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The Boy Scouts of America voted during their annual meeting yesterday to allow the admittance of openly gay youths into the scouting program, while maintaining the organization’s ban on homos#xual adults as scout leaders. What do you think?

• 

  “Big deal. I was in the scouts 30 years ago and was gay as gay can be.”

  Colin Stiven
  –
  Unemployed

• 

  “But the gay scoutmasters know all the hip new knots.”

  JoAnn Moriceau
  –
  Slurry Mixer

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  “Good. Now get out there and sell some popcorn!”

  Edward Boyd
  –
  Sign Hanger

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theonion/daily/~3/oEQUgZVpGJ8/

I’m not talking about specific games here, because they didn’t really mention them. The presentation was an hour long, and the first shot of actual gameplay came 57 minutes in — it was a brief glimpse of Call of Duty: Ghosts …

It looks like this.

… with a side-by side comparison of that game versus the last CoD game on the 360, to show off the advances in graphics:

The differences are so startling, I don’t even need to tell you which column is which.

Instead, they spent the whole presentation explaining how the system will take over all of your favorite electronic hobbies and make you hate them.

#5. You Can’t Loan Games to a Friend, and Used Games May Require an Additional Fee

The good news is that you don’t need the game disc to play an Xbox One game — every game is required to be installed on the system’s hard drive, and you just play it from there. The bad news is that there would be no way to keep people from just passing around the same disc and installing it on every system in America. “What?” you say, “That sounds like GREAT news!” You didn’t let me finish — to keep you from doing this, every time the disc is put into a new machine, the owner of that account will be required to pay full price before they can play.

“It’s not our fault, we spent all our money designing the console’s exterior!”

So no, you can’t loan a game to a friend to let him try it — once a disc is registered with one machine, it can’t be used on another without that person paying full price. So is that the end of used games as well? Nobody knows — Microsoft only told Wired that they “have a plan” for used games, but would offer no further details.

But, to make it up to you, they also announced that the Xbox One won’t play your existing Xbox 360 games.

#4. Yes, the System Requires an Internet Connection

The good news is that while you do have to have the Xbox One connected to the Internet, it will only check once a day, so in theory, if your connection goes down, you could still play a single-player game for a bit … but they said game makers are allowed to require a constant connection on any game they sell. But surely EA will make the right choice here, right?

Not to get too technical, but developers have the option of using Microsoft’s cloud computing service to borrow some of its horsepower to run their game. Which sounds great, but that means when their servers go down (you know, the way the PlayStation Network once stayed down for more than three weeks), your game stops working completely — even single player. Same if your Internet connection goes down. “We use the cloud to help run the game!” was the excuse for the SimCity disaster, in which millions of players paid $60 for the game, only to find that they couldn’t play single player due to long EA server outages.

Thus the one-and-a-half-star rating on Amazon.

#3. Watching TV Will Require Waving Your Arms and Shouting at Your Screen

Microsoft stated that their goal was to make the Xbox One a “single device to provide all of your entertainment.” As such, the console will let you watch live TV (oh, you’ll still need your current cable box, too) and use state-of-the-art technology to overlay a never-before-seen feature called a “guide” that lets you see what’s playing on each channel.

Which before now science had declared impossible.

To control all of this, every Xbox One will now come with a Kinect, the gadget that lets you control the device with hand motions and voice commands. That’s why the game console requires the Kinect to be on (with its camera watching you) at all times.

“I’ll have seen a million cocks within the first hour.”

Now, instead of the incredibly laborious process of pushing your thumb down an eighth of an inch to press a TV remote button, you can use your hand to swipe through menus using a “smacking that ass” motion:

Or you can simply say “watch Game of Thrones” and it will switch to that show. That is, until somebody else on the sofa says, “Hey, did you watch the Ryan Lochte show last week?” at which point the system will presumably detect the “watch Ryan Lochte” command in the middle of that sentence and change the channel. If you are playing a video game, the system will flip to TV with the simple voice command “go to TV” — before now, this was an impossibly convoluted process that required you to climb onto your roof and re-route several cables.

EDIT: I have been told that actually you can do this now just by pushing the “input” button on your remote control.

Of course, you will presumably only be able to watch TV up until the point where someone else in the room says a phrase that sounds like “go to game.” That’s not a criticism of the system’s voice controls — they may be very good. It’s just pointing out that the Kinect is not yet a mind reader (although it can detect your heartbeat).

#2. The World Is About to Be Full of Bad Video Game TV Show Adaptations

Quick: What’s the worst part of video games? Playing them, right? What’s the best part? The story and voice acting, of course. So clearly the next step in the evolution of the medium is to just strip it down to the latter.

So, about 40 minutes into the presentation, we heard from former president of CBS Studios Nancy Tellem, who said Microsoft would be developing TV shows for the console (the first being a Halo series) and that she would bring to them the same edge and innovation she brought to CBS with shows like, and I quote, “the CSI franchise and Survivor.” Also, Steven Spielberg will be involved somehow, so there’s that.

#1. You and Your Friends Can Accidentally Watch Each Other Masturbate

As we mentioned, the Kinect will always be on, and it will have a high-definition camera that lets it see everything that is happening in the room in front of it, at all times. The implementation Microsoft seemed most proud of was Skype, which would let people call you and plant their big stupid face right onto your screen while you’re trying to watch a movie (the example they used was breaking into your friend’s football game to taunt him about it):

So … you can call people with voice commands, and you will always be on camera. Which means you’d better hope that in the throes of sofa s#x you don’t shout anything that sounds like “call Grandma.”

Anyway, if you don’t have time to watch the conference video, somebody on YouTube boiled it down to its essence:

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CrackedRSS/~3/xbsHq0JUorY/

Singer-songwriter and rapper Ke$ha is dating a ghost.   And plans to marry him.

Ke$ha said that she fell in love with the ghost over the last few months.  ”He was visiting me every night before I went to bed.  We talked and got really close and then, one thing led to another,” the singer reportedly said.

She does not feel that she is crazy or that it is unusual to be dating a ghost.

In an interview with Ryan Seacrest, Ke$ha revealed last September that she had multiple intimate experiences with a ghost and that her song Supernatural was inspired by the affair.

“I don’t know I would fall in love with him,” Ke$ha said. “He was a ghost! But I was very open to it.”

Ke$ha wants to marry her ghost boyfriend, who she simply calls, TJ.    ”TJ and I want to get married and we are hoping to married in San Francisco sometime in the Fall,” the singer reportedly said.

There are no laws on the books that currently prevent a person from marrying a ghost in California, but in Las Vegas, woman have been marrying Elvis for decades

Ke$ha’s Warrior Tour begins May 29 in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Article source: http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/56307/kesha-dating-a-ghost/

And don’t forget to subscribe to the Cracked channel, where you can get caught up on every episode of 8-Bits, Agents of Cracked, After Hours, Stuff That Must Have Happened, Michael Swaim’s Does Not Compute, Daniel O’Brien’s Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder, and Today’s Topic.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CrackedRSS/~3/JtfCkbbV9jc/

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A Miami man  captured and killed the largest-ever Burmese python ever recorded.

It seems only memorable things are 19-feet long: a stretch Mercedes-Benz wagon, the longest carrot ever recorded and now, the largest-ever Burmese python recorded in Florida.

The 128-pound, 18-foot-8-inch reptile was caught by a Miami man who spotted it earlier this month while out driving, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The reptile surpasses the previous record of 17 feet 7 inches, according to University of Florida scientists.

The man, Jason Leon, was riding late on the night of May 11 in a rural area of Miami-Dade County when he noticed the reptile extending about three feet into the road from some brush, said Carli Segelson, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Leon might have recognized the species. Before it became illegal to owen a Burmese python as a pet in Florida in August 2010, Leon had owned some of the reptiles, Segelson said.

Leon stopped the car, got out, grabbed the snake by the head and began dragging it out into the road, according to a commission statement. When the snake began to wrap itself around his leg, Leon killed it with a knife. The creature is nonvenomous, according to the commission.

Leon reported the capture to the commission, which turned the snake over to its partners at the University of Florida Research and Education Center in Fort Lauderdale.

“The FWC is grateful to him both for safely removing such a large Burmese python and for reporting its capture,” Kristen Sommers, head of the Exotic Species Coordination Section of the conservation commission, said in a statement.

Leon could not be reached.

In one of two photos posted to the commission’s Facebook page, Leon appears to be struggling to hold up the large reptile. In another photo taken at the University of Florida, three research staffers lying on the floor foot to head are the same length as the snake.

Burmese pythons are generally docile creatures that can weigh up to 200 pounds and reach the girth of a telephone pole, according to the National Geographic website.

According to the Florida commission, the species is invasive and has negative impacts on the Everglades.

Article source: http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/56278/worlds-longest-python/

Action movies try to kick ass by ignoring the laws of physics, which is like trying to win at wrestling by ignoring the use of your limbs — you’re left with ridiculous plots and big men making stupid facial expressions. Everything that moves, impacts, or explodes is by definition physics. The machines, pyrotechnics, and computers they use to fake those things are even more physics. The only good part of action movies that physics can’t explain is Jackie Chan. But he’s a problem for biologists, because he disproves the survival instinct, and advanced students of hypothetical insurance theory.

JCE Movies Limited
Jackie Chan, personally fixing everything wrong with the Transformers movies.

But real-world scientists and engineers make “special” effects look like a euphemism. Behold, four real science and engineering videos that apply a significant podal positive impulse to a lot of gluteus maximus.

#4. Explosions: Nuclear Tanks Versus Every Other Vehicle

An international organization of engineers tried to destroy nuclear containment vessels by ramming trains and trucks into them. That’s not an engineering test, that’s an action movie plot escaped into the real world.

They forged 50 tons of solid steel indestructibility and then tried to destruct it, which is what happens when engineers get sick of philosophers wondering whether God could create something even he couldn’t destroy and decide to do it themselves. Either that or it’s a top-secret program to develop a taxi service for Jason Statham.

via Free Science Lectures
“We’ve arrived at a kickass explosion, Mr. Chelios.”

They start by dropping containers from a crane, which sounds boring until you realize that they’ve built the most impenetrable anything they can conceive of and are now playing conkers with the Earth’s crust. Then they utterly destroy a locomotive by ramming it into the indestructo-box at 100 miles an hour, and the box is fine. If Hephaestus had been half the engineer these guys are, Pandora could never have caused any trouble.

It escalates like an engineer keeping promises to his 8-year-old self. When the train doesn’t break the box, they try again with a bigger train ramming a truck. Then a rocket-propelled truck ramming a wall. Then a rocket-sled-train ramming a wall. These people use The Fast and the Furious to cure insomnia.

via Free Science Lectures
This is actually The Fast and the Furious 7, from a finer future where they no longer waste time pretending to have plots.

This video is everything the Transformers movies should have been. True, the vehicles don’t transform, but they also don’t hang around with Shia LeBoeuf, so that’s a better than fair trade. These vehicles do nothing but kick ass, and then they explode so that they don’t have to even look at anyone who wanted more than that.

via Free Science Lectures
OPTIMUS PRIME IS A WIIIIIIIIIMP!

This video is everything we know about gas-powered engines: stupid and awesome. It’s not a recording, it’s a never-ending series of Christmases for anyone who understands that petrol is made from living things and that burning it releases all their joy back into the world as velocity. Then they cut the middle man and dump a container in a pool of jet fuel and set it on fire, because a rocket-sled engineer’s idea of “icing on the cake” can be seen from neighboring countries.

