Speed Flying Mont Blanc: VIDEO

Happy Mother's Day! Please begin your morning with something beautiful -- such as this video of several "speed flyers" descending Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps. It's a ten-minute video, in which the speed flyers descend from a height of 4,304 meters to a height of 930 meters. The descent is captured in a single, continuous, and unceasingly gorgeous take, which is one of the greatest cinematographic feats I know of.

Watch AFTER THE JUMP. In full screen, preferably on a large-ish monitor with decent speakers. 

NEWS: Danger In The Castro, Lies About Apple, Abortions And Poultry, And The Improbability of Warp Speed

 Gay men being drugged and robbed in the Castro:

It seems there have been too many instances lately in which older gay men are being targeted by (straight) criminals who are coming into gay bars, flirting with men, and then robbing them after they take them home.

 Rosie leaves OWN.

 Upper house of Swiss parliament narrowly votes to allow gay adoption. 

 Producers of This American Life, the world's greatest radio program, are "horrified" that lies about Apple appeared in their show:

A highly popular episode of This American Life in which monologuist Mike Daisey tells of the abuses at factories that make Apple products in China contained "significant fabrications," the show said today.

... The 39-minute piece aired in January and TAL says after 888,000 downloads, it became its most popular podcast. The story is compelling: It tells of the awful working conditions of Chinese workers making shiny Apple products like iPhones and iPads at factories owned by a company called FoxConn, which also manufactures products for other electronics giants.

The piece essentially made Daisey Apple's chief critic and it also inspired a Change.org petition that collected more than 250,000 signatures demanding that Apple better the working conditions at the factories.

 Georgia rep: Stop killing babies, and you'll get chickens.

 New York Times: How Bain Capital supplies the Chinese police state with surveillance technology, and how Mitt Romney stands to profit:

In December, a Bain-run fund ... purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system that allows the authorities to watch over university campuses, hospitals, mosques and movie theaters from centralized command posts.

The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, produces what it calls “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that enable police officials in different jurisdictions to share images in real time through the Internet. Previous projects have included an emergency command center in Tibet that “provides a solid foundation for the maintenance of social stability and the protection of people’s peaceful life,” according to Uniview’s Web site.

Such surveillance systems are often used to combat crime and the manufacturer has no control over whether they are used for other purposes. But human rights advocates say in China they are also used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents. “There are video cameras all over our monastery, and their only purpose is to make us feel fear,” said Loksag, a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Gansu Province. He said the cameras helped the authorities identify and detain nearly 200 monks who participated in a protest at his monastery in 2008.

 Joe Nocera on corporate morality.

 Accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk is dead; his life was bookended by horrors. 

 Seinfeld actor Daniel von Bargen shoots himself in the head; survives.

 Barack Obama can't take sole credit for rescuing Detroit. 

 Those neutrinos almost certainly did not travel faster than light. Bummer.

 Watch the evolution of the moon, AFTER THE JUMP ...

Swiss Politician Compares Letting Gay Couples Adopt to Legalizing Cocaine

Switzerlands's Council of States, the legal committee of the upper house, voted last week in favor of rules that would facilitate adoption by gay couples. A Swiss politician's objections to changing the law are now under fire, The Local reports:

Christophe Darbellay, head of the center-right Christian Democrats (CVP) is deeply opposed to any change in the legislation governing adoption. He said he didn’t see why the law should be extended to include gay couples.

“I wouldn’t suddenly legalize cocaine just because half a million people consume it,” he said to Le Temps newspaper last Friday.

His comments have caused uproar. The Association for Rainbow Families said that it was “insulting” that Darbellay would “compare same-sex parents with cocaine addicts.”

“His homophobia shocks us,” co-president Chatty Ecoffey told the 20 Minuten newspaper.

Added Darbellay:  “I didn’t want to insult anyone. I simply wanted to say that just because something exists, does not mean that it has to be legalized."

Swiss Soldiers Lip Dub Britney Spears: VIDEO

Military lip dubs of Britney Spears' "Hold It Against Me" are not limited to American troops. Here's an entry from the Swiss, and I think I see a few borrowed moves.

The Local reports: "The four-minute video is performed by members of a sanitary division from the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The SanBoys, as they call themselves, spiced up their stay at the camp by lip-synching to Britney while performing a series of choreographed moves."

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

News: Cheyenne Jackson, GLAAD, Cancer, Jersey Shore

Students in Wisonsin rally around woman who was punched in the face for wearing a "Legalize Gay" t-shirt.

Cheyenne Jackson and his partner of 10 years, Monte Lapka, secretly became domestic partners in NYC over the summer: "We wanted to get as married as we could. I think we were filling in some forms for wills or insurance, and I just thought, Let's just make this as legal as we can."

That bigoted billboard that depicted President Obama as a terrorist, a gangster, a Mexican bandit, and a gay man has finally been taken down.

James Cameron and Angelina Jolie rumored to bring their version of Cleopatra to the big screen.

Two minutes of the some of the best laughs you'll have all day, thanks to Christine O'Donnell and Bill Maher.

Even president Obama thinks that O'Donnell poses a real threat this election season.

GLAAD not happy with Vince Vaughn's recent defense of the homophobic joke in his new movie: "Vince is right. Comedy does bring us together, unless one of us is the punchline. Then it pushes us apart.”

A gay Atlanta man has given us what he thinks is the liberal version of the Tea Party: The Coffee Party USA.

  After $10 billion and 35 miles of digging, the world's largest tunnel opens in Switzerland.

Gavin Newson wanst to be more than just the "Gay Marriage mayor."

The Jersey Shore castmates absolutely loved being mocked on South Park.

Alexander Skarsgard steps out in denim.

Scientist claims that cancer is a modern affliction: "The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer-causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialisation."

Nick Cannon on Chelsea Handler: "Angry ugly whitetrash."

Prince will welcome you 2 America this December.

Roman Polanski 'A Free Man' — Swiss Won't Extradite Him

Roman Polanski will not be extradited to the U.S. to face charges from 1977 of unlawful sex with a minor, the NYT reports:

"Switzerland will not extradite the film director Roman Polanski to the United States to face charges of unlawful sex with a minor because of a possible fault in the American application for his extradition, Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told a news conference on Monday. 'He’s a free man,' she said. Mr. Polanski was arrested on an international warrant issued by the United States on charges dating from 1977. The director fled on the eve of sentencing in California because of fear that the presiding intended to renege what his defense lawyers said was a deal to avoid a prison sentence. Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf said the American authorities had rejected a request by her ministry for records of a hearing by the prosecutor in the case, Roger Gunson, in January 2010, which should have established whether the judge who tried the case in 1977 had assured Mr. Polanski that time he spent in a psychiatric unit would constitute the whole of the period of imprisonment he would serve. 'If this were the case, Roman Polanski would actually have already served his sentence and therefore both the proceedings on which the U.S. extradition request is founded and the request itself would have no foundation,' the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement."