How would you feel if a group of young thugs punched you in the face, knocked you to the ground, stripped you naked and took off with your car keys, your watch, your money and your cell phone?  Well, that is exactly what happened to one man in Baltimore recently and it was all caught on camera.  Perhaps the most frightening thing about this incident is that nobody from the crowd of onlookers helped this man.  Instead, most of them appear to have been too busy laughing hysterically at what was happening to him.  Sadly, this kind of behavior is becoming all too common on the streets of America.  The hearts of our young people are growing very cold, and in a lot of major U.S. cities it is simply not safe to go strolling around after the sun goes down anymore.  The man in the video that you are about to see is lucky to have gotten away alive.  When he was punched in the face he fell directly backward and in the video you can hear the sound of his skull loudly hitting the pavement.  But instead of checking to see if he needed medical help, the crowd around the man descended on him like a bunch of crazed looters.  This incident happened on St. Patrick’s Day, but it is only now that the media is starting to take notice of this video.

The YouTube video posted below is a local news report about this incident.  It contains footage of him being knocked out, but it does not contain footage of him being stripped of his clothes….

CONTINUED at the American Dream.

On a fall day in 2010, half a dozen wealthy investors and portfolio managers converged on an office in midtown Manhattan. These were serious Wall Street moneymen; in aggregate, they handled more than a billion dollars. They had access to the most exclusive hedge funds and investment partnerships and often rubbed shoulders with the elite of New York, Greenwich and Palm Beach.

But on this day, they had turned out to meet an unknown college dropout from Utah — and to find out how he was knocking them all into a cocked hat.

The unknown, Allan Mecham, had been posting mind-bogglingly high returns for a decade at a tiny private-investment fund called Arlington Value Management, and the Wall Streeters were considering jumping on board. For nearly two hours, they peppered him with questions. Where did he get his business background? I read a lot, he replied. Did he have an MBA? No. I dropped out of college. Did he have a clever computer model or algorithm? No, he replied. I don’t use spreadsheets much. Could the group look at some of his investment analyses? I don’t have any of those either, he said. It’s all in my head. The investors were baffled. Well, could he at least tell them where he thought the stock market was headed? “I don’t know,” Mecham replied.

When the meeting broke up, “most people left the room mystified,” says Brendan O’Brien, a New York City money manager who was there. “They were expecting to see this very sharp-dressed, fast-talking guy. They were saying, I don’t get it, I don’t understand why he wouldn’t have a view on the market, because money managers get paid to have a view on the market.” Mecham has faced this kind of befuddlement before — which is one reason he meets only rarely with potential investors. It’s tough to sell his product to an industry that’s used to something very different. After all, according to their rules, he shouldn’t even be in the business to begin with.

Over a 12-year stretch, through the end of 2011, Mecham, now a mere 34 years old, has earned an astounding cumulative return of more than 400 percent by investing in the stock of U.S. companies — many of them larger ones like Philip Morris, AutoZone and PepsiCo. That investment performance leaves the stock market indexes and most mutual funds trailing far in the dust. Of the thousands of mutual funds in America, only a smattering of stock-oriented funds have done better, according to Lipper. Arlington, which is structured like a hedge fund, has put most firms in that category deep in the shade as well. It even managed to turn a profit during the crash of 2008, when Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell nearly 40 percent. And Mecham has done this mostly while sitting in an armchair, in an office above a taco shop, in downtown Salt Lake City.

Mecham doesn’t look, talk or act like a typical Wall Street manager. He’s soft-spoken. He doesn’t use jargon. He dresses like he works in a bookshop, with a patterned shirt and a plain tie. And the story of his success, arguably, says a lot about the flaws of the fund-management industry. By his own account, and those of other investors who have vetted his fund, Mecham has no secret sauce or amazing algorithm; what’s extraordinary about this young man is how ordinary he is. But his investment approach relies on a handful of common-sense tactics — focusing on just a few stocks, for example, and avoiding or ignoring short-term statistical analysis — that big money-management firms either can’t use or are reluctant to try. Skeptics and admirers alike agree that Mecham’s approach involves a higher-than-usual potential for hefty losses. Russ Kinnel, director of fund research at Morningstar, says most fund customers would be unlikely to take that chance. “Pension funds, consultants, investors in general are quite benchmark-centric,” Kinnel notes; they get uncomfortable when their money managers deviate.

CONTINUED at Smart Money.

Hopeless romantic or macabre publicity hound?

A Thai television director’s decision to marry his dead girlfriend and post photos and video of the event to Facebook and YouTube is drawing mixed reaction from the public.

