Awful Bureaucracy, Extinction Level Events, and Lady Gaga

Liam Brentley is a 25 year old British Royal Marine who was shot in the head by the Taliban while serving in Afghanistan.  (He wasn’t shot by the sniper dog above, of course. Sniper dog only shoots terrorists and insurance adjusters.)  Brentley suffered hearing loss and memory loss after having part of his skull, jaw, and brain tissue removed.  His insurance company (Chartis) — apparently confusing him with the Black Knight from Monty Python — sent him a letter classifying his injury as a “flesh wound” and giving him a check for $2,400 (£1,500). When reached for comment, Chartis said if he still has a permanent injury after a year he’ll get another check.  Yeah, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say getting part of your skull, jaw, and brain removed is permanent. And more than a flesh wound. Just a guess.

Need another example of how not to treat people?  A debt collection agency in Pennsylvania sent employees in fake police uniforms to alleged debtors’ homes, threatened them with arrest if they didn’t come to a court hearing, and brought them to a fake courtroom with another employee pretending to be judge and threatening them with jail time if they didn’t turn over their bank account information and car titles on the spot.  And why isn’t the company being charged with kidnapping and impersonating an officer? Probably because hardly anyone cares if somebody labeled a deadbeat gets harassed illegally, even if they debt never existed in the first place, was already paid off, already expired, or somebody just had the same name as somebody else.  Could we show some of these collectors what a real courtroom looks like? Please?

How about a palate cleanser after all that annoying bureaucracy? An elderly couple in Nova Scotia who won $11,255,272 Canadian dollars ($11,238,414 US) have gifted the entire sum to charities and family members.  Allen and Violet Large, both in their seventies, gave a little money to family members first, then went through a list of charities two pages long, giving away the entire jackpot.  Benefiting from their generosity were local services (like the fire department), the Red Cross, The Salvation Army, cancer charities, Alzheimer’s charities, diabetes charities, and the two hospitals where Violet underwent cancer treatments.  She finished her last chemotherapy treatment a week before donating the money.  I heard it wasn’t the chemo that beat that cancer, though. I heard she beat it through the power of being awesome.

MORE NEWS

• The University of South Carolina is offering a class called “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame”. Eh, Eh, nothing else I can say. (AOLNews)
• A young Asian man boarded an Air Canada plane in Hong Kong disguised as an elderly Caucasian man, made it to Vancouver before getting caught. (CNN)
• Purdue University and Imperial College London programmed a calculator that shows you what would happen if a comet or asteroid impacted the Earth, letting you adjust for size, density, angle, velocity, impact site, and where you’ll be when it goes down.  Laughing maniacally optional. (Discoblog)

KNOW YOUR STATS

• Here’s an infographic on asteroids and comets that have recently come close to hitting Earth or have hit Earth, as well as some big ones that may hit us in the future. Sweet dreams. (VisualLoop)
• This is how the “Double Irish” works, which isn’t what you call it when Lady Gaga makes a push-up bra out of four leaf clovers. (Focus)
• Twitter is now worth about the same amount as The New York Times. Half that is probably from people following Lady Gaga’s tweets. (SAI)