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I'm sure Emma Bunton will be very pleased.

I'm still hoping for a North American release of the Tamagotchi Plus. Spreading a Tamagotchi plague via its IR port might be cool, and the only way to stop a plague of Tamagotchis. For great justice!

Phones also make poor anal sextoys.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_207728.html?m enu=news.quirkies

A young Chinese tiger keeper has been mauled to death after apparently trying to defecate on one of his big cats.

The 19-year-old appears to have climbed the railings of the Bengal tiger cage and pulled his trousers down.

Evidence at the scene of the death at the Jinan animal park included toilet paper, excrement and a trouser belt.

Zoo officials think Xu Xiaodong either slipped into the cage or was pulled in by one of the four angry tigers.

According to the South China Morning Post, the man told a co-worker he needed to go to the toilet but police were called when he failed to return.

They found his body lying on the ground surrounded by tigers. The teenager had reportedly been bitten in the neck and was covered in blood.

Police believe Xu climbed the wall of a partially constructed building used to raise the tigers to relieve himself. They said the smell probably caused the tigers to pounce.

You can see more stories about tigers and zoos on Ananova, or read our Animal attacks file.

A young Chinese tiger keeper has been mauled to death after apparently trying to defecate on one of his big cats.

The 19-year-old appears to have climbed the railings of the Bengal tiger cage and pulled his trousers down.

Evidence at the scene of the death at the Jinan animal park included toilet paper, excrement and a trouser belt.

Zoo officials think Xu Xiaodong either slipped into the cage or was pulled in by one of the four angry tigers.

According to the South China Morning Post, the man told a co-worker he needed to go to the toilet but police were called when he failed to return.

They found his body lying on the ground surrounded by tigers. The teenager had reportedly been bitten in the neck and was covered in blood.

Police believe Xu climbed the wall of a partially constructed building used to raise the tigers to relieve himself. They said the smell probably caused the tigers to pounce.

You can see more stories about tigers and zoos on Ananova, or read our Animal attacks file.

I worked on the http://www.ananova.com/ website, which was originally built on Tamino. Tamino couldn't handle the load and was a nightmare to admin at the time. Doubtless SoftwareAG will have fixed the lack of backup and restore tools by now. Not soon enough for us to migrate the whole thing onto Oracle shortly after release though.

This technology is really invisibility in the sense that it stops light scattering, but for visible light would only work for microscopic items...

Which must be working because right now I so not see many single microscopic items anyway...

It can't be used to conceal guns from Xrays, which use 0.1nm-20nm wavelegths.

Hiding missiles from radio based radar? Possible?

So shielding from visible light would be possible only for microscopic objects; larger ones could be hidden only to long-wavelength radiation such as microwaves. This means that the technology could not be used to hide people or vehicles from human vision.

Also the 'inventiveness' of the invisibility cloak is much less than its engineering feat.

We all have our own ideas about projecting the view behind your onto the front... from all angles... technically how to do it flexible, and stop illumination / shadow is very hard.

Not impossible, with some very clever technology that can 'feel' its own shape, and sense light conditions, can absorb almost all light (be dark even in bright light, if a shadow is behind you), and shine as bright as the sun on a rock (if you are in the shade, but a bright rock is behind you, and you cannot use the sun on the material to compensate)

This would require some l33t processing skills to handle the data.

Here is the link with a picture http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_747591.htm

It is not a 'magic cloak,' however.

Like this?

Well, that actually requires a special viewfinder, so it's not quite as cool, but it sure *looks* awesome. Better than the "spot the spaceship" pic, anyway.

How long til I can buy this stuff at Walmart?

A (slightly hysterical) page on TV licensing: here. Half way down the page is a list of press articles including some on TVL excesses, like 800,000 people accidentally threatened by prosecution , or this guy whose house was broken into by TVL, or this one, which refers to TVL as 'menacing the public with heavy-handed advertising' and using 'inappropriate tactics'.

Well, then, we should change the Linux logo, too, right? Cause according to the latest news, they tend to be gay and some religious groups might be offended... :)

As everyone knows hamster power is just about ISO standard by now. Why would they reinvent the hamster wheel yet again?

Medics have warned that Jordan's breasts could explode if leeches get to suck them in the jungle.

Upset? They'd go INSANE! They sell so much Spam in Hawaii (6.9 million cans a year) that there's actually competition in the canned meat trade that Hormel has had to try to counter withSpecial Hawaiian Collector's Edition Spam.

Of course, by 2006, the Internet will be dead.

Apparently Mexican priests are also interested !
But the funny part is that (obviously) the mobile phone operators are against it but it also seems that it could contravene the EU legislation. So more is expected to come from this.

Catholic, are you?

Jedi perhaps? The movement, which started in New Zealand, is now a legal religion according to census officials in the UK, although it endures religious persecution in Australia, where people can be fined for declaring their faith.

"May the Force be with you"

"... and also with you." (Catholics will get that one)

I'm not sure how Paramount will solve their problem. XXXXL fans can usually be shifted with a trail of doughnuts.

What if it's just overkill for the records?

Maybe he was a dinosaur kangaroo?

Here's a guy who is gradually turning himself into a tiger. For real ...

I always suspected that the native name of your town, and the local features affected your accent (explains Liverpool and Stoke)

I read somewhere that the Liverpool accent was down to the industrial pollution but as the air has grown cleaner the children are merely learning the accent from their parents.

I've found a reference for the pollution theory: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_217094.html

• Argentine Ants Invasion: Success Tied to Reduced Genetic Variation
• Supercolony of ants found (Europe; Mirrored articles: #1 and #2)
• Invading Ants Press United Front in California
• Argentine Ants Threaten Californian Horned Lizards
• It's the weather
• Giant mutant ant colony found in Australia (similar story.
• Might not be 'supercolony' after all: #1 and #2.

Okay, i can understand some more with what you are saying, but i was applying this to more than 1 hemisphere. For example, in the US, the word "fanny" means your bum. But in the UK, it means vagina. Explain how that should be treated. But then people already do, they accept that differing countries have different usage of the word.
What worries me more is the way people text each other and abbreviate everything to fit in a small message AND then write like that as well in real life.
If people use words the way they want then won't they hit a wall if applying for a job or filling in important documents as they travel through life?
Can it change to fast for a dictionary to catch up? "Bling" is now a word and "Bling Bling" is now a phrase in the dictionary.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_765279.html?m enu=news.quirkies/
Also, I'd like to add that once I created 2 words for myself to help in my course work at college, one was the word "sociality", meaning that state of mind of a group of people, akin to a persons personality. The second word was "nymphomation", but then i did a google search and found somebody else had beaten me to it and was partially common usage. Its simply means an overload or an overdose of information for a person.
Irony however, is just one of those words which is hard to explain to some, but then you say, (i think) that i shouldn't explain it to them?

The future is Japan, and in Japan, you can have an invisibility cloak. Welcome to the world of tomorrow.

If you want to see fake talking heads, try Ananova video reports.

The Honda walking robot, though, is for real. They have a clue.

There was a guy in Croatia who made a nice income from the local version of the show. I think he was eventually banned as a phone a friend. Here you go.

And now they've got Spock's ears.

Especially if your values are this extreme [warning! Not for the squeammish!]

If his first enemy would be Monkey Man.

More here....

New Delhi residents fear 'Monkey Man'

New India's 'monkey man' branded imaginary

India's Monkey Man and the Politics of Mass Hysteria

Police suspect 'monkey man' is alien or remote-controlled robot

No, they have PlayStation2s running Linux.

He describes himself as "uniquely bright," but admits he hasn't done anything spectacular to merit this title.

What an ignorant twit. Some of the most brilliant people on the planet never did "anything spectacular to merit this title". Do a google for Grady Towers - a guy with an IQ that I guarantee to be at least two sigma above yours, and probably three or four who was a security guard at the time of his murder.

There are many absolutely brilliant people out there who will never do anything "spectacular". Some by choice (the concept of Atlas Shrugged is quite real). Some by mandate (Robert Jordan was denied a position on the New London, CT police force because his IQ of 125 was considered "too high" - the courts agreed that if New London wanted cops with an IQ of 120 or lower then that was their right.

Don't lose sight of the issue with brighter people being more likely to not fit in as well with others and miss out on all of the social promotions that many others have.

I realize that a lot of geniuses didn't do well in high school, but then, they weren't labeled such until after they did something to prove themselves.