Chadil Deffy, also known as Deff Yingyuen, married his girlfriend of 10 years, Sarinya “Anne” Kamsook, early this month as she lay in a coffin in a wedding-cum-funeral at a temple in Surin Province, the Pattaya Daily News reported.

During the ceremony, the 28-year-old groom, wearing a black tuxedo, placed a ring on the finger of his late girlfriend, whose body was lying on a raised platform, dressed in a white bridal dress.

He put photos of himself and his dead bride on his personalFacebook page under an album titled “Corpse Bride.” He also uploaded a video to YouTube.

The couple met while studying at Eastern Asia University 10 years ago and had planned to get married for a while but Kamsook died in a car accident on Jan. 3, according to media reports. She was 29.

A friend of Deffy, Onsiri Pravattiyagul, wrote in anopinion column this week in The Bangkok Post:

The “wedding” was his attempt to right a wrong, however belated the gesture might have been.

As expected, the initial public reaction was an outpouring of sympathy for the “groom” and a wave of sentimental remarks. The romantically inclined were moved by this expression of “true love,” however unconventional. It seemed to hit a nerve with many people. The offline media picked up on the buzz, too, and went to town with the story. Chadil found himself under a spotlight, experiencing an unexpected 15 minutes of fame.

Also as expected, within days, the backlash began — and it wasn’t at all kind. In a heartbeat, Chadil went from being viewed as a hopeless romantic to being vilified as a publicity-hungry opportunist.

Pravattiyagul said Deffy was heartbroken and “wasn’t thinking about the possibility of fame when he decided to put a ring on her cold finger. He merely wanted to make things right, however small or inadequate the gesture might seem.”

Source: MSNBC.

Seen here about to fail hard, 37-year old “warrior” David Millington prepares to wage battle on an enemy he’s held a grudge against for 30 years. Wait — since you were seven?! Jesus, he wiped a booger on your arm, bro – let it go.

This is the astonishing moment a crazed attacker stormed into a supermarket armed with an arsenal of knives including a hockey stick with a blade on the end as oblivious punters carried on their shopping.
Described as looking like a ‘warrior’, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard how David Millington, 37, went into Morrisons in a suburb of Wolverhampton last March wearing a tool belt containing five kitchen knives and a makeshift shield.

Millington then chased security guard Andrew Osbourne, who he lived close to as a youngster and reportedly has a 30-year grudge against, through the store before being tackled to the ground by brave manager Michael Walsh.

First of all, that’s not a shield. Not even a MAKESHIFT one. That’s a piece of foamboard with a belt taped to it. Secondly, I can’t believe his mom let him leave the house with her good knives. Lastly, Millington was ruled unfit to stand trail and ordered to be treated in a mental hospital because he’s a little cray-cray. Gee, you think? He had 30 years to plot revenge and this was his plan A.

Moment crazed ‘warrior’ enters supermarket armed with five kitchen knives, improvised axe and makeshift shield [dailymail]

Thanks to Seb, who agrees in 30 years you could have at least ordered something from ACME.

Source: Geekologie.

This is a screenshot from French clothing retailer La Redoute’s website advertising kid’s t-shirts. Aaaaaaaaaand they used a product shot with a dude’s wiener in it. I even found a closeup HERE because I know you’re a pervert!

The image, which appeared for several hours on its website today, showed a group of four children running on the sand.
But, in the background, a naked man can clearly be seen wading behind them up the sea-shore.

Web users spotted the ‘faux pas’, which has since been taken down, and immediately took to Twitter to poke fun at the clothing company.

Admittedly, I don’t really think it’s that big a deal. I mean, Europeans are WAY COOLER with nakedness than we are here in the United States of Embarrassment. Especially France. I just assumed naked wieners were a fact of life over there. “You’re going to vacation there, aren’t you?” I dunno, what’s my ticket say? “One-way.” *wink*

Source: Geekologie.

A Connecticut man with a drug addiction and a spastic colon allegedly defecated in the parking lot of a New Milford bank before robbing the establishment. The man’s wife and kids were with him and sat in the getaway car, police said.

Russell Mace, 55, was arraigned in Bantam Superior Court Monday, charged with first-degree robbery, third-degree larceny and two counts of impairing the morals of a child. Judge Richard Marino set Mace’s bond at $100,000 and ordered him to appear in court again on Jan. 4.

Mace’s charges stem from a bizarre bank robbery that occurred on the afternoon of Dec. 16 at the Union Savings Bank on East Street in New Milford. While the robbery itself was par for the course, police said that Mace’s alleged activities prior to the heist were far from normal.

“It’s a first in my career,” New Milford Police Lt. Lawrence Ash told The Huffington Post.

CONTINUED at Huffington Post.