Huh?

I leave the world to its own devices for a day, and what happens? I come here, go to my friends page, and there's a post from ryttu3k exclaiming that Steve Irwin¹ is dead, after playing with stingrays² while filming near Port Douglas. That Steve's last words were "Crikey! Isn't it a beauty? I'll just- aaaarrrrrggghhh" is so conceivable it's inconceivable.

I think the most surprising thing is that, up until now, he still had all his fingers and toes. He'd been hugging and pouncing on variously-angry crocodiles for years, made a routine habit of picking up the world's very most venomous snakes, and then it was a pancake-shaped fishie that ended up saying a very bubbly "kthx i keel you".



And once again, this goes to show that LiveJournal is one of the fastest news sources on the planet..

ETA: So far, Google News has indexed 293 articles on Steve Irwin's death from news sources around the world. It happened six hours ago. The Queensland Police media release came out two hours ago. Two hours, 293 news sources. Wait, just rechecked: 301 news sources, meaning eight new ones in the last 6 minutes. It's interesting seeing just how fast information gets about these days.

ETA: Another hour later, it's grown to 502 articles.

1. The phrase 'Irwin cleared after penguin probe', found in a source link on that Wikipedia page, sounds mildly disturbing.
2. Also, both these Wikipedia pages have had editing temporarily disabled (for new and anonymous users), following their "Crikey! It's being edited into extinction!" vandalism policy. Whee.

Meme

Just like it says on the box.

If there is one or more people on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.