Russ McBee

Three stories showed up today, and none of them should come as a surprise: 1) Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event; on this day in 1908, something (either a small asteroid or a small comet) exploded in the air over Siberia. Although it never impacted the ground, and the object itself was only a few meters across, the blast ...

Three very cool stories caught my eye today. 1) Researchers have managed to decipher and play back a recording made nearly two decades before Edison's phonograph. The phonautogram was made in France in 1860 and represents the earliest known recording of any sound. Although the recording (and others like it) have been known for a long time, only ...

Contempt seems to be a common theme in today's news cycle: Josh Bolten and Karl Rove have been held in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas in the US attorney firing scandal. The White House and the obstructionist Senate Republicans are showing nothing but contempt for renewable energy; they're also showing contempt toward ...

Certain things in the news today probably won't amount to a hill of beans in the long run: Trent Lott resigned abruptly (although the circumstances seem a bit fishy). Bush is having a photo-op with the Israelis and Palestinians in Annapolis. Oprah is getting all political for Barack Obama. And some things may: France is selling a bunch of ...

I just came across two unrelated BBC stories that, for some reason, seem to go well together. First, there's the story of the British dude electrocuted while on vacation with his girlfriend in Paris: An inquest has heard how a Sussex man was electrocuted in the shower during a holiday with his partner. [...] [His girlfriend] said: ''He had ...

These stories from today's news either struck a chord or struck a nerve with me; I'm not sure which: Americans who've lost their homes due to foreclosure are subject to a huge tax hit by the IRS. The amount of the forgiven debt is considered taxable income. One family lost their $106,000 home to Wells Fargo, who bought it for $1. The family ...

Man, was today ever a kicker for weird news stories. First, there's an alarming rise of West Nile cases in the US, and an even more alarming rise of dengue fever cases in Indonesia. However, if we ever suffer a large population drop, the world could be repopulated much more quickly using the new and improved Womb On A Microchip (available soon ...

The bulk of today's news, compressed into a single paragraph: Happy Mother's Day. Speaking of mothers, Bush visited Jamestown to celebrate its 400th anniversary, but there's no word on whether he said the Queen was there in 1607. More governors are coming forward to say the National Guard is stretched so thin, they aren't able to respond to ...

Today's news stories condensed into a single paragraph: Billions in Iraqi oil have gone missing since 2003, Gonzo's Monica problem just got a lot worse, incidents like this prove racism is alive and well, and TWRA is cracking down on drunk boaters. Katrina reconstruction money still isn't being paid out, but there seems to be plenty of ...

We're inundated with news, from TV, radio, the Web, newspapers, magazines, email, blogs, RSS feeds, and our cell phones. It's just too much to manage. So, to bring a little clarity and order to the miasma, I thought I'd try to summarize the bulk of today's news in a single paragraph: The Iraqi parliament wants us to leave ...