A day late and a dollar short, it’s your weekly installment of doom: 

Politicking 

• Gambia’s leader—who demands to being called His Excellency President Professor Dr. Al-Haji Yahya Jammeh, and who has proposed an “herbs-and-banana cure for AIDS” and the beheading of gays—has now initiated “dragnets” on witches and evil sorcerors, killing six so far. Things that sound like they should be in The Onion are actually pretty terrifying when they come from The New York Times.
• Nebraska, (a state known most for corn and, um, more corn, and maybe soy beans? ) has been pwned by the internet in their selection of a new license plate. CollegeHumor.com led a campaign to stuff the ballot boxes sticking Nebraska with a “boring license plate.” 

Man vs. Machine

• Do you trust elevators? Maybe you shouldn’t. A Houston doctor was decapitated by a malfunctioning elevator, one of the roughly 30 elevator related fatalities that happen in the United States each year. 
• In 1912, Franz Reichelt attempted to test the latest innovation in parachuting: the parachute jacket. It didn’t work. Unfortunately, he decided to test it by leaping from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Zombie News

• Residents of Boston (Headquarters of Doombot East) can feel safe and secure in the knowledge that the Boston Police Department will not hesitate to notify you of a Zombie apocalypse via Twitter. 
• Corpses are rotting more slowly than they used to – is it because we have less bacteria on our bodies due to diet, or imminent zombie apocalypse? The Boy Scout in me says prepare for both. 

Who will speak for the Children?

• Parents struggling to get their kids to revise in the run-up to exams can now keep them at their desk using a ball and chain that only unlocks when they have studied for long enough. “Study Ball helps you study more and more efficiently.” I can only hope that no one buy this with the sincere intent of using it on their children.  
• In response to a grade school student committing suicide after being banned from gaming by his father, Thai courts have closed 72 gaming and gambling websites—presumably, the next step in a much grander social experiment on the widespread effects of game deprivation.

YouTube Video of the Week:

• This unbelievable 1985 commercial for the Plymouth Duster starring Finola Hughes and every ’80s cliche.   “We cannot parody the ’80s. The people of the ’80s did it all first, in this one commercial.”