Here's your Friday Lance Lawson mystery. Solution at the bottom.

YOU DID WHAT? This has become world-wide news. Poor kid.

You suspect the "row" was "brief" because the kid crumpled after the first blow. Gawker mines the story for yuks, adding

If it's someone's unhappiness, it's Gawker-fodder.

Assuming the story's true, that is. The newspaper industries of other lands have a fanciful approach to truth when it comes to little slice-of-life stories. Not to say that the American press hasn't been guilty of that from time to time.

While it's fun to mock Gawker, sister-site i09 delivers interesting science almost every day. Today there's this:

Wow! I know! Incredible, isn't it? Actually, it is. That's an account of the Mayan climate during their civilization's rise and fall, based on evidence in a stalagmite so rich in data scientists could see climate variations in six-month increments. You're thinking: stalagmite. Is that the hanging one or the pointy-up one? Pointy-up. The others are stalactites. Here's an easy way to remember: "Mite makes right." Because if you laid down on your left side and raised your right arm it would be a stalagmite. I just made that up.

VIDEO "This Is Why You Don't Buy an iPad From Walmart," the feller says, as he goes on to show how his employees treat merchandise back in the stock room. Since it contains profanity, we won't embed it here, lest it leak all over the site and into the office, and someone hears a curse word and suddenly thinks it's 1985 again.

Link's here. Question: fake? You could say it has all the hallmarks of a real idiocy - shot in portrait mode instead of landscape, faces shown, location announced - but that could make it fake as well. Then again, you would have to be as stupid as the people in this video to post the video.

Usually we find out what happens to these people, so stay tuned.

SOLUTION If they'd never seen the bottle before - sorry, if NIETHER had seen the bottle - how did they know it was cyanide?

They'll be kicking themselves about that one all the way to the gas chamber.