Those Britons who are too lazy to simply step outdoors will soon be able to see people drink and take drugs from the comfort of their couches, as Knifecrime Island’s Channel Four plans to air a science series called “Drugs Live.”

“[A]ny two bears you meet are as different as any two people you meet. Not every person you come across is a calm poet, not every person is a nasty mugger. Bears, because of their intelligence, develop individual personalities.”
 — Here are some tips on what to do when confronted by bears, some of whom will be more confrontational than others.

Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters, from Flickr.

If you’ve been rubbing your eyes and sniffling a lot more than usual lately, you are not alone. It seems like everyone I know is suffering from terrible allergies this spring. And guess what? It probably is the worst allergy season in recent memory, say experts. If you can hold out another few weeks, “the pollen should taper by the end of the month.” Good luck.

Evil Swedish free subway rag Metro went big this morning in an attempt to make sense of the current NYC population undercount. Their online headline is “Hipsters to Blame for Census Losses?” but they amped it up younger for the bleary subway crowd. Also maybe it was those pesky “illegal immigrants”! Or something else! Mm, hipster outrage bait. (via, via)

You’re going to find this hard to believe, but there it is: “House Speaker John Boehner, giving Wall Street leaders his prescriptions for growing the U.S. economy and reducing the nation’s debt, built his case on several assertions that are contradicted by market indicators and government reports.”

The future is now, trendsters!

Blu, the maker of electronic cigarettes that release a nicotine-laden vapor instead of smoke, has developed packs of e-cigarettes with sensors that will let users know when other e-smokers are nearby….

The new “smart packs,” which will go on sale next month for $80 for five e-cigarettes, are equipped with devices that emit and search for the radio signals of other packs. When they get within 50 feet of one another, the packs vibrate and flash a blue light.

The reusable packs, which serve as a charger for the cigarettes, can be set to exchange information about their owners, like contact information on social networking sites, that can be downloaded onto personal computers.

There are so many things to be ashamed of here. Particularly if you use the word “vaping.”

20. Evangeline

19. Georgia

18. Sara

17. Gloria

16. Kimberly

15. Lucille

14. Corrina

13. Billie Jean

12. Natasha

11. Lola

10. Bonita

9. Suzanne

8. Isis

7. Luna

6. Mary

5. Lucinda

4. Rosalita

3. Allison

2. Jane

1. Candy

What I don’t understand about the future, AKA the present, is: well, who’s zooming who? Take a “brand synergy moment” like Lady Gaga premiering her new album in Farmville, which, if you are new to the Internet, is some kind of “time management” game on Facebook where you grow crops. So who pays whom for the honor? Gaga gets an enormous, frightening, keyed-in audience; Farmville gets exclusive “added value.” Maybe nobody pays anyone? Is this what Tina Brown wanted in the 90s? Also, between this, her abandoned Target promotion, the terrible new song and everything else, has anyone ridden the steep sine wave of exciting fame to slavish corporate sadness faster? It seems like only yesterday she was making out with ladies in prisons and now she’s helping people raise virtual sheep.

“Arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems.”
 — Omar bin Laden.

Like so many from the old country, my parents were hard workers. They led quiet lives and poured their hopes into their offspring, of whom I was the eldest.

I was teased when I was young. Others used to call me “monster,” and though it hurt my feelings at the time — so many tears! — looking back I can understand why. I was quite gangly, always tripping over myself, and I had a disproportionately large head.

My parents encouraged me and I persevered. I began to show signs of possessing a rare beauty, which of course is superficial and has very little to do with what goes on in the soul. In short, it was a difficult period for me: like many adolescents, I tended to look back at my younger self — and more hurtfully, my parents — with poisonous disdain.

Still, I blossomed into a flower such as I had always dreamed about. I felt the world owed me something, and miraculously it was delivered. This was a period of exhibition that verged on narcissism. So many others told me that I had achieved something unprecedented, as if beauty were some kind of technological advance. I don’t mean to sound dismissive. This was a wonderful, heady time for me, when everything seemed possible, and in some ways, it was. Also? It went by in the blink of an eye.

I’m sure I’m not the first to say I hung on for too long, ignoring all the signs that should have led me to make a graceful exit. Whenever I’m asked about it now, I always say it’s possible to get what you want, but that you will also lose it. Some rules can never be changed. It can be consoling to know that you are no different than anyone else.

The end was not pretty — there was a lot of falling apart — but I don’t regret it, either. It was a time of reassessment, of taking stock in what I had accomplished. Did I change the world? That’s not for me to decide.

All you can do is drop your petals on the floor with the hope that someone will pick them up and think about the way life used to be, even if — like every generation — they long for something different.

Matthew Gallaway lives in Washington Heights and is the author of The Metropolis Case — available on an Internet near you.