Mikkele.bringard

Some people dress up as their favorite Star Wars character, superhero or sci-fi villain when attending a blockbuster movie screening. As evidenced by this picture from Twitter, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is more of a Biblical epic kind of guy. If you were recently at an early screening and found yourself wondering what was up with the couple sitting behind you in homemade Old Testament costumes (along with a tin foil battle ax), it may have actually just been a geeked out Super Bowl MVP and his wife out for a date night ...

Today, World Vision made the very unexpected announcement that Christians in same-sex marriages will be eligible for hire. The organization—which one of the biggest Christian charities in the world—still requires employees to be sexually abstinent outside of marriage, will allow believers in legally recognized same-sex marriages to work for them. According to an interview World Vision's U.S. President Rich Stearns gave to Christianity Today, the goal is not to make a statement but to promote unity. "Changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues," he said. He repeatedly stressed that the move did not signify an endorsement.

This is not an endorsement of same-sex marriage. We have decided we are not going to get into that debate. Nor is this a rejection of traditional marriage, which we affirm and support ...We're not caving to some kind of pressure. We're not on some slippery slope ...This is not us compromising. It is us deferring to the authority of churches and denominations on theological issues. We're an operational arm of the global church, we're not a theological arm of the church. This is simply a decision about whether or not you are eligible for employment at World Vision U.S. based on this single issue, and nothing more.

What could possibly go wrong in the following scenario: This August, the U.S. Navy will set one of its own ships on fire and then release a superhuman robot to see if it can help put out the blaze. Either this turns out to be the origins story for the next great comic book super villain that threatens humanity, or the Navy could actually have a pretty valuable tool for onboard fire safety. Experts in the Navy told Mashable that “humanoids may be tasked with dousing fires aboard naval vessels full-time within a few years” if tests continue to go well. If you ever encounter one of these “humanoid” fireproof robot heroes, watch what you say around it. According to the article, it understands English. Though there isn’t a picture of the exact Navy robot, Mashable included an image of a humanoid test robot created by he military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Boston Dynamics (pictured below). Hopefully it will look similar—their previous design was downright terrifying ...

Congrats to this happy couple who managed to snap a selfie with Pope Francis following their wedding this week. A reporter for the news agency ZENIT tweeted out the pic proving that Ellen isn’t the only one who knows how to snap a viral selfie ...

Artist Dave Vancook has found away to revive those old paintings you can buy in the back of the thrift store—by adding awesome Star Wars robots, characters and vehicles to them. Yes, they are for sale, so feel free to browse his work on his Facebook page and pop some tags ...

Filmmaker Sofia Coppola will reportedly be directing a dark, live action version of the Hans Christian Andersen novel The Little Mermaid. And according to some sources, this won’t be a Disney movie—the script is being described as “exquisite and painful”, and The Independent says the film may focus on the story’s utter bleakness. Either way, it should be interesting to see how Coppola’s indie aesthetic—she’s known for visually dramatic films like Marie Antoinette and Lost in Translation—jives with a movie that is in large part an underwater romance. All we can say is that if there’s not an extended musical segment dedicated to “Under the Sea”, then we boycott ...

An investigation by the newspaper The Telegraph alleges that former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner—who has been suspended for corruption-related issues in the past—accepted brides from Qatar in exchange for the country hosting the 2022 World Cup. The decision to award Qatar the tournament has been questioned since it was first announced in 2010. Not only is the nation so hot that they may actually have to change the dates of the tournament to the winter, but, as The Wire notes, “Qatar World Cup has also been criticized for the illegality of alcohol consumption and homosexuals; potential mistreatment of Israeli athletes; construction laborers working in slave-like conditions …” and other concerns.

The Telegraph report suggests that Warner received $1.2 million (a payment that a bank in the Cayman Islands refused to process over legality concerns before it was handled by a bank in New York) from a company owned by Qatari FIFA VP Mohamed bin Hammam. The paper says that the FBI is now involved in an investigation related to payments. Though Qatar told the paper it did nothing wrong, Warner refused to comment to the news outlet ...

Former Two and a Half Men star Angus T. Jones has spoken out again about his decision to walk away from the lucrative TV role. The actor, who has since become an active member in the Seventh Day Adventist Church and started rocking a killer beard, told KHOU in Houston, “It was difficult for me to be on the show and be part of something that was making light of topics in our world where there are really problems for a lot of people. I was a paid hypocrite because I wasn’t OK with it and I was still doing it.”

Jones, who is now a student at the University of Colorado, told the news outlet he’s not planning on giving up acting completely, saying he is considering doing some “Bible-based stories” in the future. When he walked away from his role as Jack on the CBS sitcom, Jones was pulling in $300,000 per episode ...

