Over at The Technium, Kevin Kelly has a great piece on how difficult it would be to restart modern society.

Starting a fire without matches is possible, but only after about as much practice as it takes to become an expert at a video game.

Don’t miss the ending, where Kelly explains why a clear view of the future does not mean that future is close.

Obviously, not everyone shares my opinion of KFC. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Gaza, where fried chicken smugglers take hours, and a massive percentage, to deliver the not-so-fast food to grateful customers.

24/7 news is, by and large, awful. Though I’ve studiously avoided her, by all accounts, Nancy Grace is also awful. Combining the two results in something comically bad: a split-screen interview from the same parking lot. The Atlantic has a wonderful takedown, replete with animated gifs for increased hilarity.

These women are right next to one another.

Disney World makes it possible for handicapped guests to jump the line at their attractiongs, along with their families. Most would agree that this is a nice thing with little downside, given the relatively small number of handicapped patrons the park is likely to have. Apparently, however, some horrible shrews from Manhattan have instead viewed it as an opportunity. They’ve taken to hiring disabled “tour guides” for their children, which enables the entire group to jump the line.

“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.

That’s incredibly low. According to one mother, however,

“This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

If you refer to yourself as “the 1 percent”, don’t be surprised if you wind up getting beheaded.

Researchers in Africa working to save elephants have discovered a fascinating way to reduce human-elephant conflicts, using bees as a barrier. Their idea is worth checking out, and it certainly trumps dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you. Still, given that the solution requires farmers to become apiarists, I can’t help but be reminded of a quote from Mitch Hedberg:

When you’re in Hollywood and you’re a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things besides comedy. They say, ‘Alright, you’re a stand-up comedian. Can you act? Can you write? Write us a script’. They want me to do things that’s related to comedy, but not comedy. That’s not fair. It’s as though if I was a cook and I worked my ass off to become a good cook, and they said, ‘All right, you’re a cook — can you farm?’

Alright, you’re a farmer — can you beekeep?

Saudi Arabia has apparently opened a luxury rehab center for Al-Qaeda militants. Does deep tissue massage work out the deep-seated hatred?

Cameron Lyle was a 21 year old student athlete. Now, he’s just a student. The University of New Hampshire Wildcat has cut his athletic career short and pulled out of the America East Conference championships, in order to donate bone marrow and save a life. Lyle was nervous about telling his coach, Jim Boulanger, but his coach’s response shows exactly the right perspective:

“Here’s the deal,” Boulanger told Lyle. “You go to the conference and take 12 throws or you could give a man three or four more years of life. I don’t think there’s a big question here. This is not a moral dilemma. There’s only one answer.”

You too can sign up for the National Marrow Donor Program and potentially save a life.

Update (May 9th, 2013): Well, this is quite a coincidence. Just a few hours after posting this story, I got an email from the National Marrow Donor Program:

Apparently, it’s my 8th anniversary in the program. Why not join, and make today your 0th?

American citizen Kenneth Bae was recently sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in North Korea, for “crimes aimed to topple the DPRK”. The nature of those crimes is not known, but it’s likely that Bae is being used to get America’s attention. Now, the big guns have been called in:

Yes, in a story which clearly should have been in The Onion, Dennis Rodman has entered the fray. Hopefully he’ll be as successful as Bill Clinton.

The Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell are fascinatingly more complex than you might expect from a Doritos-flavored taco shell.

I’ve long suspected Baz Luhrmann’s take on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” will be awful. Turning a classic novel into a $100 million dollar big budget 3-D movie seems a recipe for disaster, and the response from critics seems to bear this fear out.

“Periodically, as if by accident, something like real emotion pokes up through the film’s well-manicured surface…”

Rough.