Cow Chews Record Amount of Grass, Heifer Thanks Supportive Hubby

Louisville, KY.

Rasmine, a young cow chewed a record amount of grass in September. Heifer Rasmine thanks her talkative, supportive hubby for her feat of food.

Normally, cows chew for about 8 hours a day averaging 890 bites per hour, and ruminating takes about 12. While Rasmine did outdo the average, consuming well over 1100 bites per hour, for 11 hours a day, her large, "honeycomb" or reticulum estimated to be 51-gallons, allowed her to spend less time regurgitating her food and more time on intake. Thus, she surpassed the average 130 lbs. of food a day by a whopping 20% for the entire month of September. Farmers also attribute Rasmine's amazing consumption to an unbelievable terrain of rolling hills with grass at ideal heights of 6 to 9 inches, which optimized her chewing rate and volume. When asked what she plans to do now, Rasmine just chewed her cud.

NASA and WM Launch Space Dump Initiative

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

After years of careful planning and logistics coordination between NASA and WM (Waste Management), the first space dump prototype is set to launch. In an effort to stave off issues for future space missions, NASA and WM are tackling the goal of gathering trash obstacles such as broken satellite remnants, waste from other shuttles and rockets, and the rapidly escalating quantity of trash orbiting the Earth. This accumulating and entropicizing debris has already been the cause for a few minor mishaps in space excursions, but could prove disastrous in the future. Before that happens, NASA and WM hope to curb the problem and increase the odds for space success.

The specially designed prototype is based off of the crane grab game in arcades. It will reach out and operate with the typical boom and jib of a crane, yet the outrigger "box" will be housing the collected trash and the operator as well. The modification from the arcade game would be to take the toys from your hands and collect them into the glass box. The current plans include two astronauts tethered to the outrigger to aid in guiding the hook or jaws around the objects and securing the loads. Whereas normally the dangers in crane operations focus on having a flat base less than .1% deviation for the crane, not overloading it, and not operating in high winds, these aren't the issues for this mission since it takes place in space. Instead, NASA's concerns evolve around sharp objects in proximity to the guy lines for the jib and boom and the assisting astronauts' safety lines; shuttle-debris collision; and space as in volume capacity for the mission. The last concern has been alleviated by adding a compactor to the housing unit, which is planned to remain in space as a space dumpster. The previous concerns have been mitigated - but not absolved - by reinforcing the lines with a braided steel sheath.

Fireplaces Top List of Nonfunctional Items to Own

Boise, Idaho.

In a nationwide survey, fireplaces topped this year's list of non-functional items to own. The nonprofit organization Kyureuss Mynds conducted the poll, which included an outpouring of responses from every state branch. The study came into being due to the rise in 2013 of nonfunctional belongings.

A close second behind the fireplace for items owned for a mark prosperity or aesthetic reasons was hats.  Lids sales and improved machinery for embroidering topping over $70,000 per machine, up 40% from last years machine, which sold for $50,000 are proof of this up-and-coming, rebirthing trend. Trailing behind these two mega powers of unnecessary house or personal items is the watch. While cell phone sales are soaring, and are projected to reach over 2% of the Gross Domestic Product by 2015, the need for watches is declining, the new Samsung smart phone's companion watches not excluded. This leaves the still significant population of watch owners in third place for owning superfluous belongings.

The findings, while humorous to some, denote the underlying fiscal irresponsibility of citizens in debt to a nation in debt.

Anthropologists Claim Human Devolution from Fish after Reading NPR

Boston, MA.

Anthropologists are racking their brains like retailers on Black Friday after reading the NPR report, "Ancient Fish with Strong Jawline Could Rewrite History of Faces", claiming we come from fish. They immediately pounced very non-fishlike at the notion, accusing the claim of being fishetious.

The mammalian anthropologists wondered then, why are we so ill-suited for water in any form: swimming, epidermis, respiration and so on?, unleashing 1000's of comments on NPR's online article comment section. NPR has yet to respond.

Doodling Makes a Comeback

San Francisco, CA.

An increasing number of BART passengers have been trading in their Sudoku books and crosswords, Kindles and smartphones for the old devotion to doodling. People in coffee shops are no longer pretending to be writers, mostly gulping down espressos with an occasional scribble. Instead, an upward trend is being noted, especially on the east and west coasts of people going out in public to doodle. Last week, 7 out of 12 people on the elevator in an apartment building in Brooklyn were doodling between floors 2 and 5. An entire tour bus of tourists were caught doodling in Times Square, their cameras draped like forgotten trophies around their necks. People at a Tegan and Sara concert were seen doodling the show live, even in the front row while singing along, smartphones in pockets.

So why this sudden trade-off of posturing for humble honesty, flashy gadgets for a simple pen and paper, and mindless chitter chatter for creative expression? Hypotheses include the "small world" theory of interconnectedness, which is breeding increasing accountability in contemporaries, economical uncertainties, and a true desire to be more creative.

Graffiti artist Banksy admits to having his start in doodling. He can't recall a single thing he learned in History class, although today he expresses a keen interest in history and current events, drawing inspiration from them, literally and figuratively.

Students Skip Class to Gain Better Education

Minneapolis, MN.

It's almost an obvious equation: the lower the student-teacher ratio, the better the education you'll get. So why haven't students enacted organized groups to take shifts for attending class until now? Nonetheless, a group of students at the University of Minnesota is leading the way. This year, a study group with naturally imbalanced roles of some stronger students assisting weaker, less attentive students quickly led to frustrations and an aim to solve them. This begot the new system developed by the Coalition of Learners And Student Skippers, or CLASS, which is simply outlined as a formula-deriving group for a more efficient schedule, a better student-teacher ratio, and better information acquisition and dissemination.

One of the original founders, Ben Wadsworth, notes happily that he can go to the swimming hole, marinate ribs for the all-night BBQ, and design his 4.27-foot-long paper airplane for his Aerodynamics class instead of going to three other classes, and still gain better information for them in 30-minute review sessions and notes shared via live Google Doc updates or Twitter feeds. "I've never been kicking myself harder! Or, I guess you could say pinching myself to make sure I'm awake. At 3 pm, that is. No more 5am balogne, unless it's my turn to go to class."

Aliens Plan Attack Because of Gross Misrepresentation

Earth, Milky Way, 2013.

Aliens plan attack on Earth because of decades of gross misrepresentation. A translated intercepted long duration gamma-ray burst, thought to be emitted not from radioactive decay but rather from the astronomical collapse of a hypernovae, one of the most powerful cosmic events, has led top astronomical analysts to decoding. What they have gathered seems to be the disembarking message of an entire culture of foreign bodies, capable of collapsing their planet and communicating as well.

The emitted messages are in high energies of 10 TeV, which spacecrafts received and photographed by projections on planes constructed of materials with sufficiently high atomic number. Since reception, analysts have deciphered a warning message utilizing federal agencies' currently furloughed forensic artists to produce the above image with the following warning: We are not happy with our depictions as big-headed, slimy, drooling, leaping creatures. We are coming to eradicate.

We caught up with Jaime Theorey, Astrophysicist, Analyst, and President of Nexgalaxy Acquisitions, Inc., who confirmed these findings and his role as consultant. No stranger to social media and this report's outlets, Theorey urged the public not to panic. At least until the analysis proved the rays were of hypernovaec origins and not bremsstrahlung, and furthermore, that were they indeed from a hypernovae-inducing culture, that a black hole were not henceforth created into which they disappeared.