Wires Crossed #40 – June 10
Teen Sells Kidney To Buy iPad 2
Teen Sells Kidney To Buy iPad 2
Not too sure if this belongs in the annuls of, “yeah, right!”, but apparently a teenager from Anhui province in China wanted an iPad 2 so badly he sold one of his kidneys. After the teenager posted his woes on a messageboard a man contacted him on the internet and offered him the equivalent of US$3,100 to sell his kidney. As you would expect, his mother hit the roof when she found out what her son had done, although he did manage to get a laptop and an iPad . I know humans can survive on one kidney, but to trade one in for an iPad 2? Not bloody likely!
Old Potato Head Gets New Hair
Is it just me, or have more stories been breaking via social media these days than traditional outlets such as newspapers, news wires and TV/radio? This could cause a problem for journos in years to come as one of the main jobs of any good hack at a daily newspaper or wire service is to gets scoops. And this is pretty hard to do when the subjects of media attention are handing out their own scoops to everyone via Twitter. Take Manchester United soccer star Wayne Rooney. At 25 he’s going bald so arranged to get a designer-rug to replace those hairs now missing from his follically challenged dome. Ten years ago, the likes of the UK tabloid Sun would have had a member of the paparazzi hiding in a hedge row outside a hair clinic trying to get that elusive shot, and would have paid big money to do so. After all, the pay off would have been huge. Instead, Rooney himself not only tweeted that he’d had a hair treatment, but offered up a pic to boot. Are celebs out-paparazzing the paparazzi?
Gee, Why Do People Think Politicians Are Dumb?
The US has long been the bastion of free enterprise and the spirit of unfettered capitalism, but even presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty needs to pull is head in with his latest suggestion. Pawlenty believes that if you can Google a government service on the internet, then the government should not be in the business. Really? So there should be no police departments, sanitation departments, post offices or diplomats. Nice try, Tim, but uber fail. Maybe having you head of the free world isn’t such a good idea.
15,000 Invites To Birthday Party
So it’s not the first time somebody has used Facebook to invite friends to a party. And on occasion it has gone viral. But “Thessa” from Hamburg in Germany got the fright of her life when she sent out party requests to friends and forgot to hit the ‘private’ setting. Thus more than 15,000 people were invited. As it turns out, she scarpered and didn’t hang around while more than 1,600 people turned up to party hard. Ironically, other that about 10 arrests it was a peaceful get together and sounds like everybody had a good time.
