The McBournie Minute: I’m more popular than the pope

As my regular readers know, I’m a pretty humble person. My regular readers know that because they are my parents. I like to lead a fairly quiet life and I contemplate all sorts of issues before forming opinions on them. I’ve never tried to push my beliefs on anyone, because I know we’re all people, and we all take dumps the same way.

Then I realized I was more influential than the pope. That’s right, I influence more people than Pope Benedict XVI, the vicar or Rome. I’m not having a John Lennon moment, I just know this because Klout.com told me so. Klout is a site that, for free, tracks and grades your influence on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+. How Klout arrives at the score is anyone’s guess, but based on my observations, if you have a Twitter account, you automatically have 10, and people and brands have reached scores in the 80s and 90s.

I am a 50, and the pope’s confirmed account is a 48. That means that I influence more people than the leader of the roughly 1 billion Catholics that walk the Earth. At least online. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: I’m more popular than the pope

Newt pledges third time’s the charm

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich signed the Family Leader’s pledge to personally uphold the institution of marriage by remaining faithful to his current spouse, something that wedding vows to God and the state have failed to cover in Newt’s past for some reason. But, the former Speaker of the House who once spent months impeaching a President for similar behavior says that — this time — he means it to an Iowa social conservative group in the run-up to their primary.

Newt acknowledged his prior whoopsididdles, reminding everyone that he is now a 68-year-old grandfather. “C’mon, it’s not like I’m gonna do any better than this blonde blowbot,” he ended the written statement.

At least one teenager has justified the snotty attitude

It’s official: Angela Zhang is better than you. And me. And you and you and you.

At just 17 years old, the Wunderkind has managed to win a 100 grand grant from the Siemens Competition. What will the money be used for? Nothing short of developing a possible cure for cancer through the power of nanotechnology. Her project has been nicknamed “the Swiss army knife of cancer treatment” for the multi-purpose approach it takes with both cancer cells and cell imaging.

There’s only one problem, the name:

Her project was entitled “Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells.”

That doesn’t exactly lend itself to a kick-ass acronym. We at SG suggest the project being renamed “C.A.N.C.E.R.P.U.N.C.H.” We don’t actually what it breaks down to, but at least the acronym tells you what the project does.

Fiber theft!

As we are absolutely sure you know, the price of corn on most commodity markets around the world has greatly increased in recent years. That’s why corn is now known as “yellow gold.”

In Brazil, some daring thieves stole about 55 tons of corn from a moving train. Details on the whole thing are surprisingly thing, but what we do know is that they greased the rails, which made the train slow down enough for them to unload some of the containers into, we’re assuming, a truck, and then made off with the corn.

Someone’s going to have some good poops.