Conan O'Brien had the funniest wisecrack this week about 101-year-old Florence Detlor, who was introduced to the world as the oldest person to be using Facebook. Conan: "She said 'I'd like to waste what little time I have left.'" Early in the week, Facebook's Chief Something Officer Sheryl Sandberg had tweeted written on her FB timeline that Detlor was "the oldest registered Facebook user." Well, maybe not after all. After Mashable ran a story about that, it followed up: "A commenter on our earlier story pointed us to the Facebook page of his great-grandmother, Peggy Geithrie ... Peggy was born in 1908 -- making her a spritely 104, or three years older than Florence." Hang in there, Flo. Your time may come yet. Note to budding journalists - here's a great way to do your research: write wrong information and wait for commenters to correct you. HuffPo's headline, on its amended story, retroactively calls Flo "one of the oldest registered Facebook users." Incidentally, both women were in their forties until recently; they aged rapidly after buying shares of Facebook stock.

Speaking of transcendent human experiences, it's time for Burning Man, the fabulous, flaming, not-safe-for-work festival of highbrow debauchery in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. This year's theme is Fertility 2.0. Can't make it? Ustream has a live video feed and words of explanation swiped from burningman.com: "Black Rock City is a kind of Petri dish. Theme camps cling in fertile clusters to its latticework of streets, artworks tumble out of it, like pollen on the air. These nodes of interaction mutate, grow and reproduce their kind, only to effloresce and spread across five continents. This year's art theme contemplates the tendency of any being or living system to create abundant life." You had us at effloresce! Of course there is the official Burning Blog. A sample reading: "We are told by reliable people with direct knowledge of the situation that there are more law enforcement personnel here than in previous years, and they are keeping a higher profile. More cars than ever before are being pulled over and searched as soon as they pass the Greeters' stations. And almost any infraction will be cited, so make sure your tail lights are working."

Slate celebrates the festival with a multipart series of dispatches entitled "Why Would Anyone Go to Burning Man?" (mechanized gongs are cited). Laughing Squid offers up a gallery of brilliant fest photos by "Neil Girling of The Blight." Boing Boing presents a matrix of Instagram images "by long-time Burner Aaron Muszalski" and sends out a miss-you message to desert revelers: "To all out there as I type this, have lots of sex and fire and drugs and candyraving and shirtcocking for me" (you don't want to know). Reminder to candyravers and shirtcockers: make sure your tail lights are working.

Did you know that Burning Man "operates on a gift economy. The only things for sale are ice and coffee. Everything else you better hope you brought with you, or have faith someone will gift it," PandoDaily reports. One gift you can get is an app called "Time To Burn," which helps attendees plan their BM schedules, a task not so simple due to the many possibilities there: "Despite the hippy, raver, 'Rich Kids of Instagram' reputation of Burning Man, the variety of activities demonstrates the diverse interests of Burners." 

Samsung has been licking its wounds after losing a kajillion buck intellectual property lawsuit to Apple (a company that has never borrowed any ideas). The NY Times said Samsung will be fine and the biggest losers will be consumers, because phone makers will pass along Apple licensing fees to shoppers, and now the next great phone might never come to market. "I disagree," says Daring Fireball. "What this verdict should prevent is any of them making phones that are disturbingly similar to Apple's." In probably related news, Samsung became the first phone maker to show a Windows 8 phone, which is disturbingly dissimilar to the iPhone. Says Bits: "Samsung in the past has been quiet about its support for Windows Phone, but perhaps now it will be more enthusiastic about working with Microsoft in the aftermath of its patent battle with Apple."

While it men were burning it up in Nevada, and the GOP was dodging hurricanes in Florida, President Obama was busy doing an AMA- that means "ask me anything" - on Reddit. We learned that his favorite basketball player is Michael Jordan and that "we will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody ." AllThingsD interviewed Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who said they'd been trying to snag Obama for years and suddenly got a ping: "POTUS is doing an AMA." Ohanian added, "Nothing different about this, except for keeping it a secret. Also, the President only has thirty minutes or so to answer questions, which we made sure they said up front." If you believe some sources, the Obama team could have saved time and written their own questions.