Via Fox News:

Snubbed dwarfs are raging at the makers of Hollywood film “Snow White and the Huntsman” for casting average-sized people as the film’s seven dwarfs. The dwarf actors are threatening to protest against the film — which stars Oscar-winner Charlize Theron — with a “100-midget march,” according to a report in TMZ. Los Angeles dwarf theater group Beacher’s Madhouse is fuming — arguing that filmmakers would never use white actors and then digitally turn them black. . .

What if they used CGI dwarfs instead? Same outrage? — Greg Pollowitz

Via Foreign Policy:

As summer blockbuster season kicks into high gear, big-budget action movies like The Avengers, Battleship, and Prometheus remind us that there’s one thing that unites Americans: Our shared fear of an alien attack. They also remind us that when the invading space fleet arrives, humanity is not going to surrender without a fight to our intergalactic invaders. Instead, we will band together to fight off their incredibly advanced weaponry with our … well, with what, exactly? Are we really ready to battle our would-be alien overlords? Luckily, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, as well as some of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers, are dreaming up the weapons of the future today. With the help of everything from lasers on jets to hypersonic planes to invisibility cloaks, we just might be able to make the battle for Earth a fair fight. You may think we’re joking, but why else would NASA be uploading The Avengers to the International Space Station if not as a training manual? Here’s a look at some of the most space-worthy inventions being cooked up now. . .

The slide-show does have some cool new weapons, but I highly doubt any would be of any use against an invading army from outer space. Any civilization can travel across light-years to get to us will have no problem wiping us out. — Greg Pollowitz

Via Fox News:

A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the U.S. navy’s China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic “railguns” right out of a sci-fi movie. But at more than $3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats. . .

Why not just build more submarines? This thing isn’t stealthy from the naked eye. — Greg Pollowitz

Via Daily Mail:

For women battling each other to claim the coveted crown of Miss USA, you would think they’d care to know the basics of their country. But a hilarious quiz has revealed nearly half of the contestants quizzed on the nation’s vice president could not name him. And most did not know the colour of the waves of grain mentioned in the song America the Beautiful – a mainstay of classrooms across the country. . .

Way to shatter the myth of the dumb, yet pretty, beauty-pageant contestant. — Greg Pollowitz

Via New York Times:

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet. At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised. “Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room. Told it was unclear how much the Iranians knew about the code, and offered evidence that it was still causing havoc, Mr. Obama decided that the cyberattacks should proceed. In the following weeks, the Natanz plant was hit by a newer version of the computer worm, and then another after that. The last of that series of attacks, a few weeks after Stuxnet was detected around the world, temporarily took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium. . .

So, basically, Obama has continued Bush’s war against Iran. — Greg Pollowitz

Via Yahoo!:

Details of the gig were first reported by Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang, and later translated by other media outlets. Breivik, a 33-year-old right-wing extremist, is currently on trial for bombing a government building in Oslo and going on a shooting rampage at a youth camp last summer. The massacre claimed 77 lives. The director of the prison where Breivik could be housed said steps are being taken to keep him away from other inmates. “Many of the measures surrounding Breivik are being created to avoid a hostage-taking, which would be the only way for him to get through all the different layers of security that have been established between him and freedom,” Knut Bjarkeid told the paper. . .

What if a Muslim applies and doesn’t get the job — can he sue Norway for discrimination? — Greg Pollowitz

Via New York Post:

No more super-sized Cokes. Forget about 64-ounce stomach-busting sodas at KFC. Even 20-ounce Snapples are on Mayor Bloomberg’s latest heath-conscious hit list. In a dramatic move to reduce obesity, the city is going to become the first in the nation to impose a 16-ounce limit on the size of sweetened beverages sold in food establishments that receive letter grades from the Health Department, as well as mobile food carts. The list includes more than 20,000 restaurants, as well as movie theaters, stadiums and arenas. Bloomberg posed for a photo-op yesterday where he used sugar cubes as props to highlight how sugary the drinks are. . .

What about Starbucks? What about milkshakes at NYC diners? Or at establishments that offer free refills? And I can’t get a giant to-go cup from say Burger King because I’m going on a long drive? So, so stupid. — Greg Pollowitz