#3. Unbelievable Explosions: Exploding Lakes

The second law of action movies* states that the more gently a car nudges the ground after meandering off a cliff, the more hilariously violently it explodes. This video does it for real.

*The first law of action movies is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, the only physics law to apply to both forces and Arnold Schwarzenegger characters.

This was the disposal of war surplus material metallic sodium. Sodium is a highly reactive alkali, meaning it has only one electron in its outer shell, and not to simplify chemistry too much, but that electron is a suicidal bastard. It reacts (which often means explodes) as soon as it touches anything, especially water. After World War II, the U.S. Army found themselves stuck with nine tons of Instant Doom (just add water). After three years of winning “not getting blown to smithereens” roulette, they decided to cash out. But the sodium gods demanded that something be blown up, and the powers that be sacrificed Lake Lenore.

Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty
“We had actionable intelligence that lake could have contained scuba-diving terrorists.”

Those barrels roll gently into the lake, whistling casually, before suddenly remembering that they’re portals to hell. Then they blow hell up. In movies, “detonation” is a transition, an instant of going from non-exploded to better than that. For sodium in water, detonation is a new state of being. Metallic sodium reacting with water releases hydrogen and heat, creating a continual Hindenburg at the water’s surface. The stuff goes up like Guy Fawkes’ wet dreams and just does not stop exploding. The Catholic church’s greatest secret is that the U.S. Army killed Satan in 1947. After destroying Hitler, they figured it was only a short hop up, and since they had nine metric tons of constant boom lying around anyway …

via markdcatlin
That’s one ton per level of hell, and this stuff is hotter.

It’s the pyrotechnic equivalent of syphilis: It only happens because of American soldiers having bad but fun ideas during the war. It resulted in miles of chemical plumes, which the chirpy newscaster relays in the same manner as someone who’s just seen an interesting bird in the distance, despite being the exact opposite of that ever happening. This is the same newscaster who cheerfully praises the Army for choosing a lake without any fish in it, because back then “environment” was just a useful Scrabble word for men who’d failed the army physical.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CrackedRSS/~3/yjehfQAyN48/

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As part of CEO Marissa Mayer’s strategy to expand the company’s social and mobile presence and attract younger users, Yahoo will purchase the popular blogging service Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. What do you think?

• 

  “I think they could have gotten it for $900 million.”

  Robert Hogan
  –
  Beautician

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  “Shit. I hope Marissa Mayer still lets us blog from home.”

  Henry Kozlowski
  –
  Envelope Folder

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  “Ooh, I hope they like my Tumblr about dolphins!”

  Peggy Meillon
  –
  Systems Analyst

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theonion/daily/~3/lGQu4ofDeF8/

Excited scientists are hatching eggs recently found in 130 million-year-old dinosaur nest in South Africa.

“The embryos are still intact and we can extract enough DNS to clone the creatures,” one scientist said.  ”In effect, we can hatch the eggs just as well as the mommy dino could.”

In all, 340 eggs belonging to a primitive dinosaur species named Massopondylus, a smaller ancestor of the gigantic, long-decked sauropods of the Jurassic period, were found in 34 separate nests.

“The nests were covered by a mud flow that happened very quickly, possible the result of an earthquake,” the scientist said.  ”That’s why the embryos are so well preserved.  They still contain viable DNA and within a month or so we will successfully clone one or several of the creatures.”

Although the mother who tended the nest was about 50 feet long, her eggs are only about three times the size of chicken eggs.

“For that reason we will be using ostrich eggs to grow the embryos until they hatch,” the scientist said.  ”There is no reason at all that the dinosaur babies will not be healthy and ready to fend for itself.”

Sources close to the South African government say TV networks in the United States and Europe are prepared to bid high for the exclusive coverage of the dinosaur births.

“They want to film a live dinosaur pecking its way out of a shell,” the scientist said, “the first time it’s happened in 60 million years.  It will be a wonderful experience for TV viewers across the world.”

Article source: http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/56264/dinosaur-zoo-to-open-in-south-africa/