Slashdot Mirror

Ponca City, We love you writes "The Telegraph reports that researchers using tests originally designed to demonstrate the development of language, pre-language and basic arithmetic in human children have found that dogs are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures, can count up to five and can perform simple mathematical calculations putting them on par with the average two-year-old child. While most dogs understand simple commands such as sit, fetch and stay, a border collie tested by Professor Coren showed a knowledge of 200 spoken words. 'Obviously we are not going to be able to sit down and have a conversation with a dog, but like a two-year-old, they show that they can understand words and gestures,' says Professor Stanley Coren, a leading expert on canine intelligence at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Dogs can tell that one plus one should equal two and not one or three,' says Coren, adding that dogs 'can also deliberately deceive, which is something that young children only start developing later in their life.' Coren believes centuries of selective breeding and living alongside humans has helped to hone the intelligence of dogs. 'They may not be Einsteins, but are sure closer to humans than we thought.'"

The Narrative Fallacy writes "All 50 states in the US require the 50,000 people convicted of sexual offenses to sign a register so that their whereabouts can be tracked and monitored. The Telegraph reports that now users of the iPhone Offender Locator application can search for sex offenders living nearby a friend or colleague whose address is stored in their Apple iPhone address book, or they can type in a street address to generate a list of convicted sex offenders in the local area. 'Offender Locator gives everyone the ability to find out if registered sex offenders live in their area,' says the application developer, ThinAir Wireless, on its iTunes page. 'Knowledge equals safety. They know where you and your family are...now it's time to turn the tables so that you know where they live and can make better decisions about where to allow your kids to play.' Offender Locator uses the iPhone's built-in GPS to pinpoint the user's location, and then provide a map listing sex offenders in the local area. Tapping on one of the 'pins' dropped on to the map brings up a photograph of the offender, as well as their address, date of birth and list of convictions."

91-year-old Louise Brown is The Authors Guild's worst nightmare. Since 1946 she has read about a dozen books a week and has never paid for a single page. Now she is on the brink of checking out book number 25,000. Most impressive is the fact that Louise has never incurred a single late fee. Janice Goldie, of Dumfries and Galloway Libraries, said, "We are amazed at Mrs. Brown's achievements. When she first joined the library service she was allowed to borrow six books a week. This has now risen to 12 and she always takes her full quota. Although she has borrowed nearly 25,000 books, she has never once had to pay an overdue charge. The staff at Stranraer Library think she's a remarkable lady and look forward to her weekly visits. They would like to know if anyone can beat her reading record."

eldavojohn writes "So, you can't find the time to leave the World of Warcraft to seek help for your World of Warcraft addiction? Sounds reasonable. Well, addiction therapists are coming to meet you so you don't have to quit playing as they counsel you and your addiction. From the leader of this initiative, Dr. Graham: 'We will be launching this project by the end of the year. I think it's already clear that psychiatrists will have to stay within the parameters of the game. They certainly wouldn't be wandering around the game in white coats and would have to use the same characters available to other players. Of course one problem we're going to have to overcome is that while a psychiatrist may excel in what they do in the real world, they're probably not going to be very good at playing World of Warcraft.' Send in the level 5 counselor and let the games begin!" What happens when the therapists become addicted?

His life was a carnival so it shouldn't come as a surprise that his death has turned into one too. The next act in the Michael Jackson circus is brought to you by LifeGem. The company, who specializes in turning human remains into precious stones, has purchased a lock of the dead singer's hair and plans on transforming it into diamonds that can be sold to adoring fans. "We are currently evaluating Jackson's hair sample to determine how many diamonds can be created. This will be a limited collection and we anticipate great interest," said Dean VandenBiesen, the founder of LifeGem. I hope in the near future there is a race to be the first country with a living Michael clone.

Scientists from the University of East Anglia are studying the potential health benefits of dark chocolate, and need 40 female volunteers who would like to eat chocolate every day for a year. The chocolate loving 40 must be post-menopausal and have type 2 diabetes so it can be determined if the flavonoid compounds in chocolate can reduce the risk of heart disease. Dr Peter Curtis, of the UEA's School of Medicine, said, "Our first volunteers are about to return for their final visit to see if the markers of heart health - such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels — have changed. A successful outcome could be the first step in developing new ways to improve the lives of people at increased risk of heart disease."

