Apples Are Falling From The Sky

Well, how d'ya like them apples?

Motorists in a British village had to brake suddenly to avoid a hailstorm of apples that rained down Monday night. More than 100 yellowy-green apples (OMG! Call in the army!) tumbled from the sky over a main road in Keresley, Coventry, shortly after rush hour, the Guardian reported. The small apples pelted windshields and hoods of cars.

"The apples fell out of the sky as if out of nowhere," one driver told the newspaper. "They were small and green and hit the (hood) hard.

"There were other cars on the road at the time, too, and everyone had to stop their cars suddenly."

Meteorologists said the apple avalanche could have been caused by a sudden vortex of air. Or we're just being rained upon by those evil, pesky birds in the clouds.

[Daily Mail]

Video: Matt Damon, The New Santa Claus in Town

Water.org cofounder Matt Damon decided to hit the malls this Christmas in order to promote the clean water cause in Africa. All I know is I'd be careful before I take a water bottle from Santa Damon.

Owner Suprised to Find Cat Regularly Catches Bus

A ginger mixed-breed cat named Dodger — after Oliver Twist’s Artful Dodger — has made habit of boarding the bus near his home, aptly dodging the fare in the process.

Apparently, the moggy regularly rides from his home in Bridpost, Dorset, to nearby Charmouth and back. Bus drivers on the route look forward to his daily visits, even bringing along a tin of cat food for him to snack on.

Owner Fee Jeanes says she believes Dodger picked up his unusal routine after people at the bus stop, which is just outside his house, started giving him food. He soon began boarding the bus, finding it warm “like a greenhouse.”

A spokesperson for the bus firm, First, said the company didn’t mind the cat’s freeloading, but have told drivers to stop encouraging him.

“[W]e recognize that cat has an owner and we do not want to discourage it from returning home for food and shelter,” said the spokesman. “Given this cat is elderly we suspect it would be eligible for free travel, perhaps a bus puss, if such a thing existed.”

[Telegraph]

'Pocket Dialed' 9-1-1 Call Leads to Easy Arrest of Two Thieves

A pair of burglars were busted yesterday by Madison police after one of the men accidentally butt-dialed 911 while the two were chatting about their latest heist.

According to a police report, 29-year-old Jason S. Hamielec and 28-year-old Brian A. Johnson went on and on about their intent to sell DVDs and video games they stole from Target, providing authorities with a description of their vehicle, and the location of the store where they were planning to offload their stolen merch.

As soon as the thieves arrived at their destination, police swarmed the scene and arrested them. As neither had bothered to hang up the phone, a dispatcher was still on the line at the time, and could hear the whole thing go down.

[State-Journal/Image: Getty via Time]

Woman Busted Smuggling $150,000 Worth Of Coke In Dreadlocks

Authorities at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok removed 3.3 pounds of cocaine from 23-year-old Nolubabalo “Babsi” Nobanda's fake dreadlocks. Thai media was there to shamelessly record the bust, and officials say it's possible the South African native could receive the death penalty.

"The embassy will give all the assistance she requires," said Douglas Gibson, South Africa’s ambassador to Thailand. "I cannot speculate as to what punishment will be meted to her. In the past 10 years only two drug smugglers were executed taking into consideration the number of dealers in prisons, and these were not South Africans."

[witness.co.za/via: dangerousminds.net]

Video: Google Presents Its 2011 Wrap-up

The year of 2011 was full of catastrophes, protests, natural disasters, revolutions, viral videos, celebrity stories, and hope. Throughout the year, people turned to Google looking for understanding and unanswered questions. Here is Google’s 2011 Zeitgeist.



[Google on YouTube]

Video: Kimmel Tells Parents to Give Their Kids Terrible Presents

These kids will grow up to kill their parents. And how can we blame them?

Golden Globes Shine on 'The Artist,' Gosling and Clooney

The Artist, a French silent film about, well, silent films, leads all films this year with six Golden Globe nominations, including one for best comedy or musical. The Descendents, starring George Clooney, and The Help, about civil rights in the U.S. south, both nabbed five nominations, including two of the best drama spots. The other films up for best drama are Martin Scorcese's Hugo, The Ides of March (another Clooney flick), Aaron Sorkin's Moneyball, and Steven Spielberg's War Horse.

