“A few weeks later, Mr. Halt was told by his boss that the lights were back and so he went back out into the forest with a couple of policeman, a camera and a cassette recorder. At the site he saw ‘indentations of around six to eight feet wide’ and increased levels of radiation as well as broken branches on the trees. Mr. Halt said: ‘Milling around, one of the individuals saw a bright glowing object like an eye. It would appear to be winking and was shedding molten metal and silently moving through the trees and at one point it actually approached us.’ He said that the object then exploded into five white objects which became visible in the sky. They were brightly coloured changing from elliptical to round as if they were moving at very high speed.’ Suddenly one of the objects sent a concentrated beam at the feet of the terrified men. ‘Was this a warning? An attempt to communicate? A weapon? Then just as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared,’ he said. The entire incident was categorised as a British affair because it had happened off base, Mr. Halt said. ‘I have no idea what we saw that night but I do know it was under intelligent control. My theory is that it was from another dimension or extra-terrestrial,’ he said.”
–Suspiciously missing from the front page of the Times today: reportage from yesterday’s press conference at which seven former U.S. Air Force officers gave public testimony about their experiences with UFOs. Apparently the aliens don’t like our nuclear weapons. Which, you know, who could blame them?

No it’s not an April Fool’s-apparently AOL really did buy TechCrunch. The comments on their post are something to see.

The War to End All Wars ends Sunday, when Germany makes the final payment in the reparation plan forced on it at the Treaty of Versailles. Up next: Weimar!

“Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that. He came in and played ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.’ A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise.”
–President Obama, Dylanologist.

You think you’re going to fright a hardcore smoker-I mean a real smoker, not one of those irritating “only when I drink” dilettantes-with a picture of a diseased lung or some prominent verbiage about emphysema or tracheotomies or whatever? Think again!

Jamie Arndt, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, had student smokers complete questionnaires designed to induce either thoughts of their own mortality or thoughts about failing an exam. Then the researchers offered the students a cigarette and measured every person’s smoking intensity-each puff’s volume, flow and duration. Students who did not smoke often indeed smoked with less passion after being reminded of their own mortality, as compared with the light smokers who read about failing an exam. As Arndt explains, the infrequent smokers may have been responding to thoughts of death by trying to reduce their own vulnerability. But students who were heavy smokers reacted to thoughts of death by taking even harder drags on their cigarettes. Arndt suggests they might have been sub consciously attempting to dispel a negative mood with an enjoyable activity.

Or maybe they are just super-tough people who LOVE TO SMOKE AND KNOW THAT THEY ARE BULLETPROOF AND WILL NEVER DIE. I mean, it’s certainly not that they’re in denial or anything.

Philly’s Free Energy and Jersey’s Titus Andronicus just finished a tour together. At one of the last shows, last week in Atlanta, the Titus guys joined Free Energy for a beery, raucous rendition of “I’m Goin’ Down,” a song from Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 album, Born in the U.S.A. It’s pretty great.

Coincidentally, this is the same Springsteen song NYC’s Vampire Weekend has been playing lately. (Or maybe not so coincidentally? Maybe there’s some competitive tri-state-area one-upmanship going on?)

And for any hipster-hating Springsteenites who might sniff at the preponderance of tank-tops and skinny jeans in these videos, remember who practically invented the look. In fact, if you’re wondering about the phenomenon of young bands covering Born In the U.S.A.-era Bruce songs? Well, he told them to do it himself, didn’t he? While wearing a tank-top.

Here are a bunch of other Springsteen covers, recent to less recent:

The news reports from today’s release of the annual American Community Survey are all leading with how the median household income fell nearly 3% between 2008 and 2009. But there’s so much more!

• “Self-employed workers experienced a greater reduction in work hours between 2008 and 2009 than workers in other types of employment. Workers who were self-employed in their own unincorporated businesses worked 66 minutes less per week in 2009, while those self-employed in their own incorporated businesses worked 49 minutes less in 2009.”

• “Nationwide, nearly two in five renter households (42.5 percent) experienced housing costs that consumed 35 percent or more of their incomes.”

• “The labor force participation rate for men 16 to 24 decreased nationally from 61.5 percent in 2008 to 59.2 percent in 2009, while for women this age the rate decreased from 60.4 percent to 58.7 percent.”

Now you know: “The French word for fellatio is ‘fellation’, which sounds similar to the word ‘inflation’.”

The Commonwealth Games-the quadrennial athletic competition between current and former members of the British empire-begin this Sunday in Delhi, India, and have been plagued with difficulties, particularly at the athletes’ village, which is still under construction. The athletes are also being bothered by snakes, stray dogs and, of course, monkeys. And how do you solve a problem like monkeys? Bigger monkeys!

Reports yesterday said officials had hired a number of snake charmers to work around the village, trapping snakes for the sum of 1,000 rupees (£14) for each reptile. An animal rescue organisation, Wildlife SOS, is also working to catch snakes. At the same time, officials have increased the number of langur monkey handlers working around the Games site. Delhi is besieged by hordes of simian hooligans in the form of common rhesus monkeys who clamber over buildings and pester people, but which are scared of the larger langur monkeys.

Around 40 langur handlers are now to be employed at various venues. “These langurs will be deployed at strategic points that will scare away the monkeys,” an official told the Hindustan Times newspaper.

Up next: finding something bigger than a langur monkey. I mean, right?

The “fire sale” of the Lehman Brothers art collection went so-so. Some serious bargains were grabbed; some things-this Richter lithograph-went for well above estimate. The big Julie Mehretu painting (everyone, where everyone is Goldman Sachs and their like, has one!) seems oddly like a bargain at a million dollars. The Neo Rauch, at half a million, mid-estimate, seems like a great buy. The John Currin went for a very low price. And so the circle of boom and bust continues unabated etc.