On the Stanford-Binet scale, a genius is one with a score of 140 or higher. They don't have to do anything else to "prove" themselves, just score at that level. Unfortunately, with higher IQs come a far greater incidence of poor vision and mental illness - including depression, which can go a long way toward hindering this great and majestic sign of brilliance that you demand.

It is nothing shocking to find somebody who is profoundly gifted to do poorly in school. Social issues, boredom and/or other special needs can all go a long way towards lowering that GPA. The claim "too smart for their education" as this parent mocks is in fact quite possible. Difficult for many to understand, but possible nonetheless.

A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren't having sex.

Come on! That this is the right place for the just in case link!

just in case.....you happen to be a leader of a free world.

My cell phone can barely be called a phone based upon it's service track and they want to make it my next PC?

While I sincerely doubt that phones will be the next PC, I do think that you'll see some merging between the various carry on devices. Imagine for a moment, something about the size of a standard Palm Pilot or PocketPC device. It's fully connected to the Internet via wireless, has a built in harddrive, and a pencil thin pull out "handset" that talks to the main unit via Bluetooth.

This device would let you check your email, store extra files (which can be synced via bluetooth), keeps track of your calendar and alerts, and would allow an exchange of business cards via wireless connections (IR or Bluetooth). When a phone call comes in, it will buzz until you remove the handset (fitted similar to a the stylus of a typical Palm) and press the accept button. Notes can be entered via handwriting recognition, or a virtual keyboard projected onto a surface.

Now you may not find this device tremendously useful. But it would be a God-send for people who carry a Cell Phone, PDA, BlackBerry, and Laptop.

It's interesting to note that Manchester United paid 30 million for Rio Ferdinand from Leeds United (this is English Premier League Football, for those not UK based) which sort of sums up the UK attitude to space travel. We pay roughly equivalent amounts to move a footballer about 65 miles as we do to send a robot explorer to a different planet in search of life....

Which is a more popular topic in a bar (or anywhere, really), the search for the Higgs Boson, or 'Who will win the league' ?

Wow. I have no idea what you just said, but it reminded me of the Hit Song Science program which is the music industry software that predicts whether a tune is going to be a "hit" or a "miss"

Appropriately enough for this thread, this article has a quote from Polyphonic HMI's chief executive Mike McCready "There are a limited number of mathematical formulas for hit songs. We don't know why."

Once they open-source those mathematical formulas that they've derived, then we can start using all the music development software to get rich.

Bzzzt! Wrong, sorry, next contestant.

There is an existing Working Time Directive (not with the force of law, but which would be supported by laws enacted in each EU state) which restricts the hourly work to 48 hours. Only one country, the UK, has an opt-out option, which allows employers to ask their employees to work longer, if the latter agree. That opt-out is now the subject of some debate.

For more information, check this link.

Yes, and what's more, it's a dancing Bear!

Ah - such an amazing Bear, even though it dances slowly and poorly, it does indeed dance.

Let me know when it can ride a bicycle.

Another Dancing Bear story.

aaaaahhhhh, JANET...

So... It's a big meteor, or a volcano or maybe, just maybe... It was caused by a verneshot

As someone who's partner is a planner, and who's learned to appreciate all kinds of architecture as a result, I have to say that I find your thinking rather blinkered.

Yes, you may not like it, and yes, it might not be a clone of every other building in the area but that doesn't make it a bad thing. If everyone thought as you do then we wouldn't have the Gugenheim Museums of New York and Bilbao, The Sydney Opera House, La Defense (in Paris), Swiss Re (in London) or the planned "Shard of Glass" (also in London).

And those are just modern examples. Virtually every noteworthy building in history has been on the receiving end of flak for being an eyesore at one time or another, yet today they are regarded as classic examples of their time.

What would you rather have architects do? Design drab, uninteresting buildings? Isn't physical architecture a valid artform? Why not? Because you say so? Why is the building "pretty ugly"? Because you say so? Ah, so you've studied architecture at length, have you? You're an expert on the aesthetics of the built environment? No? I didn't think so.

How would you feel about a world where everyone was required to dress the same way as people have always dressed, like the same art and music that people have always liked, and enjoy only the things that have been enjoyed for ages? Would you really want to live in a world that stood culturally still? Well, you might, but I don't.

