The 10 wackiest David Letterman interviews ever

1.Wacky Joaquin
Starting, of course, with Joaquin's February 2009 interview, during which he revealed that he was retiring from acting and embarking on a rap career. His shaggy beard, sunglasses at night, one-word answers to questions, and overall twiggy, skittish behavior had us seriously worried.
2. Drew flashed Dave
Drew Barrymore seems so together these days that it's easy to forget that she was once a total mess. Case in point: her 1995 interview with Letterman. It's hard to believe that she wasn't on anything when she revealed that her birthday usually makes her nauseous and talked about how liberating stripping is. Then Drew jumped on the desk and proceeded to flash Dave.
3. Madonna made us cringe
A year earlier, Madonna made quite a spectacle of herself on "Letterman." After berating Dave for being so interested in her sex life and calling him a "sick [expletive]," she said, "Aren't you going to smell them? I gave him my underpants and he won't smell them."
This was during her Goth phase, when she was rocking black hair and combat boots, and more attitude.
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4. Farrah was acting weird
In 1997, Farrah Fawcett appeared on the cover of Playboy and did a Pay-Per-View special called "All of Me." And she made an appearance on "David Letterman," which she was late for because there were "people, lots of people."
She revealed that she and her mother had to have conceived on the same day, since their children have the same birthday. But the best moment was when she got totally confused and paused for a while.
"Wow. I really thought I was looking out the window," she said, before giggling compulsively.
5. Crispin's awkward interview
Crispin Glover was so cute and innocent in "Back to the Future." But he ruined it all when he appeared on "Letterman" in 1987 to promote his movie "River's Edge."
And it wasn't just the bad wig, '70s shirt, striped pants, and platform shoes that turned the world off. "I'm a movie star," he declared, awkwardly. Then he challenged David to an arm-wrestling match.
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6. Paris squirmed
In 2007, Paris Hilton went on "Letterman" after her stint in the slammer and the whole thing was just uncomfortable. "How'd you like being in jail?" David asked, just a few seconds in. "Not too much," she replied. Yes, he also asked about the food. "It's not supposed to be good -- it's jail," she said.
7. Cher was defensive
Isn't it weird that Cher looks younger now (see the recent MTV VMA show, anyone?) than she did in her 1986 "Letterman" interview? For her 1996 appearance, she kept her hands firmly across her chest.
When David asked why she refused to come on the show for years and then relented, Cher explained, "I want to pay my hotel bill. I have a huge hotel bill. I thought I'd come on and see what this guy is like." So what did she think? "You're an [insert a not-so-nice-name for 'jerk']."
8. Courtney pulled a "Drew"
Nearly a decade later, Courtney Love went on "Letterman" wearing almost the same ensemble that Drew Barrymore sported on the show. Before she even sat down, she flashed him. Then she did it again and again, before falling off a chair.
"I learned how to flirt from watching David Letterman flirt with Sandra Bernhard. It has been the crisis of all my dysfunctional relationships ever since," she said. Yowch.
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9. Andy Kaufman's big joke
Andy Kaufman isn't known for his straight interviews. In 1982, he appeared on "Letterman" with wrestler Jerry Lawler. Why? Because part of Kaufman's shtick was wrestling women, and as such, Lawler challenged him to a match.
During the interview, Lawler slaps Kaufman, which leads to a tirade worthy of a "Real Housewife." We'll never know if this whole bit was staged.
10. Borat bombed
We know what to expect from Sacha Baron Cohen when he's in character as Borat, but David Letterman didn't seem prepared. Seems he thought he was getting an interview with Sacha proper.
When David asked about Sacha's wife, he was no doubt referring to Isla Fischer. But Sacha responded, "My wife is dead. High five. When I buy my wife, she was very nice, she cook good, she was strong on plow. But after three years when she was 15, her voice got deep and she grow much hair on chest." David was not amused.

Fake earthquake disaster drill tests Facebook, Twitter

(CNN) -- If your Facebook page or Twitter feed lights up with news of a tsunami off the California coast, don't get too worried.

At noon ET Friday, a drill was launched by natural disaster experts at San Diego State University to test how social media would be used to respond to a crisis.
Exercise 24 (X24) is being run by the university's Immersive Visualization Center.
Participants from 15 countries, including the United States, organizations such as the United Nations and Red Cross, and other business, nonprofits and individuals will be involved.
The idea is to test the speed and widen the scope of responses to a major disaster, focusing on how social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can be used.
"Ultimately, the goal is to get there faster, respond more effectively to save lives, communities, businesses, etc.," read a written release on the drill.
Organizers said that all messages about the fictional disaster would be marked clearly as fake on the Web.
Shortly after 12:30 p.m. ET, organizers began sending fictional messages from an account on Twitter reporting the disaster.

