Siri won't help you hide a body today. Back in 2012, however...
Casey Johnston
Update: The Gainesville police department has clarified that, while a department detective did show a screenshot of the "hide my roommate" query from the suspect's phone, the question was not necessarily asked in connection with the alleged murder. The suspect's attorney told CBS Miami that the query was found "among hundreds of pictures that were on Bravo’s phone and that the search may not have been initiated by his client." The CBS report also notes that the suspect admitted to beating the victim the night of the alleged murder, and that police found the shovel with which the victim was buried. Original story is below.
A murder suspect may have actually used a Siri Easter egg while hiding the body of his victim, according to a news report Tuesday from the Palm Beach Post and later picked up by BuzzFeed. Gainesville, Florida detective Matt Goeckel presented evidence in court Tuesday that showed the suspect, Pedro Bravo, telling Siri, "I need to hide my roommate." He received as suggestions: "Swamps. Reservoirs. Metal Foundries. Dumps."
The response from Siri was originally meant to be a macabre joke; it's one of the virtual assistant's first Easter eggs from when it launched on iOS in 2011. According to the Gainesville police, Bravo actually asked his phone for advice when looking for somewhere to hide roommate Christian Aguilar's body on September 20, 2012, after the two had a fight.
This may be used in the plot of a cheesy movie about radical vegetarian terrorists
It's like a zombie film in reverse; an outbreak of ticks is succeeding where environmental statistics, health warnings and pictures of cute animals have failed – turning hardened meat eaters vegetarian.
Known as the Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum), the tick caries a variety of diseases, such as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, although it is not a carrier of Lyme Disease, by far the best known tick-borne infection.
However, the tick's most interesting feature is the capacity to make people allergic to meat. The ticks carry alpha-gal (Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose), which may sound like a superhero, but is actually a type of sugar found in non-primate mammals.
Under normal conditions the stomach digests alpha-gal without negative effects. Alpha-gal in the bloodstream is a different matter. The immune system creates antibodies against it. The next time the body encounters alpha-gal it responds as though the sugar really was a superhero and the antibodies were the villain's minions. This can occur whether the alpha-gal is now in the bloodstream or the digestive system.
The association was first made when an infestation of a different species of tick produced similar symptoms in Australia seven years ago. Warnings were sounded in February, but this summer has really seen the number of cases take off. The tick is spreading across the United States and has become particularly common on Long Island, bringing increasing numbers of people within range of its ravenous bite. Allergist Dr Erin McGintee reports seeing 200 cases from the island in the last three years.
Those with the allergy can still eat fish or chicken, but some dairy products can also stimulate a reaction – or even vegetable products cooked in beef fat. While allergists are unsure whether the allergy will wear off with time, those who have been hospitalized and need to carry EpiPens in case they ingest a small quantity of meat products may not be too keen to test if they have recovered, particularly since reactions often get worse each time a person is exposed.
McGintee warns that the reaction can take up to eight hours after eating meat, making it hard to identify the trigger.
According to a report from TV Wise, Babylon 5 showrunner J. Michael Straczynski will shortly begin work on a rebooted big-screen version of his 1990s sci-fi TV series. Straczynski made the announcement at San Diego Comic-Con last week.
Babylon 5’s pilot episode originally aired in 1993, with the series beginning its regular run almost a year later as a foundational component of the now-defunct Prime Time Entertainment Network. The show lacked the production budget of its contemporary rival Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (which allegedly lifted some or all of its core concepts directly from Straczynski’s original—and rejected—Babylon 5 pitch meeting with Paramount). Still, it attracted enough of an audience to accomplish a noteworthy feat: Babylon 5 became the only non-Star Trek science fiction show on American television to reach its series completion without being cancelled. Not until 2004’s Battlestar Galactica reboot would another non-Star Trek show earn the same distinction.
After Babylon 5 ended in 1998, Straczynski (usually referred to simply by his initials, "JMS") tried multiple times to bring a B5 movie to theaters. The most recent attempt in 2004 came the closest, with a completed script and some preproduction work underway, but without financial backing from Warner Bros. the project had to be abandoned.