The future. What will it be like? Flying cars? Mars vacations? Dippin' Dots? These are questions for greater minds than our own, but there are at least a few minds thinking about one particularly ugly corner of the future: prisons. According to an interview with Aeon Magazine, Oxford philosopher and future jail expert Rebecca Roache thinks the future is going to be a deeply unpleasant time for inmates.

As biotech companies pour billions into life extension technologies, some have suggested that our cruelest criminals could be kept alive indefinitely, to serve sentences spanning millennia or longer. Even without life extension, private prison firms could one day develop drugs that make time pass more slowly, so that an inmate's 10-year sentence feels like an eternity. One way or another, humans could soon be in a position to create an artificial hell.

"Artificial hell." Interesting choice of words. The article itself goes on to debate the ethics of such a punishment but, well, ethics rarely enter into the modern conversation of how prisoners should be treated. Why should the future be any different? ...

We’ve got some good news for any clumsy eaters out there: Science has proven that the 5-second rule is a real thing. Those who abide by the concept know that there is a widely held belief that if you drop something you’re eating on the floor, you have at least five seconds to pick it back up before it is contaminated. The team at Aston University's School of Life and Health Sciences in England intentionally dropped a variety of foods on indoor surfaces and used microbiology to measure the transfer of E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. Calling the five-second rule “much more than an old wives tale," professor Anthony Hilton told Science Daily, "We have found evidence that transfer from indoor flooring surfaces is incredibly poor with carpet actually posing the lowest risk of bacterial transfer onto dropped food." Translation: If you dropped a delicious slice of bacon while reading this, go ahead and pick it back up, and eat it. You’ll probably be just fine ...

What better way to celebrate Jon Ham’s birthday than by photobombing unsuspecting tourists to New York’s Rockefeller Center with Jimmy Fallon? As the video below shows, there is no better way ...

Presbyterian pastor and graphic designer Joseph Novak has created a series of minimalistic posters that offer cool looking, stripped-down, symbolic interpretations of each book of the Bible. On his website, Novak describes the ‘Minimum Bible’ as a way to “rely on simple symbolic shapes to introduce us to themes beyond the text.” Though some of the imagery (like a colorful harp used for Psalms) is an obvious connection to the text, others are intentionally more difficult to figure out. Novak says on his site, “The Minimum Bible is not trying to replace the Bible. Rather, it serves as a sort of visual diving board back into the text.” Each of the designs are available for purchase as cards or posters ...

Look, when writing things all day long is your job, mistakes are going to happen. That's life. Some typos are more unfortunate than others, but this typo from a Monday morning report on "the world's longest spelling bee" goes down in Typo History. Time to clear out a spot in the Typo Hall of Fame. This one belongs among the all-time greats ...

Little Emily James heard that when other kids get sick, sometimes their hair falls out. As the 3-year-old explains, she thinks this is “really, really sad.” In the video below, Emily visits her uncle (who happens to be a celebrity hairstylist) so she (and her Rapunzel doll) can get a haircut and make a donation to an organization that provides wigs for kids fighting cancer. Thanks for the inspiration, Emily ...

Attention urban fashion fans. The New York Times would like you to know that the monocle—that “one Part Mr. Peanut, one Part hipster chic” single eye accessory—is all the rage in Brooklyn these days. And according to one fashion-watcher, in some uber-hip communities, even the accessory is accessorized:

Martin Raymond, a British trend forecaster, credits the rise to what he calls “the new gents,” a hipster subspecies who have been adding monocles to their bespoke tweed and distressed-boot outfits. On a recent trip to Cape Town, Mr. Raymond said, he saw such a group carrying monocles along with tiny brass telescopes kept in satchels.

It’s just further proof that The Penguin was the original hipster ...

A toy designer is hoping that a new Barbie-style doll named “Lammily” will redefine how little girls think about body image. Unlike Mattel's unrealistically thin Barbie, designer Nickolay Lamm used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to find the average body size of an American 19-year-old to create the dimensions of the toy. A crowdfunding campaign for the new doll, whose motto is “Average Is Beautiful” has already surpassed its goal, meaning Lammily will likely be going into production very soon ...

Fast food chain Arby’s now owns the epic hat worn by Pharrell during this year’s Grammy Awards. The award-winning producer and singer put the infamous lid on eBay, with proceeds of the auction going to benefit his children’s outreach organization, From One Hand to Another. Arby’s, whose classic logo closely resembles the comically oversized Vivian Westwood headgear, forked over $44,000 (approximately the cost of 11,600 Arby’s Beef and Cheddar Melts) for the privilege of owning it forever ...