part of the Olympics merchandising campaign which is set to feature 12,000 products and is an important revenue source and a vital way of engaging the public. A public poll will be held to decide the mascots' names from a shortlist of Oba and Eba; Tiba Tuque and Esquindim; and Vinicius and Tom. But whatever name is chosen, organisers hope to raise a billion reais in retail sales from Rio 2016 branded merchandise, and are hoping the mascots help engage younger audiences in the Olympics, with a television series starring the mascots planned to run on Brazilian television next year. But at least it's a much more imaginative choice than some of the more recent mascots we've had.

Reds surge to fourth

Manchester United's elusive search for a first away win in 2014/15 came to what had initially seemed like an unlikely end this morning with a 2-1 victory over Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium. A Kieran Gibbs own goal in the second half, Wayne Rooney's galloping breakaway effort in the 85th minute, and the heroics of David De Gea at the other end of the field earned the three points. Antonio Valencia's low shot after 56 minutes was inadvertently deflected by Gibbs into his own net to give the Reds the lead, then Rooney finished off an incisive counter-attack to make it 2-0. Angel Di Maria could have made it 3-0 late on, but he missed a good chance and Olivier Giroud pulled a goal back to make it a nervy 2-1 finish. But this was a commendable performance of persistence from United in testing circumstances, as the Reds have now climbed up to fourth place, and it looks like maybe things will be better with Loser van Gaal in charge.

Hello Forty

Hello Kitty, the cat that isn't really a cat, recently turned 40. After entering the world on Nov. 1, 1974, the iconic character produced by Sanrio Co. has been loved by millions of people around the world, regardless of gender and age. Kitty, whose real name supposedly is Kitty White, is a girl who is five apples tall (two more than the Smurfs), weighs three apples, and has blood type A. She lives in the London suburbs with her parents and her twin sister Mimmy, according to Sanrio. Her favorite food is the apple pies her mother bakes, and she dreams of becoming a pianist or poet in the future. Speaking of apples, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver admits he once spiked his daughter's apple with spicy chilli after she misbehaved. Oliver made the admission while appearing on the BBC Good Food Show. The father of four said his wife Jools was outraged at the method, but that "it worked a treat". "I give them chillies for punishment," The Daily Mail reported Oliver saying. "It is not very popular beating kids any more ... and if you are a celebrity chef like me it does not look very good in the paper. So you need a few options." Oliver said he had prepared the chilli-ridden snack in reply to his tween's rude and disrespectful behaviour. "Five minutes later she thought I had forgotten and I hadn't," he told the crowd. "She asked for an apple. I cut it up into several pieces and rubbed it with Scotch bonnet [chilli] and it worked a treat. She ran up to mum and said, 'This is peppery'. I was in the corner laughing." For those of you not in the know, Scotch bonnets are a very spicy chilli, not as spicy as the bhut jolokia (aka ghost pepper) but way spicier than jalapenos. This just screams of bad parent, much like that tiger mother Amy Chua or the judge who beat his daughter while the whole thing was being taped without his knowledge. And besides, Oliver is not the only celebrity to use chilli to discipline his child. US actor and public speaker Lisa Whelchel, who was Blair on The Facts of Life, recommends a technique known as "hot saucing", where "tiny" amounts of chilli or pepper condiments are placed in a child's mouth as punishment.

FRIDAY FILM BEAT: Exists

This movie is a masterpiece compared to Eduardo Sanchez's other work. The critics do not seem to agree with me on that, even though Fearnet praised Exists for its editing and score, as they felt that it would help make the movie appeal to people who would not normally like found footage films. Let's hope Mr Sanchez can "find" some more footage worthy of the big screen.

Noteworthy money to be issued next year

New Zealand's banknotes are getting a makeover for the first time in 15 years, and although the same well-known faces will remain, security features have been beefed up. Today the Reserve Bank announced it will be releasing new designs of New Zealand bank notes, which will come into circulation from October next year. The last banknote upgrade was in 1999, with the change from paper to polymer. While the new designs will feature all the same well-known faces, including Sir Edmund Hillary and Kate Sheppard, the new designs and colours will be more vibrant. That's right, New Zealand's "paper" money is changing from this:

to this:

As you can see, the text of the number value of each note will be much bolder and brighter. The shape, size, and feel of the notes will also remain the same. However, the new notes will contain more sophisticated security features. These include holographic features that will help to make the notes easy to verify, but much harder to counterfeit. The transparent windows that feature in the current banknotes will also be much larger in the new designs, featuring a greater level of both design and security. But Kiwis won't be seeing these in their wallets just yet - the new $5 and $10 notes will be out next October, and the other three will be out six months later.

Get ready to say nanu-nanu to the end this festive season

The final season of Mork and Mindy is coming out on DVD in less than three weeks time. But right now, it's the twentieth anniversary of the first UK National Lottery draw. The first draw took place on 19 November 1994 with a television programme presented by Noel Edmonds. This was an hour long special, in which 49 contestants competed to become the first person to start the draw, the winner being 18-year-old Deborah Walsh. The first number to be drawn was 30. The next numbers drawn were 3, 5, 44, 14, and 22; the bonus number was 10; and seven jackpot winners shared a prize of £5,874,778 (£839,254 each). But enough about that because a new generation of New Zealand banknotes will be revealed tomorrow afternoon, when the new banknote designs will be unveiled during a media lock up at the Reserve Bank before being added to circulation late next year. While the designs will be updated, the themes of the notes will remain the same, with the same New Zealanders (or old British woman in the case of the $20 note), flora, and fauna remaining. The notes will have a more modern look, feature larger print stating note denominations, and greater colour contrast between notes. The process will cost the Reserve Bank an estimated $80 million and is the first change to New Zealand banknotes since 1999 when banknotes went from being printed on paper made from cotton to polymer.

BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK: Subway attacks

A man has been pushed to his death beneath a train on the New York subway. Police said an unidentified man pushed 61-year-old Wai Kuen Kwok onto the tracks and into the path of an oncoming train on Sunday morning. Kwok, who had been standing on the platform with his wife, was struck by a southbound train at around 8.40am at the 167th Street and Grand Concourse station. He was pronounced dead at the scene. His wife was not injured. The assailant fled but authorities have released video footage of a man wanted in connection with the horrific incident. Witnesses said they believed the man fled the subway station after shoving Kwok and jumped on a city bus. There have been three other incidents in recent years that have involved a person being pushed onto the tracks. In April 2013, a train ran over a man desperately clawing at a Manhattan subway platform after being pushed onto the tracks by a homeless suspect with whom he'd been arguing. In December 2012, another homeless man was arrested for pushing a Queens man in front of a Times Square train that fatally crushed him. And later the same month, a mumbling woman pushed a man to his death in front of a subway train in Queens. This is not on. You don't just push people in front of a train like that. It may be a good idea for a joke at the time, but you won't find it funny when the cops get involved.

99 bucks to get a tablet

The age of the $99 tablet is here, and just in time for the holiday shopping season. While you’re shopping for the latest copy of "101 Ways to Prepare Leftover Turkey" on the day after Thanksgiving, Walmart hopes you’ll also take home E Fun's newest Windows tablet, the 8-inch Nextbook. The tablet will be available at Walmart’s brick and mortar locations starting on Black Friday, November 28, for the low, low price of US$99. The device comes with 16GB of internal storage. But buyers can take advantage of a Black Friday promotion that offers a 16GB microSD card in the box, a bonus that basically doubles the storage capacity of the device. The Nextbook also comes with a one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal, including 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage, and hopefully a way to find an e-book version of "101 Ways to Prepare Leftover Turkey" - finding a free copy would be better still so you don't have to shell out even more just for the paperback version.

