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Pope Francis wants you to give up being a jerk online for Lent
Forget quitting smoking or cutting carbs from your diet. If you're thinking of something to give up this Lent, which starts today (Ash Wednesday), Pope Francis has a surprisingly modern suggestion. During the weekly General Audience in St. Peter's Square today, the Pope told the 12,000 people gathered to "disconnect from cell phones and connect to the Gospel," according to Vatican News, the Holy See's information service. This Lent, Pope Francis said, "is a time in which to turn off the television and open the Bible."
5 Apps for Mardi Gras
With Lent peeking around the corner, there's still time to get down, celebrate, and indulge before fasting, abstinence, and penitence. In that spirit, here are a bunch of last minute apps to help you seize the day...and the pancakes. If you're lucky enough to be around New Orleans, follow your favorite Mardi Gras parades with the WWL-TV Experience Mardi Gras app (Free). This handy mobile app offers schedules, routes, events and more for the Mardi Gras partier. It uses integrated GPS coordinates to let you know what's happening right around you. Can't get down to New Orleans? You can try out a virtual Mardi Gras! ($0.99) experience instead. This game allows you to "hop on your float, wear a purple crown, and be the King of Mardi Gras!!" The goal is to "keep the crowd happy" by throwing cheap trinkets at them. The game is rated 4+, so TUAW rather suspects that the traditional method of asking for trinkets will not be shown in-app. Brush up your Hip Hop skills with Dance Video: Hip Hop Dancing ($2.99). On sale this week for 50% off its normal price, this app helps teach the basic hip hop steps, "wave", "crip step", and "old skool" moves like the "running man". Of course, TUAW staffers admonish you not to try dancing with a gut full of pancakes. Looking for a few last minute recipes? You might want to check out Gourmet Live (Free). This lifestyle apps includes new and classic recipes, interviews with celebrity chefs, and more. It may be your best chance to indulge in high-caloric yumminess for a while. Finally, in the sincere spirit of Shrove Tuesday, we bring you Pancakes (Free). We were totally won over by the beautiful app description: "Pancake is a game of how you can cook delicious pancakes. We cook a lot of delicious pancakes. How to Play: Within the time limit, or compete for a delicious pancake how many burn." We think you'll like the app description too.
When good toys go bad IV: explicit CD player triggered during mass
While we've seen quite a few toys pulling stunts that they should definitely be ashamed of, the latest edition ups the ante by doing its dirty deed in a Roman Catholic cathedral. Following the "if it blinks, obliterate it" mentality so well exemplified at various Boston transit arteries, a team of Santa Fe bomb squad experts were called onto the scene after three CD players were triggered to start blasting "sexually explicit language in the middle of an Ash Wednesday Mass" at the Roman Catholic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. Reportedly, the players were "duct-taped to the bottoms of the pews," apparently causing the innocent church dwellers to assume the worse -- you know, like C4 explosives camouflaged as a mid-range driver. Nevertheless, the bomb squad removed the devices, took them outside, and probably had a thrilling experience whilst detonating two of the players as a safety measure. Once the crew realized the only explosive tendencies were captured in the inappropriate lyrics, they salvaged the third unit to comb for fingerprints and hopefully arrest the perpetrator(s). Now, which cop is going to cave in and post the fireworks on YouTube?[Via BoingBoing]
