See, the reason you spend the extra money on First Class tickets is so that when the airplane sloughs off its wings and transforms into an organic, hyper-dimensional rocket beast, you aren't jettisoned along with the rest of the schmucks in Economy. Plus you get to board first and clink champagne glasses together as poor people file past, which is always fun.
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Paying a visit to the doctor's office today (October 30), the charming Rosie Huntington Whiteley made her way out of a medical building in Beverly Hills on the way home from her checkup.
Exquisite in a gray dress and boots, the "Transformers" starlet walked with pomp, holding a matching gray handbag.
In related news, the 26-year-old actress, along with a handful of other familiar names, are hard at work on a brand new movie, called "Mad Max: Fury Road."
Slated for release in 2014, the action-adventure flick stars Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron and Mel Gibson. As of now, the movie does not have a set synopsis, so stay linked to GossipCenter for more news about Rosies upcoming movie!
These days, pedestrians tapping away while walking are hard to miss.
These days, pedestrians tapping away while walking are hard to miss.
We've all grumbled about the growing ranks of phone-gazing zombies, drifting along the sidewalk or holding up the checkout line. Texting while walking, distracted walking, the smartphone sidewalk scourge — whatever you call it, this phenomenon has rapidly become a nearly inescapable frustration of modern life.
Oliver Burkeman over at The Guardian has had enough. He missed a subway train on Friday, he writes, when the woman in front of him on the stairs "drifted placidly to a standstill ... distracted by something on her smartphone."
As Burkeman notes (as have our friends over at Shots), these head-down meanderers aren't just annoying. They're also at risk of hurting themselves by walking into crosswalks without looking both ways and lingering as they cross — never mind stumbling off curbs, running into parking meters and knocking into other pedestrians.
To that last point, Burkeman laments what he (and surely many of us) have observed as a shift in sidewalk etiquette: Whether consciously or not, distracted walkers now assume that it's the responsibility of other pedestrians to make way for them, not the other way around.
And to nip this development in the bud, he proposes a "simple, legal, non-aggressive act of resistance," namely, refusing to play along.
"Next time you're implicitly required to alter your path to avoid colliding with an oblivious phone user ... just don't, and see what happens ...
"And just to be clear, you must still dodge people if you get within a few feet: we're trying to prevent accidents here, not cause them (or start fights). But based on my experiments so far, you'll never get that close. Distracted walkers aren't completely unaware of their surroundings, after all. It's just that their range of awareness is smaller. Once you finally impinge upon it, they'll look up, steer around you, and walk on, ever so slightly conditioned to pay more attention next time."
I'm not entirely innocent here, myself. And plenty of you may be guilty, too. Perhaps, at a time when almost 60 percent of American adults own a smartphone, Burkeman is fighting a losing battle.
But tell us what you think — for the distracted walkers among you, would a few near-collisions convince you to put down your phone? For the rest of you, would you dare try it? Or will this approach just tick up sidewalk frustration for everyone? Let us know in the comments.
There is little to enjoy about plane travel in America anymore, but if you have flown Delta Airlines anytime in the last year, you've probably already encountered its delightfully subversive airline safety video. It's your standard "seat-doubles-as-a-flotation-device" information, but with all sorts of fun visual gags mixed in. When I first saw it, it not only put a grin on my face, but it also kept my attention all the way through, as I waited for the next cheeky joke. Check it out.
Now, Virgin America is taking the safety video challenge. "We thought, what better way to shake things up than to re-imagine the safety video through the language of music and dance?" Virgin America writes on its site. Here it is:
Virgin America's safety video is directed by the Step Up 2 film director.
Adweek has these details on the makers of the video:
"There's a 'robot rap,' a gyrating nun and countless back-breaking dance moves, all filmed by Step Up 2: The Streets director Jon M. Chu (who also did this recent Microsoft Surface ad) and choreographed by frequent Chu collaborators Jamal Sims and Christopher Scott."
