As a Michael Jackson fan from childhood, I developed my own little narrative to explain his sometimes bizarre and disturbing behavior. Could it be possible that it was all just an elaborate and hard core “life-as-art” performance piece? Maybe he was so extreme that he created this persona and transformed his whole appearance deliberately to ellicit a response from our deepest places of insecurity, fear, judgement, loathing, and bigotry.

Wouldn’t it be the biggest statement of pop art to extract the highest levels of public adoration and revulsion all at the same time? It would have been a great act with no better finale than tragically vanishing right before making a big comeback. You can’t blame me for wanting to believe in someone who was sometimes the exact human personification of magic.

From BBC News…

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around “as high as a kite”, a government official has said.

Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.

She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.

Australia supplies about 50% of the world’s legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.

We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles. Then they crash Lara Giddings, government official

“The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” Lara Giddings told the hearing.

“Then they crash,” she added. “We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high.”

Rick Rockliff, a spokesman for poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids, said the wallaby incursions were not very common, but other animals had also been spotted in the poppy fields acting unusually.

“There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles,” he added.

Retired Tasmanian poppy farmer Lyndley Chopping also said he had seen strange behaviour from wallabies in his fields.

“They would just come and eat some poppies and they would go away,” he told ABC News.

“They’d come back again and they would do their circle work in the paddock.”

Some people believe the mysterious circles that appear in fields in a number of countries are created by aliens. Others put them down to a human hoax.

(Reuters) – Dress Barn Inc (DBRN.O) announced that it will buy teen-apparel seller Tween Brands Inc (TWB.N) for about $157 million in stock. Word is that Dress Barn, largely known as a purveyor of pants suits and “temp” wear, is making a go at the tween girls market. Does this mean that girls are going to start dressing like the cast of “Heathers” again? In the words of Veronica Sawyer, “How very.”

Heathers

All up in your koolaid. Wired outs Facebook as a potential new media Dr. Evil with big plans to take over the world.  Mwa, ha, ha (my attempt to render villainous laughter). Google says touché.

Thanks for sharing, Bryant. This is sort of inevitable. We’d be naive to think that our carefree online cavorting with friends wasn’t fodder for massive databases to be used for behavioral marketing. Facebook would be a goldmine. Marketers usually have to create incentives for people to share personal info, whereas people give away intimate details on FB for free. I just wonder how it’s all going to be aggregated and organized. That will be a huge project. At least it will create jobs for programmers, I suppose.

This should be an interesting read on the subject: http://thenumerati.net/

Got this from playahata.com and Think Progress. Apparently, there was a conference hosted by Pat Buchanan last weekend where one of the topics for discussion was why English should be the official language of the United States. Buchanan even took shots at Supreme Court justice nominee Sotomayor for coming from a non-English-speaking background. In a lovely twist of irony, Buchanan was caught at the conference chatting with the editor of the white nationalist website Vdare.com underneath a banner where the word “conference” was spelled all janky. And yes, if English supremacists can mis-spell English words, I can use “janky” in a web post.

Friend and music journalist Elizabeth Mendez Berry appeared on NPR’s “The Takeaway” on the underlying complexities of the Rihanna/Chris Brown scandal. If there were more conversations about the social issues involved in abusive relationships, this might be a teachable moment for young people and everyone else wanting to learn more about healthy relationships.

From the fascinating and strange world of biofuels…

If they are able to convert liposuction waste next, the energy crisis could be solved for LA and Atlanta.

BY Ariel Schwartz

Hemp, soy, mustard, sunflower and palm oil can all be used to make biofuels, so why not elephant dung and World War Two-era fungus? Copenhagen-based Danisco A/S is using the fungus, which was discovered during WWII eating soldier’s cotton tents, for its enzymes that break down plants for ethanol. Once ethanol is produced, Amsterdam food company CSM NV uses yeast developed from enzymes contained in elephant dung to manufacture biofuels.

Danisco A/S and CSM NV’s processes don’t occupy a niche market–Jens Riese, head of biofuels at McKinsey and Co., estimates that enzymes and biofuels for second-generation cellulosic biofuels could be worth $5 billion a year by 2025 in a $60 to $80 billion overall plant-based biofuel market. And while Danisco’s use of the fungus enzymes for biofuels may be new, the enzymes have been used by Genencor since the 1980s to stonewash jeans, bleach paper, and treat animal feeds for nutrition value.

Next up for Danisco and CSM: improving the enzymes and yeasts and working with U.S. partners DuPont and Poet to connect the supply chain from plant to ethanol. DuPont and Danisco have already collaborated on a $70 million Vonore, Tennessee-based pilot plant to turn energy crops and plant waste into fuel. The plant will begin production in December. The sooner full-scale production gets started, the better; advances in enzyme technology and U.S. subsidies could make cellulosic biofuels competitive with conventional food-based biofuels by next year.

[Via Bloomberg]

From the Lusaka Times…

The Zambia Police Service says plans are underway to introduce a mandatory
circumcision policy for all male recruits.

Kamfinsa Police training school commanding Officer, Malcom Mulenga, says
male circumcision will help prevent HIV and AIDS cases in the Police
service.

Mr. Mulenga, says the Zambia Police Service has continued to lose qualified
manpower as a result HIV/AIDS.

He was speaking when the American government handed over a Voluntary
Counselling and Testing centre to the Zambia Police Service.

At the same function, Home Affairs deputy Minister, Misheck Bonshe, welcomed
plans by the Zambia Police Service to circumcise male recruits.

And the United States Charge d¹Affairs for Zambia, Michael Koplovsky, said
his government has set aside K1.5 billion for the construction of health
centres for police officers.

A library in Manchester, England has uploaded an authentic 15th century cookbook. Now people can learn how to cook porpoise and other unusual renaissance festival fare. “It’s very much suck it and see, but great for experimenting,” says John Hodgson, keeper of the library manuscripts upon which the cookbook is based. Be cautious of whose themed dinner party invitation you accept.

Revolutionary leader turned hip pop icon Che Guevara’s granddaughter appears to have gotten dressed up as a beta-carotene-addled Playboy Bunny gone maverick – all in the name of publicity for PETA. I don’t know what’s weirder, this or the rumor that she got it on with Aquanet-happy Brit comic Russell Brand.

I know they’re going with a guerrilla theme but given PETA’s tendency to rely on naked celebrities, I think they could have come up with a spicier campaign name than “Start a Vegetarian Revolution.” How about “Tempeh Temptation” or “When I Think About You, I Touch My Tofu?”

In all seriousness, does anyone who wasn’t a Latin American studies major have any context for who Che Guevara was anymore? Least of all his granddaughter, who may very well be getting an invite to Paris Hilton’s next party as I write.