Our weekly content roundup from around the web and around the world continues with this week’s morsels to get your week off to a good start.
Enjoy!
Teen charged after crash of horse and buggy in chase
An Amish teen who tried to flee police faces charges of alcohol possession and “overdriving an animal” after he crashed his getaway vehicle—a horse and buggy. Thanks to @RhinoRuss for bringing this to our attention.
Eeeewwww! What’s that smell?
BBC News reports that thousands of visitors turned out at a Tokyo botanical garden to witness a rare flower that finally bloomed after almost 20 years. The Amorphophallus titanium (for those of you botanically inclined) is a native of Indonesia’s Sumatra island and is more than 5 feet tall. The only problem is that at full bloom, that wonderful flower smells like “raw garbage, gone rotten.” From @SwissNetInc.
13 People fired over their tweets
This is an interesting slide show, courtesy of the Huffington Post, about 13 people around the globe who ended up losing their jobs over comments they made on Twitter. Were these actions called for or not? Via @SmartBrief.
Employees Ignore Social Media Policies, Play “FarmVille” on Company Time [STUDY]
Cisco’s 2010 Midyear Security Report sheds light on how the popularity of games like FarmVille is contributing to lost productivity.
- 7% of the sample who access Facebook at work “spend an average of 68 minutes per day” playing FarmVille.
- 5% play Mafia Wars for an average of 52 minutes, while 4% play Cafe World for about 36 minutes each day.
- 50% of surveyed employees ignored company social media policies at least once per week, while 27% went so far as to reconfigure settings on corporate devices to access forbidden content.
The 53rd Annual Punctuation Posse Round-up
Found on passiveaggressive.com: These office notes and plenty of other fun stuff to contemplate. The first set of handwritten notes deal with punctuation. The second typed set is a rather humorous statement about the use of Comic Sans font (remember that from last week?). This funny community site was brought to our attention by @MGStults.
Video of the Week
Mel Gibson Says the Darndest Things
That’s putting it mildly. In this clip from the Jimmy Kimmel show, they decided to have a 7-year old read Mel Gibson’s latest rants.
Did you enjoy this week’s features? Leave a comment and share your thoughts, a recipe, some crazy content or whatever. And, if you’ll be in the New York City area on Wednesday, August 4th, I hope you’ll join me at the Indian Country Noir book release party at the Mysterious Bookshop. Get more information on this fun event.
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