Canadian Ryan Gosling picked up two acting nominations, one for best actor in a comedy or musical for his role in Crazy, Stupid, Love and for best actor in a drama for The Ides of March. You can se the full list, including the television nominations, here. HBO leads all networks with 18 nominations, although if you're watching the Globes for the television segment, you're doing it wrong.

[Vancouver Sun]

Facebook Launches 'Timeline' to Public

Facebook is not going back to the future—it just thinks that the future is in the past. The social network officially launched its "Timeline" design Thursday. It lets users revisit important stories since they joined the site. The feature was announced in September and test runs were available for some users, but the network's more than 800 million members will be able to convert their profiles today. Productivity at your office is expected to plunge.

[CNET]

Mayor's Christmas Card Not Exactly as You'd Expect

If you're wondering why the Mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, chose for his annual Christmas card to pose his family next to a leopard slaughtering a gazelle, you are not alone. There are several theories floating about: The official line is that Jorge Santini wanted to promote the San Juan Wildlife Museum and its breathtaking taxidermy displays to rival anything in the Caribbean. (There are two alternate cards, one involving penguins, the other a bear and wild turkey.) A second theory is that Santini is sending a not-so-veiled message to his political rivals in anticipation of this upcoming election year. But we're going to throw a third theory out there: The twisted little girl on the lower left is just into extreme Nativity Scenes. Run, Baby Jesus, run!

[Daily Mail]

Facebook Now Offering to Help Save a Friend

Facebook is offering a way to report a friend's suicidal posting, and get him or her help via instant message. It's not the most direct or energetic way to get help for a terminally depressed pal, but at least it's something.

The new frontier in suicide prevention looks like this: a friend sees suicidal content, clicks "Report," and chooses "suicidal" under "harmful behavior." The suicidal friend then gets an email with a link to an online chat with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, plus a phone number for the same group. "We've heard from many people who say they want to talk to someone but don't want to call," a lifeline director told the Associated Press. "Instant message is perfect for that."

While everything helps and it's nice that Facebook is finally trying to address the emotional needs of its users, let's all agree to not let this slacktivist suicide prevention system keep any of us from making a friendly phone call or delivering, like, a nice batch of cookies, okay? Great.

[Image of Facebook's User Operations Safety Team via AP]

Wall Street Traders Bet Billions on Twitter Trends

ZOMG, Justin Bieber is trending! How can we short the Jonas Brothers?? That, apparently, is the sort of conversation that's becoming more and more plausible on Wall Street; hedge funds are increasingly turning to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube trends to place social media driven bets in the "tens of billions of dollars," according to a company that sells them data.

Social media aggregator Gnip tells the Wall Street Journal that a handful of unnamed "macro quantitative funds" are using its data, along with complex computer models, to make bets on which way markets are moving. Assuming they're real and not an invention of Gnip's marketing department, these social-network-driven hedge funds join Derwent Capital, which made its name earlier this year as "the Twitter hedge fund." There is actually a credible if unproven mechanism for how this might work: Twitter delivers the first word of Osama bin Laden's death, a trader makes an early and/or after-hours long bet on the overall stock market, which promptly spikes. Or, a Twitter rumor drives Latvians to pull money out of Swedish banks (true story!), which a trader already shorted when the rumor started trending.

Sure, it sounds like a fairly insane way to invest. But then you have to ask yourself: Did Goldman Sachs really funnel $1.5 billion into Facebook and not get any special data out of the deal? Always one step ahead of the pack, those guys.

[Wall Street Journal]

Video: "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" Played on Glass Harp

Amazingly this guys plays Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” on a glass harp.



[MetaFilter]

Video: 2011 Filmography Mash-up

Good: 2011 is nearing its merciful end. Better: It’s time once again for genrocks annual Year in Film retrospective. Over 230 films produced and/or distributed in 2011 have been handpicked to celebrate the year that was in motion pictures. Reality may have sucked, but make believe had a pretty good year.

A complete list of films in order of their appearance can be found here.