Singapore Wi-Fi - an expensive way to fly

Although in-flight Internet access has existed for a handful of years now, it's still pretty rare to board a flight and find out that it's offered, and after learning of a recent experience by a Singapore Airlines customer, I'm starting to think that we might be better off without it. Once in the air, Jeremy Gutsche plunked down $28.99 to experience the wonders of in-flight Internet. I doubt it needs to be said, but $29 for a service like this is really high - it's almost as if the charge is $1 for every 1,000 or so feet in the air. Nonetheless, the asinine charges didn't stop there. After deboarding, Jeremy was handed a bill for $1,200. We've all heard this story before - overage is one heck of a drug. So please do not use in-flight Wi-Fi. The Internet will still be around when you land.

Millers to be milled out

Good news, everyone - The Millers has been cancelled. One more episode will be filmed before production is shut down, at which point an awful chapter in television history will come to an end that should've come a lot sooner.

FRIDAY FILM BEAT: Interstellar

This is one of Christopher Nolan's best films to date. To find out just how good, you should go see it for yourself.

Trailer out for Insurgent

The revolution is on! The official trailer for Insurgent, the next installment in Veronica Roth's young-adult dystopian trilogy, was released yesterday, and if it's any indication, viewers are in for even more action. The trailer picks up where Divergent left off, with Tris (Shailene Woodley who turns 23 on Saturday), Four (Theo James), and Caleb (Ansel Elgort) rallying their band of friends in a post-apocalyptic Chicago to foil the evil doings of those now in power, led by Jeanine Matthews (Kate Winslet). Insurgent, which stars new cast member Suki Waterhouse as Marlene, hits theaters March 20 (release dates may vary) and will apparently also be released in 3D.

Guess who's back, back again? Maybach's back, tell a friend!

Mercedes-Benz has finally confirmed one of the year’s worst-kept secrets: as a possible result of its name-checking in the Lorde song Royals, the Maybach brand is making a return as a new “Mercedes-Maybach” sub-brand specializing in ultra-luxury, similar to how the existing Mercedes-AMG sub-brand specializes in performance. Along with the confirmation, Mercedes released two photos teasing the first Mercedes-Maybach-enhanced model, the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class, which has been confirmed for separate debuts at auto shows taking place in LA and Guangzhou in the coming week. Big deal. The comeback of 2014 was when Pam Dawber was on The Crazy Ones, but it's not like anybody's talking about that anymore.

BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK: Letting David Moyes take the reins

Former Manchester United boss David Moyes has been named as the new manager of Spanish club Real Sociedad. It is the 51-year-old's first job since he was sacked as United manager in April after a 10-month spell in charge. Moyes replaces Jagoba Arrasate, who was dismissed by Sociedad after a poor run of form which currently sees them lie 15th in La Liga. The Scot has signed a contract to June 2016 and will take charge for the first time at Deportivo on 22 November. We all know Moyes is going to screw this up like he did Manchester United, which begs the question: why did they pick a manager that fires blanks to replace another manager that fires blanks? Speaking of which, I'm not sure Loser van Gaal is even trying anymore.

Art upon art

Some of the new street art adorning buildings in Dunedin's warehouse precinct and the surrounding area has been defaced with graffiti (vandalism pictured). On its online social media page, Dunedin Street Art says the group "clearly made someone angry" in its effort to bring art to some of the city's blank walls. The group posted four pictures of graffiti, three of which bore the same offensive stencilled message. One of the targeted buildings was Chipmunks, a children's adventure play business, and it's not something kids turning up to a play area should have to see. It’s also not fair to the artists or owners involved to have this happen to their walls. It’s Dunedin Street Art or the building owner that has to pay for such a bad-taste joke to be removed from the buildings. If someone is going to be tagging and defacing property they need to be caught and punished (and hopefully be made to reimburse whoever paid for the removal). What gives them the right to do that? And how would they like it if somebody went to their house and wrote things on their wall (like 'Get a job you talentless git')? The only silver lining of this is that the graffiti isn't actually on the street art - it's just on the same wall but not over the art itself, which is good because removal isn't going to destroy the work.

