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Less deadly than a Hellfire missile, but maybe creepier: This robot dinosaur sure knows how to fling a cinderblock.

Boston Dynamics, the contractor with a DARPA contract to make frightening robot novelties for the U.S. military, has come out with a new nightmare-inspiring video.

This latest video release comes after Boston Dynamics first unveiled an un-knockable-overable quadrupedal robo-mule called the "Big Dog," and then, on a lark, weaponized it with bull horns.

All of which was a little alarming, but we took comfort in the fact that if we ever met one of these things in the wild we'd at least be able to outrun it. Then Boston Dynamics dropped a video of a new four-legged death-machine-in-training called the Cheetah, which can achieve top speeds of 28.3 miles per hour, somewhat faster than the world's fastest man, Usain Bolt.

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Sam Levin

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and State Senator Stephen Saland

Mike Bloomberg announced a new piece of legislation this afternoon that would give the mayor, via the city's school chancellor, more power to dismiss teachers who engage in acts of sexual misconduct in the classroom.

You'd think that inappropriate sexual behavior form teachers is something everyone could agree on, but apparently not.

Today's announcement from the mayor's office has already sparked an (admittedly unsurprising) war of words between the mayor and the Teachers Union with regards to how school systems across the state respond to allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior in schools.

Under the proposed statewide legislation, championed by the mayor today and brought forth by State Senator Stephen Saland, school districts would have enhanced abilities to dismiss teachers in sexual misconduct cases by having the final say of what action should ultimately be taken.

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Well, this is heartening terrifying news for anyone who plans on traveling through JFK in the near future. A woman got through security in Terminal 5 with a dagger in her bag, the New York Post reported. Nope, TSA people, you weren't hallucinating à la Macbeth. It was an actual antique dagger, which the woman, 26-year-old Gabrielle Olsen of Washington Heights, told police was given to her by her father for protection.

And it's not like Olsen hadn't caught the TSA's eye. Before the TSA noticed the dagger they confiscated a bottle of liquid from Olsen. Then -- after she passed through the checkpoint -- they noticed the pointy thing on "a screening-machine X-ray."

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Cruise ships have never been something we've found appealing, personally. Really, there's something about being trapped in a large vessel on the open sea with a bunch of people we don't know that has always kind of freaked us out. The boats themselves haven't been doing a lot to prove us wrong recently. First, the Costa Concordia tragedy. Now, CNN reports outbreaks of Norovirus on two Princess Cruise ships. Cruise ships, you aren't doing yourselves any favors here.

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R.L. Stine, wondering why this piece took so long.

Sometimes in the nonstop world of blogging you do something that takes a little more time, and which you're very excited about. But because of the nonstop world of blogging, and because you want to do it right, and because it takes more time to do that, the idea or scoop or interview you were so excited about gets pushed to the side, to do at night or on weekends, or in the rare blogging breaks. And sometimes by the time you get around to it, the peg -- and occasionally, the enthusiasm -- has been lost. Such pieces have been sacrificed for the greater good of "feeding the beast." They never get their day in the sun, and that is sad.

Today is my last day at the Voice (thank you, readers, coworkers, Tony Ortega, who hired me and set the last two crazy/wonderful years in motion, and everyone who supported and/or stayed friends with me throughout). And thank you to everyone I ever spoke to whose words didn't make it onto the published page. This one is for you.

On Thursday, January 13, 2011, I left my blog-shackles and my computer and trekked from Voice HQ to the Upper West Side to meet R.L. Stine at a Mexican restaurant for lunch and, presumably, what would become a published interview. He had been the inspiration, on the basis of a tweet, for my first viral blog post, "50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City." I wanted to thank him for that (I think/hope I picked up the tab!), and also, I mean, it's R.L. Stine, a name I'd seen on bookshelves since childhood, a writing success story, an inspiration. He had a cranberry juice and his usual choice from the lunch menu; I drank Diet Coke and then coffee and, too nervous to eat, picked at whatever lunch I ordered. Three hours later we parted ways, me with a signed copy of one of his books from the Goosebumps stories; him with my promise to send him the link to the piece, "as soon as it was up."

That promise comes due today. Here is the lost (and, now, found) interview with R.L. Stine.

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Paper cuts are THE WORST.

Today is a day that strikes fear in the hearts of some and general amusement or even glad tidings in the hearts of stauncher types. It is Friday the 13th. If you are one of the terrified, you suffer from "paraskevidekatriaphobia," a potentially crippling disorder that means you are among plenty of people who cannot possibly pronounce that word and are also afraid of Friday the 13th. Which is, as we mentioned, today.

For the record, fear of Friday the 13th is also called "friggatriskaidekaphobia," which is equally hard to say and terrifying.

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Following up on the elevator tragedy that caused the death of Suzanne Hart, a Y&R ad executive working at 285 Madison Avenue, the New York Post reports that Transel, the elevator maintenance company responsible for the elevator (work was reportedly done hours before the accident that killed Hart), has been sued at least eight times from people who say they were injured in its various -- some 2,500 in the city -- elevators.

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Alert: You need a new phone.

Today between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., the Office of Emergency Management will be sending out texts that say "Severe Alert" or "Extreme Alert." This would be frightening, perhaps even terrifying, but, not to worry, this is only a test! In partnership with the Department of Homeland Security, the FCC, and others, the OEM is conducting this test of Wireless Emergency Alerts, a new free emergency notification system that will allow government officials to send geographically targeted alerts in case of danger to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Sprint customers. While random text messages on our cell phone generally send us into a tizzy even if they only say "Hey," or "What are you up to?" these practice texts are for our safety, and should be met with much joy.

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Wild turkeys are no laughing matter, as one local news reporter found out the hard way earlier this year. Well, it's turkey time again, and they're encroaching closer. And closer. Wild turkeys have been a problem on Staten Island for a while now, and there have been numerous discussions on what to do to keep them in check and/or do away with them (cooking them, for instance, has been suggested). Some want to save them. And this year, it seems, they are more terrifying than ever. They are next level wild turkeys.

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Will Skynet become self-aware as well?

This Wednesday, a day after we narrowly avoid being hit by an asteroid, America will face yet another threat: television interruption. On November 9th, the FCC, FEMA, Homeland Security, and the National Weather Service will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System. Mediaite reports this is the organizations' "first all-inclusive, national test," and it will occur at 2 p.m. EST. For a couple minutes this week, there will be nothing on TV. May God help us all.

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