Social media has become an increasingly important tool in disaster response in recent months, particularly during the Haiti earthquake and Gulf oil disaster.
During the recent wildfires in California, responders used sites such as Facebook and Twitter to track the fires and see what people were saying about them.
Friday's fictional scenario starts with a major earthquake off the coast of Huntington Beach, California, generating a tidal wave and an oil spill. A social media aggregator program will be used to try to bring together all the information about it on social media sites.
On Friday, about 50 members of government and relief groups huddled in the drill's dimly lit, makeshift command center at San Diego State University.
Chris Mayfield, a civilian systems engineer with the U.S. Navy, tapped on his keyboard.
"We have to be ready in case something like this gets to the presidential [federal] disaster level," said Mayfield, who is with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.
SPAWAR helps deploy critical federal response teams and equipment during disasters.
"For example, somebody needs fresh water," Mayfield said. "So we need to find out, how do we get it? Are there troops available who can bring that to them? What's the time line?"
At the center, U.S. and Mexican flags hung on the wall, symbols of the need for both countries to cooperate on logistics if such a massive earthquake hit the area.
While government and relief organizations are the official participants, the public is being asked to help, too.
People were asked to visit the InRelief.org website starting at noon ET to see if the site can handle a huge amount of traffic. They are also being asked to find and follow specifically branded sites on Facebook and Twitter, to help see how easy it will be for people to get information that way.
"Essentially we're challenging the public to teach response groups what they need and want re: social media engagement in a very real sense and then to put it all to work," said a written release. "We'll develop and share the results in a report with everyone afterwards."
As of about 5 p.m. ET on Friday, the InRelief site was performing well, said Google spokesman Dan Martin. The site is built using Google Apps.
Martin said that, at that time, the site had seen 10,000 unique users from 60 different countries.
The drill will last through Saturday.

Make yourself a better person and know who you are before you try and know someone else and expect them to know you

3 Relationships Will Fail If The Following Three Steps Don’t Get Fulfilled Within Your Relationship!

Here are three things you must ensure you focus upon within your relationship, to secure any sort of future and prosperity of the relationship. Let’s look at the three…

Your Partner comes first in your relationship.

In a functional, dedicated, and happy relationship your partner should be your life and you should be theirs. That means that of all of the people in your life, the opinions, needs, desires, and emotions of your partner come supreme to everyone else’s! To further emphasize this, the needs of your partner exceed by far the importance of the need of your parents, siblings, family, and friends. If you take the needs of anybody else over your woman’s/ mans you instantly disrespect their position at your life – at the very forefront. Never ignore the wishes of your partner to follow somebody else’s instructions and desires. Once you do that you lose respect by your partner, and the very cohesion that’s meant to be the very cement to the relationship! Even if your partner seems irrational, controlling (to a degree), and dead set on something (this may be anything in particular), you must go against the whole world if need be, upset everyone you know if need be, to be supportive and co-operating with your partners needs, and wishes. If you don’t follow this one vital point, chances are and I guarantee it, your relationship will never work out!
Ensure your partner feels appreciated.

If your partner is your life, then you should make sure they feel like it each and every day you’re together. Life is just too short for people to fail to ensure their partner feels wanted, needed, loved and appreciated! It’s not brain science; we all want to feel wanted and appreciated, your partner isn’t exempt to this. No matter how long you’ve been together, and no matter how lazy you’ve become in your relationship, don’t think for a moment that your partner doesn’t want to hear how appreciated they are. Just a simple ‘Darling dinner was great’, compliment could make your partners day! Before you go to sleep, and as you wake, it doesn’t hurt to tell your partner you love them and how much they mean to you each and every day of your life! Women and men equally want to feel appreciated the same. Is it so hard to let the one person you share your emotion, body, and soul with that they are the reason you look forward to each waking day. After all if this wasn’t the case you shouldn’t be together to begin with, and may just need to call it quits! Fail to make sure your partner feels loved and appreciated may not end your relationship today or tomorrow, but it all adds up, and like cancer will destroy everything between you!

You must put your partner before yourself.

