ASYLUM - For all mankind

(Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.)

A cancer vaccine being developed to treat non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was made using genetically engineered tobacco plants.

The vaccine works by pumping the body full of the exact same protein that makes up the surface of cancerous cells. Researchers have found that this excess protein causes the immune system to see the cancer as a danger, triggering killing cells to destroy tumors.

Through a complicated process, scientists have figured out how to quickly grow these proteins inside of tobacco leaves. The leaves are then ground up with the essential elements separated out and injected into patients.

Needless to say, we applaud any victory in the war against cancer, and anxiously await the genetically engineered ice cream that cures obesity.

The tough thing about being a rapper is that there is such a wide gap between image and reality, and the chasm leaves a lot of room for humiliation.

Did you tap dance as a kid? Have you ever had braces? If you want to be a rapper, you better burn those pictures. Complex has collected the most embarrassing moments in the history of rap, complete with an extremely unfortunate picture of a high-school age Ashanti.

Some of our favorite embarrassing moments in rap:

-- Vanilla Ice appearing in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II." Go ninja, go ninja, go!

-- DMX getting busted for identity theft. Identity theft? That's not so tough, dog.

-- Kanye West dressing as Jesus on the cover of Rolling Stone.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments.

Elsewhere in the manly "sack pack" universe today ...

Best Firefox Aps for College Students (CO-ED)
Tom Cruise Not in "Top Gun 2" (Holy Taco)
Ten Reasons Josh Childress Signed with Greece (Uncoached)
Bringing the "Kicked in the Nuts" Record Home (Tasty Booze)
When Boxing Kangaroos Attack (Uber)
Bad Piercing Idea (Afrojacks)
Giant Snake Eats Cameraman (Linkognito)

(All the delicious pickin's from this week's world of entertainment ... )

Books: "My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life" is a better-than-average memoir from the son of Spock, Adam Nimoy.

DVD: For the perfect puree of nerdy and hilarious, check out "Robot Chicken: Star Wars." Sample sketches include "Darth Vader's Collect Call" and "Inside the AT-AT."

Games: "NCAA Football 09 " may not be a major departure from previous versions, but we love that "new game smell."

Music: U2's first three albums, "Boy","October," and "War" have been remastered. Get the standard disc or a deluxe double version including B-sides, live tracks and rarities.

Film/TV: Starting this Sunday, it's SHARK WEEK baby! Please send take-out; we'll be on the couch.

In what is seriously the most terrifying news story we have ever read, 30 man-eating bears are currently holding a group of Russian geologists hostage at their remote survey site.

The bears, reacting to a fish shortage, began their human-hunting rampage last week, when a massive brown bear killed two of the scientists. Officials said helicopters can't fly in bad weather, forcing the geologists to remain in camp with weapons ready as 10-foot-tall bears roam around outside. The Kamchatka brown bear (pictured) is one of the world's largest bear species, weighing nearly three quarters of a ton.

A spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry said: "The people inside are scared by the invasion of bears. The bears are hungry -- for some reason there is not enough food for them this summer." An all-terrain vehicle is on its way to the camp, where its crew will await government approval to shoot the bears.

While we feel sorry for both the starving bears and the terrified humans, we can't help but wonder if this story doesn't prove that Stephen Colbert was right all along.

(Every week, political pundits grace us with gaffes, hyperbole, violations of logic and just plain untruths. Every week, we try to catch them because we are smart alecks.)

This week, we celebrate:

Chris Matthews from "Hard Ball"
Chris "I Felt This Thrill Going up My Leg" Matthews went on Leno and explained how Obama's oratory skills had caused a funny feeling in his pants.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade
During a radio interview about Iraq policy, Kilmeade dropped this bomb of a comparison:

"You understand that convoy attacks are down to one percent -- that's the same percentage that's in America! I think there's just as many convoy attacks in America as there are in Iraq!" While there is little doubt the situation in Iraq has improved, there is also little doubt there hasn't been a convoy attack in America since the days of the Oregon Trail.

More fantastic punditry after the jump.

You've ordered a case of Red Bull and your Boba Fett costume is almost finished. Your phasers are set for stun and you're ready for ComicCon, the Nerdapalooza of movies, comic books and gaming that starts today in San Diego.

But there are some other things to fill out your personal utility belt that you can only get once you're inside San Diego's convention center. There's the Veronica Mars mini-bust ($55), the Dude action figure from "The Big Lebowski" ($25) and the scantily clad Phantom Zone Supergirl, worth every hand-stitched penny at $140 (shown at left).

But there's some gear that money can't buy -- for those, you'll have to take a page from the goth handbook and pay for your toys in blood.

See the rest of the goods you'll want to decorate your dorm room, cubicle or basement apartment in your parents' house at Action Figure.com.

A few weeks back, we brought you reggae chef John Bull's video on how to prepare jerk chicken. That's a pretty standard Jamaican dish, so for this next installment, we opted for a cuisine a little bit more on the exotic side. If you happen to have some goat meat lying around, give it try. Irie! [via Dayrobber]

On this day in 1832, Benjamin Bonneville led the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains at Wyoming's South Pass. It was an important moment in pioneering history, and a big step toward allowing America to achieve its vision of Manifest Destiny. Most of us who grew up in the 1980s, however, aren't familiar this bit of history.

Why? Because we spent our childhoods gleaning everything we needed to know about the pioneers from the "Oregon Trail" computer game. With its primitive (yet oddly lush) graphics and addictive gameplay, "Oregon Trail" helped a generation of kids learn about everything from buffalo slaughter to death by dysentery.

So we decided that on this special anniversary, we would reexamine exactly what we learned from this classic piece of educational software.