For its part, Delta has updated its in-flight safety message for the holidays. Enjoy.
A brief holiday-themed safety presentation from Delta.
Johnny and Amber, together again -- on the big screen! Johnny Depp, 50, will make a cameo in London Fields, an upcoming thriller starring his 27-year-old girlfriend Amber Heard.
The crime thriller, based on the 1989 novel by Martin Amis, started filming in September in London. The plot follows a terminally-ill ex-pat, played by Billy Bob Thornton, who meets a psychic named Nicola Six (Heard) at a seedy London bar. Nicola, who knows she will be murdered before her upcoming birthday, begins a torrid love affair with three different men-- one of whom is her killer. Theo James and Jim Sturgess will costar in the film.
Although Depp's role in the movie remains unknown, sources told The Hollywood Reporter that the Pirates of the Caribbean actor has already filmed his scenes during short breaks from other in-production films, the big screen-adaptation of Into the Woods and Mortdecai.
PHOTOS: Johnny Depp's movie makeovers
Just last Thursday, Oct. 24, Heard and Depp were spotted together, for the first time since July, enjoying dinner in London's Mayfair District. Heard, who recently commented on her love life to Net-A-Porter's The Edit, said, "I have had relationships, successful relationships, with men, and I had a great relationship with a wonderful woman." (The bisexual actress dated Tasya van Ree from 2008 to 2012.) She added, "We all love who we love; we don't choose it."
PHOTOS: Can you believe these couples' age differences?
The stunning star and Depp first met on the set of 2011 film, The Rum Diary. They confirmed their relationship in June 2012 shortly after Depp and the mother of his two children Vanessa Paradis ended their 14-year relationship.
The Hollywood heartthrob shared some insight on the split with Rolling Stone in June: "Relationships are very difficult. Especially in the racket that I'm in because you're constantly away or they're away and so it's hard." A source told Us Weekly that once Heard wraps up filming, she plans to stay in London with Depp, who commences filming his other projects in mid-December.
"The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world," The Washington Post reported at midday Wednesday.
"By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from among hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans," the Post adds.
Its source for this report: "documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials."
In just 30 days ended Jan. 9, the Post says, the documents indicate that "field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — ranging from 'metadata,' which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, to content such as text, audio and video."
Google issued a statement says it is "troubled" by the news. Yahoo said it has not given the NSA or another other agency access to its data centers. White House officials "declined to confirm, deny or explain why the agency infiltrates Google and Yahoo networks overseas," according to the Post report.
Google and Yahoo thought their systems were secure. But the Post says that:
"In an NSA presentation slide on 'Google Cloud Exploitation' ... a sketch shows where the 'Public Internet' meets the internal 'Google Cloud' where their data resides. In hand-printed letters, the drawing notes that encryption is 'added and removed here!' The artist adds a smiley face, a cheeky celebration of victory over Google security.
"Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing."
The program the Post is reporting about — reportedly called MUSCULAR — is said to be separate from the PRISM program that was disclosed earlier this year. Under PRISM, as we wrote in June, "Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Apple and Paltalk all negotiated with the government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide the National Security Agency with user data."
According to The New York Times, under PRISM such data are shared only after the companies' lawyers review the government's requests and determine that they meet the FISA requirements. But MUSCULAR, writes the Post, "appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies."
Barton Gellman, one of the two reporters who wrote today's Post story, talked with Fresh Air last month about how he came into contact with Snowden and about the effectiveness of post-Sept. 11 surveillance programs.
All the unlimited lives, ammo, and health in the world won't make it easier to deal with your boss at that meeting you've got later today. But you know what will? Some straight-up liquid courage. And that's why this Gamebooze is infinitely more useful to a gainfully employed adult than a Game Boy. For just $20 it promises to make everything more enjoyable: from your daily subway commute, to waiting in line at the bank, to your kid's piano recital. Just don't forget to 'charge' it every night if you know what we mean. [ThinkGeek]
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