When you’re single you’re an individual and key component of society, and in this circumstance your interests come first above all. In a relationship between two people in love, this is not so! Your partner comes first in your life. No matter how frustrated, angry, or just upset you get made to feel by your partner, you must cooperate together and take them for who they are, and love and care for them no less! It doesn’t matter how much harder or inconvenient, your partner may make your life, they should always remain the focus and the meaning of your life. Just remember that you were once before them, and you needed them, and upon needing them you obligated to them. Upon any obligation, the consequence may be a lack of freedom, and you gain a thing called responsibility! You chose to be responsible for your partner and them vice versa. This responsibility may come at the cost of a little pain, time, and care on your behalf, but isn’t this just a marginal cost in enjoying the beauty of having another human being in your life, to share your life with? Your partner is your life, and your life is theirs, never forget that. So instead of complaining, take pride in the bonds you share with your loved one, otherwise your relationship is doomed for failure!

I hope the aforementioned three pointers lead you all on the right track in achieving, and maintaining happiness and prosperity in your relationships.


Read more: http://socyberty.com

Falling in love costs you friends

By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC New

Sept 15


We probably all know that a passionate new relationship can leave you little time for others, but now science has put some numbers on the observation.

Oxford University researchers asked people about their inner core of friendships and how this number changed when romance entered the equation.

They found the core, which numbers about five people, dropped by two as a new lover came to dominate daily life.

"People who are in romantic relationships - instead of having the typical five [individuals] on average, they only have four in that circle," explained Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford.

"And bearing in mind that one of those is the new person that's come into your life, it means you've had to give up two others."

The research, which has only recently been submitted for publication, was presented to the British Science Festival at Aston University.

Professor Dunbar's group studies social networks and how we manage their size and composition.

He has previously shown that the maximum number of friends it is realistically possible to engage is about 150. On the social networking site Facebook, for example, people will typically have 120-130 friends.

This number can be divided into progressively smaller groups, with an inner clique numbering between four and six.

These are people who we see at least once a week; people we go to at moments of crisis. The next layer out are the people we see about once a month - the "sympathy group". They are all the people who, if they died tomorrow, we would miss and be upset about.

In the latest study, the team questioned 540 participants, aged 18 and over, about their relationships and the strain those relationships came under when a new romantic engagement was started.

The results confirmed the widely held view that love can lead to a smaller support network, with typically one family member and one friend being pushed out to accommodate the new lover.

"The intimacy of a relationship - your emotional engagement with it - correlates very tightly with the frequency of your interactions with those individuals," observed Professor Dunbar.

"If you don't see people, the emotional engagement starts to drop off, and quickly.

"What I suspect happens is that your attention is so wholly focussed on your romantic partner that you just don't get to see the other folks you have a lot to do with, and therefore some of those relationships just start to deteriorate and drop down into the layer below."

BP finally seals leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well

19 September 2010

The ruptured well that has spewed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico has finally been sealed, US officials say.

A pressure test showed a cement plug put in place by BP to permanently "kill" the well was holding.

President Obama hailed the news, vowing to continue to help those affected.

The worst offshore oil spill in US history began after the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on 20 April, killing 11 workers and later sinking.

'Important milestone'
The top US federal official overseeing the disaster, Coast Guard Adm Thad Allen, said on Sunday that the well was now "effectively dead".

"Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state definitively that the Macondo Well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico," Adm Allen said.

A temporary cap had sealed the flow on 15 July while a relief well was dug. That well finally linked up with the ruptured well on Thursday, allowing workers to start pumping in the cement, removing the need for the cap and creating the permanent "kill".

The disaster has brought an environmental nightmare to hundreds of miles of US coast. It led to BP chief executive Tony Hayward standing down and the imposition of a moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling.

In a statement, President Obama hailed Sunday's "important milestone" and thanked all those who had "worked around the clock to respond to this crisis and ultimately complete this challenging but critical step to ensure that the well has stopped leaking forever".

He said he remained "committed to doing everything possible to make sure the Gulf Coast recovers fully from this disaster".

He added: "This road will not be easy, but we will continue to work closely with the people of the Gulf to rebuild their livelihoods and restore the environment that supports them."

The cost of the disaster to BP has been massive. It has created a compensation fund of $20bn and paid out another $8bn so far in the clean-up campaign.

This final sealing will mean BP can leave the site and concentrate on dealing with the aftermath of the spill.

At the beginning of August, the US government announced that almost three-quarters of the oil had been cleaned up or broken down by natural forces.

The remaining quarter was thought to be "degrading quickly".

But more recent research noted an undersea plume of crude oil-based chemicals up to 200m high and 2km wide, extending 35km from the spill site.

