Mystery solved. Sixteen-year-old Miami resident Nicholas Harrington says he put a grand piano on the sandbar in the middle of Biscayne Bay because he "wanted to create a whimsical, surreal experience." And also make a video for his application to college (where he will be totally stressed out.) Nicholas and his family came forward yesterday after local film-makers Billy and Anais Yaeger falsely claimed credit for the stunt that became a world-wide phenomenon. But there's someone else who deserves credit for the inspiration. His name is Dwayne Smith. READ MORE

What is your sad story? Why were you sitting in the window of an otherwise unremarkable jewelry shop in New York's Diamond District, just after Christmas, amidst other comparatively tasteful—if far less garishly ambitious—baubles? Did the primate-loving impresario who commissioned you, perhaps overestimating the sustainability of some heady, early success in the hip-hop and/or high-end poaching games, fall on hard times, leaving you imprisoned with other sparkling victims of a still-foundering economy? Are you roaring with rage at the nearby watches, with their diamond-encrusted faces the size of stop signs, for the utter banality of their excess? Do you long for a crystal-encrusted body, so that instead of living out your days dangling from the neck of a patron with questionable financial priorities, you might rise up on your mighty haunches, smash the glass through which tourists gawk at your beheaded impotence, tear at their fleshy, corn-fed necks with your deadly fangs, then escape onto 47th street, the less-precious jewels dotting your knuckles scarring the pavement as you scamper westward to terrify the wide-eyed throngs on Broadway? READ MORE

There are a lot of unanswered questions in the case of Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst who was arrested last May, allegedly on information supplied by ex-hacker Adrian Lamo. It is widely believed that Manning is responsible for the leak of over a quarter million diplomatic cables to the WikiLeaks organization. This belief rests largely on the contents of chat logs between Lamo and Manning, excerpts of which were published in Wired magazine, on boingboing and in the Washington Post starting in June of last year. READ MORE