Just as doomsday predictor Harold Camping retired from his position at Family Radio and stopped making new doomsday predictions, a “new” wacko showed up in town to pick up the slack.

Although he didn’t give any specific date for his end of times parade, Pat Robertson said on The 700 Club that the recent earthquakes in Oklahoma are a sign of the End Times and that people must “get right with the Lord.” Back in August, Robertson suggested that a crack in the Washington Monument created by a Virginia earthquake was “a sign from the Lord” too.

In this latest interview, Robertson warned that the “intensity of earthquake activity” is a Sign of the Times.

“These continents aren’t solid. They float and they move. And that’s just one more reason that we need to get ourselves right with the Lord.”

You know what else isn’t solid, floats and moves? Your stool after eating spicy Mexican food. But you don’t get right with the Lord because of it.

Anyway, one thing is certain. The end is coming — for Pat Robertson. He is 81-years-old, after all. A true dinosaur.

Thanks to a spectacular breakthrough in robotics, Honda’s new ASIMO robot no longer walks like it shit itself. Instead, it walks like it is about to shit itself and is trying to find a toilet.

The new humanoid is capable of running at 9kph, hopping on one or both legs, walking on uneven surfaces, opening a thermos, pouring drinks, and more.

The all-new ASIMO is now advanced from an “automatic machine” to an “autonomous machine” with the decision-making capability to determine its behavior in concert with its surroundings such as movements of people. At the beginning of the development process, the following three factors were identified as necessary for a robot to perform as an autonomous machine, and the technologies required to realize these capabilities were developed; 1) high-level postural balancing capability which enables the robot to maintain its posture by putting out its leg in an instant, 2) external recognition capability which enables the robot to integrate information, such as movements of people around it, from multiple sensors and estimate the changes that are taking place, and 3) the capability to generate autonomous behavior which enables the robot to make predictions from gathered information and autonomously determine the next behavior without being controlled by an operator. With these capabilities, the all-new ASIMO takes another step closer to practical use in an environment where it coexists with people.

You’d be tempted to think that one of the world’s most technologically advanced nations, the United States, has left dial-up connections where they belong — in the past. But AOL has just reported that it still has 3.5 million subscribers to its dial-up internet access service. And it isn’t exactly cheap either at $17.50 per month.

For comparison, $40/month can get you a 18mbps broadband connection — which is over 300 times faster than dial-up.

Of course, most of AOL’s dial-up subscribers are probably living in rural areas where there’s nothing else available. Either that or they’re old and/or computer illiterate. Still, it’s funny that so many people in a first world country still get to hear this sound in these modern times.

OK, so I don’t know whether she was updating her Facebook relationship status or ordering pizza, but I love how the scene happened right as the minister was saying:

“By the high standard of love…”

Update: Anonymous have cancelled the operation. “Destroying #OpCartel because the lives of people who are not participating can be put at risk.”

So apparently the Zetas (Mexico’s second most powerful drug cartel) kidnapped an Anonymous member (internet’s toughest guys) who was taking part in a street protest in Veracruz. Being the badasses they are, Anonymous didn’t take kindly to this and issued a warning to the crime syndicate, informing them that they’ve “made a huge mistake by taking one of us.”

In the threat video demanding the release of their fellow nerd, a man wearing classic Anonymous attire says:

“We cannot defend ourselves with a weapon … but we can do this with their cars, homes, bars, brothels and everything else in their possession. It won’t be difficult; we all know who they are and where they are located.

 

We demand his release.”

The group’s threat is that it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate’s associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates’ businesses.

This sounds great the first time you hear it, but it’s actually the stupidest thing ever. I mean, sure, competing cartels would love to tear the Zetas apart and take control of their market, but the names of a few easily replaceable people aren’t going to make that happen. The only thing achieved through a weak information leak would be getting a lot of people killed, which is just another day at the office for the Zetas.

If Anonymous really wanted to make the Zetas take them seriously, they should have threatened to recruit Charlie Sheen to use up all the drugs in Mexico. Now that would have been a problem for the cartels, given that they need drugs to survive.

English language transcript of Anonymous’ message after the jump.

Omar Sharif has shown today that he’s not just your regular run of the mill Oscar-nominated actor, he’s the Chief Flying Backhand ruler of the Slapaho Indians.