Mindy has now lived longer than Mork

That's right, people. Pam Dawber has reached a milestone that Robin Williams will never reach - the age of 63 years and 22 days, which is a day older than when Williams died. But we have a more important milestone to discuss: Loser van Gaal ended his losing streak this morning after Juan Mata came off the bench and to the team's rescue as he fired Manchester United to a hard-fought 1-0 win over Crystal Palace at Old Trafford. The Spanish midfielder had only been on the field for a few minutes when his deflected strike squeezed between the Palace goalkeeper and the post, but his appearance was the ideal impact substitution on a day when United could not make superior possession count in front of goal. Four players received yellow cards.

Five miles down in the five boroughs

The 25-mile-per-hour (40 km/h) speed limit that went into effect in New York City yesterday did not slow a black Mercedes that blazed a path down the middle lane of Madison Avenue at a brisk 34 miles per hour (55 km/h) around 1pm Eastern Standard Time, nor did it deter the drivers of a tow truck going 32 (50 km/h) or a city bus lumbering along at 28 (45 km/h). Even a police car was spotted darting through traffic, though no emergency was apparent. In a city where any hint of open asphalt can take the edge off a day mired in traffic, the dawn of a new speed limit did not change much. Cluttered roads still seemed to dictate speed far more than did the city’s new mandate, which dropped the default limit from 30 mph to 25. Way more interesting is this edit I recently made to the Wiktionary definition of love:

FRIDAY FILM BEAT: St Vincent

Best. Movie. Ever. Need I say more?

Android Lollipop, you make my battery's power go

On Monday, Google announced the launch of Android 5.0 Lollipop. The company is known for its gradual roll-outs, but with no Nexus 4, 5, 7, or 9 yet to update the frustration has been growing. Now we know why: Lollipop has problems. Android Police got wind earlier today that a WiFi bug in the final build of Lollipop is dramatically impacting battery life. This was backed up by mass reports of the problem in the official Android Developer Forum which were quickly fused into a single thread that is now over 800 posts long. Google Android Senior Developer Trevor Johns ultimately chimed in confirming that “Android Engineering is aware of an issue affecting Nexus 5 users running Android 5.0 which causes significant 'Miscellaneous' battery usage while WiFi is enabled. This appears to be caused by an abnormally high number of IRQ wakeup events. We are continuing to investigate this issue.” Johns’ welcome candor confirms Google doesn’t yet have a fix for the bug and the many uploaded screenshots to the thread (some samples above) show “significant” is an apt description with Nexus 5 testers showing a full battery is lasting 4 hours or less. Other testers have noted that disabling WiFi eliminates the problem, but this is hardly a practical solution for a mass roll out. Furthermore it flies in the face of what Google is trying to achieve with Lollipop and its ‘Project Volta’ scheme which aims to dramatically increase battery life. Until they fix the problems with the battery, my advice would be to switch to a phone with iOS - just remember if it's not an Apple, it's crapple.

1700 POSTS!

A Riverside County, California woman has been charged for allegedly scamming dozens of Facebook friends with a fake cancer diagnosis. Cristina Lagman posted her story on her Facebook page, saying she was dying of terminal cancer and was facing financial hardship. But Murrieta police call her story a fraud. Valerie Cortes of Murrieta and her fiance say they were duped; they contributed time and money to Lagman - "gift cards for dinners and movies and spa treatments to make the last of her days more comfortable and happier" - and they even helped organize a fundraiser at a local comedy club in Murrieta. "Cristina was happy, frolicking around, drinking quite a bit, passing donation bags around, and I thought her behavior was odd since she had said she only had four to six weeks of life left," Cortes said. During the event, the comedy club owner, Rocky Osborne, said Lagman called on her friends to say nice things about her. "The strangest thing was, as I looked around, most the people that she knew didn't really even know her. So the people that were here had only known her for 30 to 60 days," Osborne said. But her story truly unraveled when Cortes offered to take her to a doctor to confirm the diagnosis because people were questioning Lagman. "She had no proof. I asked her to show me a prescription bottle, a doctor's visit, paperwork, something," Cortes said. But according to investigators, Lagman told them she had a laundry list of cancers and had been treated at a number of hospitals including Loma Linda University Medical Center and UCLA Medical Center. Investigators say they found no medical records anywhere for cancer treatment. "I am angry with her. I am disgusted by her. She has caused our community to doubt when people say they've got cancer and need help," Cortes said. I too would be angry and disgusted. Pretending to have cancer is one of the worst things one can do. It may not be as scary as when some bellend on a flight to the Dominican Republic last month pretended to have Ebola, but by conning her community out of their hard-earned cash, Lagman has become cancer and as a result, she has been charged with theft by false pretenses. Investigators believe she may have taken more than US$3,000 in gifts and donations collected on a GoFundMe site. She is expected back in court next month.

BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK: Dismantling a perfectly good memorial

A memorial to Apple Inc founder Steve Jobs has been dismantled in St Petersburg after the man who succeeded him at the helm of the company, Tim Cook, came out as gay. The 2-metre-high monument, in the shape of an iPhone, was erected outside a St Petersburg college last January by a Russian group of companies called ZEFS. Citing the need to abide by a law combating "gay propaganda", ZEFS said in a statement on Monday that the memorial had been removed on Friday - the day after Apple CEO Cook had announced he was homosexual. "In Russia, gay propaganda and other sexual perversions among minors are prohibited by law," ZEFS said, noting that the memorial had been "in an area of direct access for young students and scholars". "After Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly called for sodomy, the monument was taken down to abide to the Russian federal law protecting children from information promoting denial of traditional family values." That law is stupid, and besides the fact that Cook prefers cock (excuse the pun), a statue of an iPhone is hardly considered to be gay propaganda. It is a useful device which has games, office applications, an alarm clock, a web browser, a camera, basically whatever crap you want to put on it. And Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, was not gay.

Ten-man Reds lose derby

It was City who earned the bragging rights in the 168th Manchester derby this morning – through Sergio Aguero’s second-half winner - despite the best efforts of ten-man United at the Etihad Stadium. The Reds were forced to play over half the game with one man less than the Blues after Chris Smalling was dismissed for two bookable offences. Aguero netted the vital strike just after the hour but United made it a real battle for the hosts in spite of the numerical disadvantage. But even so, a loss is a loss, and is counted as such in the league table. Loser van Gaal seriously needs to pull his weight if the Reds are to stay in the Premiership, let alone make it to the Champions League, next season.

Here comes the jail time

By the big smiles, warm hugs, and loud cries of ululation, the video seems to show a joyous celebration. An Egyptian prosecutor looked at the same footage and saw something very different: a "satanic ceremony" with images that are "shameful, regrettable, and anger God." The men convicted were shown appearing to take part in a Nile boat wedding celebration featuring two men as the celebrants. The video went viral on social media sites. A man who said he was one of those who appeared in the video denied the allegations in a televised interview in early September. He said he was holding a birthday party for his friend and got him a silver ring as a birthday gift. That sounds logical, but people shouldn't have to make such excuses for behaviour which is tolerated in more civilised societies. Being gay doesn't make you any less of a human being. Remember this, people:

#suedlines #everybodyincourt

Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams have lost the primary round of their legal battle against Marvin Gaye’s estate over “Blurred Lines,” according to The L.A. Times. The pair, who worked together on the 2013 hit, filed the suit earlier this year upon receiving accusations from Gaye’s family that parts of “Got to Give It Up” had been copied. Gaye’s family responded with a countersuit. U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt has denied Thicke and Williams’ motion for summary judgment. His ruling found similarities between the bass lines, keyboard parts, vocal lines, melodies, and harmonies of the two songs, meaning there is enough evidence to move forward with the Gaye family’s claim. A trial is scheduled to take place in three months, but seriously, I don't care. But if Thicke and Pharrell were to marry, the former could change his name to Robin Williams.