• dumb A woman (illegally) parks in a handicapped spot outside of a dinner where Obama’s speaking; a police officer says it’s OK for her to park.
• dumberUpon leaving, she learns that her car has been moved by Secret Service agents – and they don’t know where they put it. They can’t find it.
• dumbestThe woman, after having given up and run through red tape, finds it herself the next day – less than a block away from the convention center. source

• » How far did WaPo commenters read? Rather than get upset about the fact that the Secret Service lost her freaking car, they criticized the woman for parking in a handicapped spot, even though the tag was for her husband. Not to underplay the traffic violation, but the Secret Service lost somebody’s freaking car.

• She’s still looking for answers about her daughter. She wants to bring her daughter home.
• Beth Holloway-Twitty’s lawyer John Kelly • Explaining why Holloway-Twitty went to the prison Joran van der Sloot is being held (as a suspect in the murder of Stephany Flores earlier this year) to directly confront the guy most commonly suspected in her daughter’s disappearance. Beyond handling this like an immature adult, it felt like it had the makings of a stunt. See, she did it with a Peruvian TV station for the purpose of creating “a TV special which would include her, the Flores family, and an interview with Joran van der Sloot.” How does this case keep getting weirder? source

• Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said some pretty weird crap lately. He thinks you should be able to change your name as an adult. He suggests that you shouldn’t say certain things online if you don’t want them to get out there. And it’s got consumer groups pretty concerned. We don’t think Schmidt is anything other than a weird dude, but this clip makes him look like the second incarnation of Chucky from “Child’s Play.” Is it really this bad? Really? source

• We don’t know yet if these two end up being bad guys or are just really strange people.
• A U.S. official • Speaking about the detention of two people who had some really weird crap in their checked luggage on a flight from Chicago to Amsterdam. (They were detained by Dutch police after the end of the flight, by the way.) One dude had $7,000 in cash for no good reason. The other had a cell phone taped to a bottle of Pepto-Bismol (which isn’t a bomb, by the way), a bunch of cell phones taped together (also not a bomb) and a bunch of watches taped together (not a bomb, either). ABC News has reported that it appeared to be a dry run for a bombing attack, to check how secure the system was, but officials don’t know yet. Let’s hope they were just idiots who were holding a bottle of Pepto-Bismol for ransom. source

• Out of the many frank things that came out of Apple’s rage-filled press conference today was the existence of these rooms where they test the signals of their cell phones. They look like the dream chambers of a science fiction author, not a real-world cell phone testing place. We wonder if this place is available for parties or weddings or that sort of thing. It would be one of the most awesome spaces ever for something like that. source

• Somehow, a tribe that recognizes lacrosse as a sport doesn’t recognize passports. Members of the Iroquois lacrosse team, who had gotten a one-time waiver from the U.S. government, couldn’t get the same from the British government. The tribe uses their own non-standard passports, not American ones, creating a weird area even beyond the realm of exception. (Oh yeah: In case you’re wondering: Lacrosse originated with the Iroquois and Huron tribes, not douchey high school students.) source

Flickr Photo By Caitlinator

• Right now, it sucks to be Kellogg’s. The company was forced to recall numerous brands of cereal over a reportedly soapy/metallic/stale flavor that some of their cereal boxes had. Sure, it was a lot of cereal, but we were also curious how many bowls of cereal that actually was. So we did the math. And this is going to affect a lot of mornings.

• 28 million boxes recalled for a weird odor and taste (eww)

• 20 complaints about cereal that tasted like soap or metal (eww)
• 13 average number of ounces in the various recalled boxes
• 353M number of servings of cereal that is – based on our math, below

• 69Mbowls of Apple Jacks, based on an average of 12.85 servings per box
• 95M bowls of Corn Pops, based on an average of 11.78 servings per box
• 148Mbowls of Froot Loops, based on an average of 12.63 servings per box
• 41Mbowls of Honey Smacks, based on an average of 15.3 servings per box

• » Methodology: We based our findings on the various serving sizes available for each type and size of cereal, dividing evenly for each serving size. We then multiplied by the average serving size – Kellogg’s provides this on their Web site – which in most of the cases was one ounce, making the math relatively easy. While it’s likely that Kellogg’s sold more Apple Jacks than Honey Smacks, we unfortunately do not have exact counts. One thing we do know is that Froot Loops’ share of the market is, at minimum, 26 percent larger than any of the other brands, so we took that into account. Oh yeah, if you’re like us, you probably eat double the size of the recommended serving without realizing it. Because we don’t measure. We just pour.