Try and appreciate that things change, and that, just because you don't like it, that doesn't mean everyone agrees with you. I guarantee you that, in twenty years time, 90 percent of the people who feel that the building is "pretty ugly" now will be looking at the same building and calling it fantastic.

In fact, the building is beautiful right now. Anyone with a trained eye would rattle off a whole lot of reasons why, just as a good art student could tell you why Picasso's work is genius.

What you call an eyesore is actually anything but. That you don't see it is a real pity.

Sounds good. Can I get this for my Inflateable Mateable?
Though I don't want to go as far with it as this guy!

That's why I eat boogers.

News story and company site

"An Austrian architecture firm has designed a high-tech monument and grave site concept to be available to clients in the United States beginning this summer. The design combines earth, water and light with stainless steel, solar cells and an LED display reminiscent of a calculator."

I wonder if it runs Linux?

Penis explodes during sex

Doctors in Romania are treating a 28-year-old whose penis exploded while he was making love to his girlfriend.

Ilarie Coroiu was taken to hospital in the Transylvanian town of Cluj after his girlfriend, Magdalena, 18, "felt something strange" and noticed that the bed was covered in blood.

Dr Angela Domocos, head of the accident and emergency department at Cluj General Hospital, said: "It is very rare for this to happen. We call it an exploded penis because it happens when the blood cavities in the penis burst.

"I don't know what this couple were playing at, but there must have been tremendous pressure inside the penis to make this happen."

Mr Coroiu is now recovering after an operation to stop the bleeding.

Zoo keeper mauled to death 'after defecating on tiger'

A young Chinese tiger keeper has been mauled to death after apparently trying to defecate on one of his big cats.

The 19-year-old appears to have climbed the railings of the Bengal tiger cage and pulled his trousers down.

Evidence at the scene of the death at the Jinan animal park included toilet paper, excrement and a trouser belt.

Zoo officials think Xu Xiaodong either slipped into the cage or was pulled in by one of the four angry tigers.

According to the South China Morning Post, the man told a co-worker he needed to go to the toilet but police were called when he failed to return.

They found his body lying on the ground surrounded by tigers. The teenager had reportedly been bitten in the neck and was covered in blood.

Police believe Xu climbed the wall of a partially constructed building used to raise the tigers to relieve himself. They said the smell probably caused the tigers to pounce.

You can see more stories about tigers and zoos on Ananova, or read our Animal attacks file.

Zoo keeper mauled to death 'after defecating on tiger'

A young Chinese tiger keeper has been mauled to death after apparently trying to defecate on one of his big cats.

The 19-year-old appears to have climbed the railings of the Bengal tiger cage and pulled his trousers down.

Evidence at the scene of the death at the Jinan animal park included toilet paper, excrement and a trouser belt.

Zoo officials think Xu Xiaodong either slipped into the cage or was pulled in by one of the four angry tigers.

According to the South China Morning Post, the man told a co-worker he needed to go to the toilet but police were called when he failed to return.

They found his body lying on the ground surrounded by tigers. The teenager had reportedly been bitten in the neck and was covered in blood.

Police believe Xu climbed the wall of a partially constructed building used to raise the tigers to relieve himself. They said the smell probably caused the tigers to pounce.

You can see more stories about tigers and zoos on Ananova, or read our Animal attacks file.

Zoo keeper mauled to death 'after defecating on tiger'

A young Chinese tiger keeper has been mauled to death after apparently trying to defecate on one of his big cats.

The 19-year-old appears to have climbed the railings of the Bengal tiger cage and pulled his trousers down.

Evidence at the scene of the death at the Jinan animal park included toilet paper, excrement and a trouser belt.

Zoo officials think Xu Xiaodong either slipped into the cage or was pulled in by one of the four angry tigers.

According to the South China Morning Post, the man told a co-worker he needed to go to the toilet but police were called when he failed to return.

They found his body lying on the ground surrounded by tigers. The teenager had reportedly been bitten in the neck and was covered in blood.

Police believe Xu climbed the wall of a partially constructed building used to raise the tigers to relieve himself. They said the smell probably caused the tigers to pounce.

You can see more stories about tigers and zoos on Ananova, or read our Animal attacks file.