Despite optimism about the clean-up, the damage to the local economy, wildlife and the ecosystem of the Gulf is hard to fully assess yet.

It's good to think - but not too much, scientists say

17 September 2010

People who think more about whether they are right have more cells in an area of the brain known as the frontal lobes.

UK scientists, writing in Science, looked at how brain size varied depending on how much people thought about decisions.

But a nationwide survey recently found that some people think too much about life.

These people have poorer memories, and they may also be depressed.

Stephen Fleming, a member of the University College London (UCL) team that carried out the research, said: "Imagine you're on a game show such as 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire' and you're uncertain of your answer. You can use that knowledge to ask the audience, ask for help."

The London group asked 32 volunteers to make difficult decisions. They had to look at two very similar black and grey pictures and say which one had a lighter spot.

They then had to say just how sure they were of their answer, on a scale of one to six. Although it was hard to tell the difference, the pictures were adjusted to make sure that no-one found the task harder than anyone else.

People who were more sure of their answer had more brain cells in the front-most part of the brain - known as the anterior prefrontal cortex.

This part of the brain has been linked to many brain and mental disorders, including autism. Previous studies have looked at how this area functions while people make real time decisions, but not at differences between individuals.

Illness link
The study is the first to show that there are physical differences between people with regards to how big this area is. These size differences relate to how much they think about their own decisions.

The researchers hope that learning more about these types of differences between people may help those with mental illness.

Co-author Dr Rimona Weil, from UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: "I think it has very important implications for patients with mental ill health who perhaps don't have as much insight into their own disease."

She added that they hope they may be able to improve patients' ability to recognise that they have an illness and to remember to take their medication.

However, thinking a lot about your own thoughts may not be all good.

Cognitive psychologist Dr Tracy Alloway from the University of Stirling, who was not involved in the latest study, said that some people have a tendency to brood too much and this leads to a risk of depression.

More than 1,000 people took part in a nationwide study linking one type of memory - called "working memory" - to mental health.

Working memory involves the ability to remember pieces of information for a short time, but also while you are remembering them, to do something with them.

For example, you might have to keep hold of information about where you saw shapes and colours - and also answer questions on what they looked like. Dr Alloway commented: "I like to describe it as your brain's Post-It note."

Those with poorer working memory, the 10-15% of people who could only remember about two things, were more likely to mull over things and brood too much.

Both groups presented their findings at the British Science Festival, held this year at the University of Aston in Birmingham.

Missing 'cult-like' group found alive after suicide fears

By the CNN Wire Staff
September 19, 2010 -- Updated 2337 GMT (0737 HKT)

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- A group of 13 Salvadoran immigrants missing in southern California amid fears that they planned a cult-like mass suicide have been found alive, unhurt and upset to find they were the subjects of an extensive search.
Authorities had been scouring the Palmdale area of northern Los Angeles County on horseback and by helicopter Sunday in search of the group, which included eight children between the ages of 3 and 17, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. A resident spotted one of the vehicles identified in the lookout at a park and notified the sheriff's department, he said.
One woman in the group told CNN they were "perfectly OK" and were shocked and angry to learn that such an extensive search was under way. The woman, who would not give her name, said they had been praying all night in the park, that they had done this routinely and that their husbands were aware of the practice.

The search began Saturday afternoon, when the husbands of two women in the group reported them missing, the Sheriff's Department said. One of the men said their wives were part of a "cult-like group" and had been "brainwashed" by its leader, and Whitmore said the wife left a purse with her husband and asked her "to pray over" it.
When the husband opened the purse, he found money, mobile phones and notes that "talked about meeting Jesus, talked about deceased relatives soon to meet up," Whitmore told CNN earlier Sunday. That raised concerns that the group members planned to take their own lives, he said.
The husbands told investigators that the group had broken away from a Christian church in the Los Angeles area "and formed a separate group that included both traditional and non-traditional practices and beliefs," the Sheriff's Department said Saturday. Its leader, whom investigators identified as Reyna Marisol Chicas, had taken her followers on a similar outing six months ago "in the apparent belief that there was going to be a major earthquake."

Several members of the group spoke with investigators, and Chicas was held for questioning after giving deputies a false name, Whitmore said. Though no crime had been committed and the group appeared to be praying for 'honest and well-meaning things," he said deputies had to investigate once their husbands filed missing persons reports.
"The letters themselves could be interpreted in many ways," Whitmore said. "Now, some of the language in it could be interpreted as saying goodbye as relatives, but that's an interpretation." But given the husbands' concerns, "It is better to overreact than underreact," he said.