, And Other News

You weren't in the office over the weekend – we hope – which means you weren't hanging out on Digg to avoid working. Here are some interesting stories that you might have missed while you were out (having fun).

Who Is Andrew Blake? 

After Brittany Quinn and two of her roommates were gunned down by Quinn's ex-boyfriend in 2011, attention soon turned to a third roommate who emerged unscathed from the shooting: Andrew Blake. As Aja Romano chronicles in Kernel Mag, Blake is a strange, fascinating character¹who is nearly impossible to pin down:

For the last 12 years, a veritable industrial complex of people within fandom communities have been sounding the alarm about Andrew Blake. They describe him as a cult leader, a pathological liar, and a master manipulator. They point to the well-documented, endless string of lies Blake has told at various points over the years: that he was a child sex slave, that he had an evil twin, and that he has a "lost son"—who turned out to be a sparrow. 

Weird Food Patents That Never Quite Caught On

We learned this weekend that drinking more coffee is actually good for you, but the same probably can't be said for patent US6749882B2: nicotine-infused coffee.² 

It Was Bodyslam Weekend In The Sports World: The First Legal, The Second Legal, And The Third Very Illegal

For better or for worse,³ one of the reasons we enjoy sports — football in particular — are the big hits, the 'Oh my god' moments. During the football offseason, though, we have to look elsewhere in the sports world for these moments, and this weekend delivered, even if it did so in rather unexpected⁴ ways.

Let's start with something from the basketball court that was completely (and gloriously) within the rules of the game: the Sacramento King's DeMarcus Cousins absolutely obliterated the Boston Celtic's Jae Crowder with a poster dunk on Friday night. The video doesn't show it, but we're assuming that the refs put down a chalk outline around Crowder's body immediately afterward. 

For the next two incidents, we move to the soccer pitch. On Sunday, a security steward at the stadium of the British Premier League's Southampton had the opportunity to leave his mark when he dropped a Liverpool fan — who was attempting to rush the field — with an expert version of The Rock's signature Rock Bottom bodyslam. 

Finally, straight from the sixth tier of British football, came something you might never see again. After a hard foul by Stockport's Charlie Russell, Worcester City's Shab Khan responded by picking up Russell and performing a suplex bodyslam on him. Khan was, needless to say, immediately ejected.⁵

How To Misuse Statistics. Or, Are Fans Of Nicholas Cage More Likely To Drown? 

No, of course not. But with the way people use (and abuse) statistics these days one could certainly make it look that way. 

Draven Rodriguez, Of Laser-Cat Photo Fame, Dead At 17

Rodriguez passed away on Thursday, in an apparent suicide. 

Rodriguez, a senior at Schenectady High School in New York, captured the imagination of the internet last September when he petitioned to have an image of himself with his cat, Mr. Bigglesworth, and with lasers in the background included in the school yearbook. 

The Oscars, As They Happened

Was it possible to miss that the Oscars happened? Probably not, for better or for worse. But if you did, here's how it all went down.

In the news: The Marina Torch in Dubai, one of the world's tallest residential towers, caught fire Friday night; the Pentagon is thinking about slowing down the United States' military withdrawal from Afghanistan; the World Health Organization approved a test that can check for an Ebola infection in 15 minutes; and seven CBS journalists contradicted Fox host Bill O'Reilly's retelling of his experiences in a 1982 riot in Argentina.