Day: July 2, 2013

The Lord of the Ring’s director Peter Jackson uploaded a video entitled “Goodbye Orlando” on Sunday, after Orlando Bloom finished “battling a serious Orc for all 12 hours of shooting – part of the Battle of the 5 Armies for the third Hobbit movie.”

On his Facebook page, the Oscar-winning Jackson explained that he just “couldn’t resist” having the actor sing along with the electronic song dedicated to a single line his character, Legolas, shouts in The Two Towers after spotting the Uruks: “They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard.” The footage above shows Orlando playing peek-a-boo with an iPad showing the video as he sings/shouts along with the chorus.

(MORE: PRISM Speculation and The Lord of the Rings: The ‘Palantir’ Connection)

The music video itself–which has lines from Gollum and Celeborn interjected intermittently–went viral back in 2005 with accompanying Legos, The Office, and 

150 years after Lincoln gave his speech eulogising the Battle of Gettysburg, it has become one of the most celebrated speeches in history. Here’s a pop culture tribute to the Gettysburg Address.

The second week of George Zimmerman’s second-degree murder trial began with a recording of the neighborhood watch volunteer describing his fatal encounter with 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to a police officer soon after it happened.

Plus, actor Jamie Foxx explained his decision to wear a Trayvon Martin T-shirt at the BET awards on Sunday night

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Smokers have grown accustomed to graphic warnings on cigarette packs, detailing the havoc cigarettes can wreak on their lungs, their teeth, their libidos, basically anything related to their well-being. But in case they haven’t gotten the message, health researchers have devised a new way to grab smokers’ attention: cigarette packs that talk back to their owners.

(MORE: FDA Approves New Cigarettes in First Use of New Regulatory Power Over Tobacco)

Researchers at the University of Stirling in Scotland have designed packages that play a recorded message each time the lid opens. The BBC reports that the message would warn smokers about fertility risks and offer a helpline number for further information on quitting. The messages showed initial promise among a sample group of libido-concerned teenage smokers. Aside from the content of the message, some test subjects considered quitting just to make the packs shut up. According to the Daily Mail…

An unmanned Russian rocket veered off course and exploded in a fireball seconds after liftoff. The rocket launched from the Baikonur Space Station in Kazakhstan, and was broadcast live on television. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Don’t panic, but there’s a honey badger following you …on Twitter.

Meet BG, a resident of the Johannesburg Zoo in South Africa and quite possibly the world’s first tweeting honey badger in captivity:

#selfie 😉 pic.twitter.com/lB6gCqsxrQ

— Tweeting Badger (@zootweetslive) July 2, 2013

In a video, the Johannesburg Zoo explained that it didn’t have the resources to hire a social media expert and decided to fill the position by promoting from within. Specifically, they turned over their @ZooTweetsLive Twitter feed to BG, a seemingly affable honey badger with an attitude.

To help BG implement his social media strategy, his cage has been outfitted with motion-sensors, which are linked to his Twitter account. When BG wanders to his feeding bowl, it triggers a camera that lets him take part in that great social media pastime of taking a picture of his meal: