Following up on yesterday’s Movie-a-Minute post, we present: Book-a-Minute, which comes in three flavors: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Bedtime, and Classics. Although some of the books might take more than a minute to read, many are deliciously brief. My favorite is from the Bedtime category:

The Cat In the Hat
By Dr. Seuss
Ultra-Condensed by David J. Parker and Samuel Stoddard

Sally and Me
We’re bored.

(The Cat in the Hat shows up and wrecks the entire house. He cleans it up just before MOM gets home.)

Sally and Me
Let us never speak of boredom again.

THE END

Read zillions more book summaries.

If you thought Bill Clinton’s tryst was bad, check out some of the salacious dirt haunting our other famous Presidents…

Warren Harding had a 15-year long affair with Carrie Phillips and over the years he gave her a Cadillac and offered her $5000 a year to keep her mouth shut. When the affair started getting in the way of his election, his campaign managers paid her more then $20,000, and sent her on a trip around the world.

Nan Britton, Harding’s other famed mistress, supposedly gave birth to his daughter. She also reported that Harding and she often had relations in White House coat closets, and once were almost caught by his wife before a Secret Service agent saved the day. (more…)

It’s funny — and a little sad — because it’s true.
Via ashersarlin.com.

I’m sooOOOoooo excited to introduce you all to Daft Dave, a new feature I’ve been thinking about for some time. The basic idea of Daft Dave is this: here at the _floss, we pride ourselves on being smart, right? Of course, we also screw up now and again, and every week you guys—our even-smarter-than-us loyal readers—prove it by offering up corrections and pointing out egregious errors in the comments.

Sure, as a blogger on a site like this, it’s fun to show off, but perhaps even more fun for you all to prove we don’t always have our facts straight, or our grammar correct, or our punctuation, or spelling, or our links are dead, or… the list goes on.

On such days, when I’m the guilty party, I feel rather daft. Like, how could I have missed/forgotten/not known THAT? Smart, witty David feels more like Daft Dave, which got me thinking… what if I make the mistakes right upfront and let you guys fix ‘em in a recurring feature?

So welcome to Daft Dave’s debut. Today I messed up Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address from 1764, er, I mean 1863, of course.

First person to point them all out gets serious Daft Dave Debut bragging rights!

I’m not going to tell you how many mistakes I made copying the 271 word speech into this post, but there are some typos, as well as two words that got switched around. Remember, as with all our contests: no cheating, no consulting books, texts, reference guides or Internet searches, okay? Go to it after the jump… And next week Daft Dave will have some incorrect facts for you to correct.
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I am both a night owl and a morning person (which means I’m an insomniac). The only reason I use an alarm clock is to pick the kids up at school on time. But some seriously deep sleepers (like my children) need more incentive to get out of bed than a “normal” alarm clock offers. You’ve read here about the Puzzle Alarm Clock, the Flying Alarm Clock, and Clocky the hiding clock, all designed to make you wake up and do something to turn the alarm off. The problem is that some heavy sleepers can learn to do those things without waking up! But clock designers are busy making it even harder for you to snooze.
For example, try this Bomb Clock. In order to turn off the alarm, you must connect the wires in the correct order, or an explosion will result. I don’t think that will actually happen, but why take the chance?

They say that money is the biggest incentive in the world. That’s the concept behind the Banclock. You have to feed it a coin to turn the alarm off. But eventually, you’ll be able to take that money out. I think.

The cops are coming! The Emergency Alarm Clock wakes you up with blue lights and a siren. You can attach it to the wall or window if you like. Also good for pranking your sleeping friends.

More ways to wake up, after the jump. (more…)

Indeed, it is. Maybe you’ve heard of MJ’s plans to memorialize himself in the sands of outer Vegas. Rush & Molloy confirmed yesterday that:

“It would be in the desert sands,” said Mike Luckman of Luckman Van Pier, consultants to large entertainment companies. “Laser beams would shoot out of it so it would be the first thing people flying would see. Neon is wonderful, but it’s old school.” Luckman’s partner, Andre Van Pier, who designed the futuristic spacesuits worn recently by Bono and U2 at a benefit concert in New Orleans, designed the robot.

No blueprints have been leaked as of yet, but perhaps the betas will show up here. Maybe he’s trying to jump the gun on the Elvis statue set to go up in Honolulu later this year? And why hate on neon? The noble gas has amazing refrigeration capacity while in liquid form, and has rocked the scientific world since 1675, when barometric light was stumbled upon by Jean Picard. In 1855 the geissler tube continued to experiment with trapped gas under pressure, and Georges Claude debuted the first neon lamp in 1910. His company, Claude Neon, took those lamps across the ocean in 1923 and sold them for 24k to an LA car dealership. Which I’m sure have nothing on this bad boy eBay bargain.

Though they left few written records and began to disappear in the 15th century, scientists have found an unlikely new way to chart the downfall of the once-mighty Incas: by studying the mites which thrived in their llamas’ dung. Turns out the mites, fossilized in mud cores, can reveal details about animal-based societies’ size, patterns of movement and — when the mites disappear suddenly, as they did in once Incan-only areas after Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 1400s — a society’s collapse. Researchers hope to use their new dung-reading skills to learn more about the animal-loving Vikings’ occupation of Greenland, among other upcoming projects. (Pictured above: a fossilized mite, courtesy the BBC.)

Don’t have time to sit through a whole movie? Don’t even have time to read a review? You need Movie-a-Minute, a brilliant web site that reduces movies to their brief, hilarious essence. If produced, the Movie-a-Minute scripts really would take less than a minute. My favorite:

The Sixth Sense
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, 1999
Ultra-Condensed by Derek Richardson

Haley Joel Osment
I see dead people.

Bruce Willis
Try talking to them.

Haley Joel Osment
It worked.

Read many, many more movie summaries.  (Tomorrow we’ll bring you their sister site, which is equally full of laughs — stay tuned.)

It’s never too early to start planning for retirement. And I don’t just mean 401(k) and IRA and ATOFA (All Those Other Financial Acronyms). According to Howard Stone of 2Young2Retire.com, “rehirement” is all the rage. If you slap on the gold watch at 65, that still leaves a lot of time for living – and spending. Stone lists a few career opportunities for people over 60. This list includes:

• Life coach
• Horticulturist
• Hypnotherapist
• Cruise ship lecturer

Even if this all seems like a lifetime away, I’m interested in hearing your plans for retirement/rehirement. Either real plans, like giving speeches on cruise ships, or your dream scenario.

[Demotivational poster courtesy of Despair, Inc.]

“Huge poisonous monster” — it’s Australian for “toad.” Coming to a Downunder metro area near you: poison-skinned toads that weigh nearly two pounds and are as big as a small dog, like the one pictured here (nicknamed “Toadzilla”). Introduced from Hawaii in the 1930s as part of a failed effort to eradicate destructive cane beetles in Queensland, the toads have adapted to their new home with surprising aplomb, spreading themselves across the land with amazing speed. Environmental group FrogWatch, which organizes toad hunts in an (admittedly hopeless) effort to make a dent in the cane toad’s now 200 million-strong population, estimates that before long they’ll be common on both coasts and in most Australian cities, where they thrive like rats in New York City.

All that wouldn’t be so big a deal if the cane toad weren’t such a tough mother. Unfortunately, however, it has a taste for all manner of indigenous species unique to Australia, and its hardy disposition and toxic skin make it notoriously difficult to kill. The poisonous beasties are even becoming notorious killers of crocodiles who unwisely try and make snacks of them. So what’s to be done? Some Northern Territory police are advising residents to attack the toads with golf clubs on sight, though most officials aren’t sure what to do. Forget aliens from outer space destroying all life on earth: the damage these alien toads have done (and could still do) to Australia’s flora and fauna proves that we can annihilate ourselves just fine, thanks.

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