Yes, folks, there are televisions bolted to the tops of gas pumps in LA, or at least at the gas stations that my cow-orkers and I visited during our time on the west coast. They're all tuned to local news stations or CNN so that you can keep an eye on your stock prices or the traffic situation in LA while you're gassing up.

I was half-expecting to see a women pushing a baby carriage with a television in it down the sidewalk whilst pumping fuel.

It seems that LA police completely missed something shady happening that was not only reported by the public but recorded by a securicam: J. Random Stranger poured a bottle of mercury out on a subway platform, and the hazmat crew arrived eight hours later to clean up the spill. The Joint Terrorism Task Force says that this wasn't even a criminal act, which it probably wasn't but for future reference it actually is because mercury is toxic, and in fact there are special procedures that must be followed to clean it up. However, the guy who spilled the mercury hunted …