Officials from a noise pollution team are investigating claims that the children at Osmund and Andrew's Primary School laugh "unbearably" loudly. In addition to the excessive laughter, neighbors complain that the children kick footballs against the school's chain link fence, the sports teacher shouts during lessons, and the kitchen routinely runs out of cinnamon rolls on chili day. Headmaster John Thorpe said, "Children have to be educated somewhere and there are obvious good reasons why it should take place in residential areas. Bearing that in mind, it is inevitable that there will be a range of different responses to that from residents. We have always adopted a good neighbor policy and done whatever we can to mitigate disturbances. Some people will say that the sound of children laughing and playing together can be quite uplifting. As a teacher, I think it's good to hear children running around and thoroughly enjoying their lives."

370 children at Southway Junior School were surprised when a spaceship landed near their school. They were terrified when aliens invaded the classrooms and started to abduct teachers; and their parents are furious that school officials decided to put on this production to "develop youngsters' writing skills" without notifying them first. The school did have the foresight to inform the local police however. Thinking it was a great idea, the cops provided sirens and flashing blue lights to signify the landing of the spaceship. A parent who wished to remain anonymous said, "God only knows what the school was playing at. I mean, to shock children into thinking that the aliens have landed and have abducted a teacher is just a little too much for seven-year-olds. My daughter was deeply upset by it all and came home looking shell shocked. She wasn't sure what had happened and really wanted to know that everything was going to be alright."

Barence writes "Microsoft has confirmed it is preparing to launch a music streaming service. The service will be a direct rival to Spotify, hugely popular in the UK (but unavailable in the US), which allows users to stream music for free in return for listening to around a minute's worth of advertisements every half hour. 'It will be a similar principle to Spotify but we are still examining how the business model will work,' said Peter Bale, executive producer of MSN." The article claims that the new service will boost the popularity of the Zune player, though how this is to happen is not explained. There doesn't seem to be a close tie-in between device and service, as there is between the iPod and the iTunes Store.

Steve Henry and David Alberts have written a book, You Are Really Rich, You Just Don't Know It Yet, that tries to figure out the real world value of life's priceless moments. According to the authors, being told, "I love you" is worth £163,424, being in a stable relationship £154,849, and hanging out with your friends comes in at a measly £63,256. The values were determined by asking 1,000 people what made them happy and then comparing that event to the happiness they would feel after winning the lottery. "It was interesting when doing the research that very few people mentioned money and people focused on family occasion, hanging out with friends, having a quiet time on their own, seeing grandchildren and visiting places they had never seen before as things that made a real difference in their lives," said Alberts.

The Baltesz family is using a radical method to get their runaway dog to come back home. The family is marking trees, lampposts and the local streets with their own urine in the hopes it will lure their Labrador, Simon, back. Having presumably tried all methods that didn't involve pouring pee out of a soda bottle, the family decided this approach was the best. Mrs Baltesz told the Bristol Evening Post, "I know it sounds bizarre and I'm embarrassed to mention it but it makes sense if you think about it. Simon may pick up our scent because dogs have an incredibly powerful sense of smell. Despite having two other dogs, the house is so quiet without him."

An English court has ruled that David Peers is not allowed to be drunk anywhere in England or Wales until 2016. Peers has been charged 11 times for his drunken anti-social behavior, and has been arrested for fighting, verbally abusing town residents, and occasionally urinating on shop windows. Doug Stott, of Surrey Police, said, "David Peers has a history of drinking and disorderly behaviour. Despite extensive intervention by Surrey Police and our partner agencies, Peers has not shown a positive change in his behaviour and has continued to verbally abuse and be aggressive towards local businesses and residents."

More than 500 workers at Japan's, Keihin Electric Express Railway, must have their faces scanned each morning to determine their optimum smile. The "smile scan" analyzes a smile based on facial characteristics, from lip curves and eye movements to wrinkles. After the program scans you, it produces a smile rating that ranges from zero to 100 depending on the estimated potential of your biggest smile. If your number is sufficient, you can go about your day grinning like a maniac. If your smile number is too low the computer will give you a message such as, "lift up your mouth corners" or "you still look too serious." Every morning employees receive a printout of their daily smile which they are expected to keep with them throughout the day.

Luke Tipping, the Michelin-starred executive chef of Simpsons' in Birmingham, and Laslan's British Curry Award-winner Aktar Islam, have decided your baby should only eat the finest. They've come up with baby food that is worthy of a Michelin star including such favorites as: warm vermicelli pudding, scented with cinnamon and green cardamom, sprinkled with crush pistachio and rusk croutons, and dill-seasoned cheddar cheese fish pie accompanied with fresh broccoli and sweetcorn. Mr Tipping said, "There's nothing wrong with a baby eating a fresh meal, I would rather they did that than give them the usual processed stuff that's out there."

Half-pint HAL tips news of UK prosecution lawyers who are instructing police to study information on Wikipedia when preparing to give expert testimony in court. "Mike Finn, a weaponry specialist and expert witness in more than 100 cases, told industry magazine Police Review: 'There was one case in a Midlands force where police officers asked me to write a report about a martial art weapon. The material they gave me had been printed out from Wikipedia. The officer in charge told me he was advised by the CPS to use the website to find out about the weapon and he was about to present it in court. I looked at the information and some of it had substance and some of it was completely made up.' Mr. Finn, a former Metropolitan Police and City of London officer and Home Office adviser, added that he has heard of at least three other cases where officers from around the country have been advised by the CPS to look up evidence on Wikipedia."

motherpusbucket writes "The Telegraph reports that Japanese scientists hope to be breeding a so-called 'Super Tuna' within the next decade or so. They have about 60% of the genome mapped and expect to finish it in the next couple months. The new breed will grow faster, taste good, have resistance to disease and will totally kick your ass if you cross them."

Land Rover says their new S1 mobile is the world's strongest phone. Testing done by Land Rover and the staff at The Sun showed the S1 would still work after being stepped on by an elephant, run over by a Land Rover, dropped from a second-story window, buried in mud, soaked in a pint of beer, and roasted in an oven at 150 degrees centigrade. A forklift truck proved to be its match, and was able to crush the S1 under its three-tonne weight. The phone comes with 1,500 hours of battery life, a 2.0 megapixel camera, an extra loud ringtone and an unconditional three-year guarantee.

A marketing company in Newcastle got rid of Hawaiian shirt Fridays and their pants while they were at it in an attempt to improve morale. Naked Friday was the brainchild of business psychologist, David Taylor. He convinced the folks at design and marketing onebestway that stripping off their pants would also strip away walls blocking good communication. Nearly everyone went the full monty at the office, with only one man and two women choosing to wear underwear. Sam Jackson, 23, the house manager, was the only woman to go fully naked. She said, "It was brilliant. Now that we've seen each other naked, there are no barriers."

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that dozens of users of the recently released iPhone 3GS have reported overheating issues, with some iPhone owners unable to pick up the device because the handset gets so hot to the touch, while others say the casing turns pink with the heat. 'I am definitely experiencing issues with the iPhone running warm and quick battery life lost,' writes Tom Goldstein on one discussion board. 'The phone seems to warm up almost immediately if I am doing anything that pulls data over the network.' Some users have said the device has been too hot to put to their ear while making a phone call, and others say the overheating seems to occur when owners are using the iPhone's mapping software, which uses the handset's built-in GPS technology. Melissa J. Perenson writes at PC World: 'I became aware the handset had become very hot. Very, very hot — not just on the back, but the entire length of the front face, too.' Some gadget experts believe faulty batteries could be the cause of overheating and poor battery life. 'My guess is there's going to be a whole lot of batteries affected because these [iPhones] are from very large production runs,' said Aaron Vronko, who fixes iPods and iPhones. 'If you have a problem in the design of a series of batteries, it's probably going to be spread to tens of thousands [of device], if not hundreds of thousands, and maybe more.'"

Complaints by activists started a two-month government investigation into whether or not Canterbury does enough to promote homosexual culture. The "sufficiently gay" seal of approval came after 60 days and a cost of thousands of pounds. The town council proved its gay friendliness by giving details of "touring plays and musicals, for example, which would be of interest to the LGBT community." Spokesman Rob Davies, said, "Obviously we're delighted with the outcome of the investigation. We feel we do a great deal for the gay community in Canterbury and we have always tried to support various gay events and promotions. But at the same time it is not the duty of any council to set up a gay bar — that's not what councils do."

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that scientists have found that if you want to get someone to do something, ask them in their right ear. Known as the 'right ear advantage,' scientists believe it is because information received through the right ear is processed by the left hand side of the brain which is more logical and better at deciphering verbal information than the right side of the brain. 'Talk into the right ear you send your words into a slightly more amenable part of the brain,' say researchers. The team, led by Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University of Chieti in central Italy, observed the behavior of hundreds of people in three nightclubs across the city where they intentionally addressed 176 people in either their right or their left ear when asking for a cigarette. They obtained significantly more cigarettes when they made their request in a person's right ear compared with their left. 'These results seem to be consistent with the hypothesized specialization of right and left hemispheres,' say researchers. 'We can also see this tendency when people use the phone, most will naturally hold it to their right ear.'"

Canadian scientists are breeding a type of cow that burps less, in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gases. Cows are responsible for almost 75% of total methane emissions, mostly coming from burps. Stephen Moore, professor of agricultural, food and nutritional science at the University of Alberta, hopes the refined bovines will produce 25 per cent less methane. Nancy Hirshberg, spokesman for Stonyfield Farm says, "If every US dairy farmer reduced emissions by 12 per cent it would be equal to about half a million cars being taken off the road."

tonywong writes "Mrs Ethelston's Church of England Primary School, in Uplyme, Devon, prohibited parents photographing their own children during a school event, claiming it was due to changes in child protection and images legislation. This may be harsh but not as bizarre as another UK school attempting to cover up photos of all the students with smiley faces last year. Perhaps the UK has more bogeymen per square kilometer (kilometre if you're a non USian) than the rest of the world, or is the UK on the leading edge of things-to-come?"

Continental Europeans are eating so many horses that EU officials are worried that vet drugs will start to enter people's diets. Their solution is to have all horse owners sign a pledge not to eat their animals. Anyone who just can't bear the idea of not eating a delicious horse barbecue faces prison time and an unlimited fine. Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, said, "I'd like to be a fly on the wall when the Queen and Princess Anne are asked to sign a form saying they're not going to eat their horses. Measures to stop the trade in horse flesh may be a good thing. But any common sense in Brussels is drowned by the sheer weight of ludicrous suggestions."

Scientists at the University of Sheffield have created a device dubbed the "cargo-screening ferret" that is able to detect drugs, weapons, and even illegal immigrants concealed in cargo containers. The 30cm-long robot is equipped with tiny sensors that are more sensitive than any currently employed in conventional cargo scanners. The ferret will attach itself magnetically to the inside of a cargo container and sweep it for contraband, while sending a steady stream of information back to its controller. Project leader Dr Tony Dodd said, "It's essential we develop something which is simple to operate and which border agents can have total confidence in. The ferret will be able to drop small probes down through the cargo and so pinpoint exactly where contraband is concealed."

chrb writes "Two days ago Slashdot discussed broke counties grinding their tarmac roads into gravel. Now the Telegraph reveals plans to raze huge sections of at least 50 US cities to the ground. The resulting smaller cities will be more economical to run, and the recovered land will be returned to nature."

There are fewer hassles for an adventurer or business traveler bigger than lugging around bags of silver and copper pieces. Luckily TG-Gold-Super-Markt has installed gold vending machines in 500 locations including train stations and airports all across Germany. The machines charge about 30% more than the current trading price for gold, and are updated every few minutes. All are closely monitored by cameras, and like 3rd and 4th edition, electrum pieces are not accepted.

hoytak writes "An expert in electoral fraud, professor Walter Melbane, has released a detailed analysis (PDF) of available data in Iran's controversial election (summary here). While he did not find significant indications of fraud, he does note that all the deviations from the predicted model are in Ahmadinejad's favor: 'In general, combining the 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that a substantial core of the 2009 results reflected natural political process... [These] stand in contrast to the unusual pattern in which all of the notable discrepancies between the support Ahmadinejad actually received and the support the model predicts are always negative. This pattern needs to be explained before one can have confidence that natural election processes were not supplemented with artificial manipulations.'" In related news, EsonLinji notes reports in the Seattle PI and other sources that the US State Department has asked Twitter to delay system maintenance to prevent cutting off Iranians who have been relying on the service during the post-election crisis. And if you would like to help ease the communication crunch, reader RCulpepper tips a blog post detailing how to set up a proxy server for users with Iranian IP addresses.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Jeff and Danielle Smith sent a photo of themselves with their two young children to family and friends as a Christmas card, and posted the image on her blog and a few social networking websites. Then, last month, a friend of the family was vacationing in the Czech Republic when he spotted a full size poster of the Missouri family's smiling faces in the window of a local supermarket in Prague, advertising a grocery delivery service. The friend snapped a few pictures and sent them to the Smiths, who were flabbergasted. Mario Bertuccio, who owns the Grazie store in Prague, admitted that he had found the photo online but thought it was computer-generated and promised to remove it, and 'We'll be happy to write an e-mail with our apology,' he says. Meanwhile Mrs. Smith has received 180,000 visitors and over 500 comments on her blog since she posted the story. She says she is glad the photo wasn't used in an unseemly manner. 'Interesting. Bizarre. Flattering, I suppose,' writes Mrs. Smith. 'But quite creepy.'"

eldavojohn writes "Winning the lottery requires incredible luck and one in a million odds. So does getting hit by a falling space rock. A 14-year-old German boy was granted a three-inch scar by the gods. A pea-sized meteorite smote young Gerrit Blank's hand before leaving a foot-sized crater on the road. The boy's account: 'At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder. The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road.' Curiously, the rock was magnetic, and tests were done to verify it is extraterrestrial. The Telegraph notes the only other recorded event of a meteorite striking a person was 'in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.' Space.com lists a few more anomalies and we discussed the probability of these things downing aircraft recently."

Socguy writes "More than 40,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked into the open when a 15ft crack appeared in a pipe leading to a cooling pond in the Sizewell A reactor in January 2007. This was only noticed by chance as a worker was sorting laundry in the area when it happened. Supposedly, a leak of this type should have set off alarms, however, the alarm in question appeared to be defective. Should this leak have gone unnoticed, there was a real likelihood of a full-scale meltdown."

After suffering a stroke, 69-year-old Ali Asghar was unlucky enough to get an ambulance driver who really, really, hated overtime. The driver allegedly refused to work beyond his shift and clocked out part-way through the trip to the hospital. Since it was 15 minutes past quitting time, the ambulance was taken to the depot where the next shift's driver took over and finally brought Mr. Asghar to the hospital. Asghar deteriorated during the drive and died soon after arriving at North Tees hospital's accident and emergency unit. An NHS source said, "Paramedics pride themselves on the public being able to feel they are in the best hands when they are called out to an emergency. If this person wanted a nine to five job he should not have become a paramedic. A couple of minutes in a life or death situation is a very long time. Skimming off just a few seconds from an emergency call-out can save lives — that's why ambulances are fitted with blue lights and sirens."

A group of researchers set out to discover what makes the ideal Bond girl. Why they did this is anybody's guess. Perhaps they had already determined how many fools Mr. T would pity on an average day. The team assessed the physical traits of all 195 female characters in the first 20 movies, then contrasted the characteristics of the 98 who had "sexual contact" with Bond with those of the 97 who did not. They found that the women Bond sleeps with tend to be younger, slimmer and more attractive than the women he does not. Amazing. "A majority of female characters engaged in some sexual activity, particularly those in major roles. And the great majority of sexual behaviors involved Bond himself," says the research team, led by Kimberly Neuendorf, professor of communication at Cleveland State University, Ohio.

According to scientists, city Great Tits prefer other city Great Tits over country Great Tits. (Lets act like adults). The researchers found that the city dwellers responded more strongly to songs of fellow city dwellers and the same held true for the bumpkins. The average minimum pitch of male Great Tit songs in noisy urban areas was higher than in quieter, rural areas just a few miles away. Dr Rupert Marshall, of Aberystwyth University, Wales, and his team recorded bird song in 20 different cities in Britain. He says, "People speak louder and higher in noisy places like pubs and bars but still recognise their friends' voices once they go outside. Great tits seem to learn the high notes from their neighbours but don't respond as strongly to lower rural tones even when it's quiet."

BBVA, Spain's second-largest bank, has offered most of its 30,000 staff the option of taking the next 5 years off at 30% pay, with their health care costs covered, and the guarantee of their jobs back when they return. The bank says this is an opportunity for employees to spend more time with their families and get involved with other "professional projects." I call it the layoff plan of the gods.

Jon Matthews won £5,000 by beating the odds, even the 50/1 odds offered by bookmakers William Hill, when he remained alive until June 1, 2008. The same bet for June 1, 2009 paid out another £5,000 today. In April 2006, Matthews was diagnosed with mesothelioma and his doctor only gave him a few months to live. "I think I'm the first person in the world to bet on my own life," he said. The longest doctors at Harefield Hospital have heard of anyone surviving this type of cancer after diagnosis was 25 months. "I reached 26 months a year ago and on June 1 this year I will have reached 38 months," he said. "When I was diagnosed I was told mesothelioma was a death sentence." Jon has again placed a bet for next year and will get a 100/1 payout this time if he lives until June 1, 2010.

The famous restaurant chain Nobu has added advisories about bluefin tuna to the menus at its London restaurants, warning customers that the fish is "environmentally challenged." The warning adds: "Please ask your server for an alternative." "They shouldn't sell endangered species. They should change their menu to incorporate a fish that's sustainable and not one that's critically endangered," said Giles Bartlett, senior policy officer for WWF. Other dishes that have raised eyebrows in the past, including panda sashimi and manatee tempura, remain on the menu without an advisory.

Maybe it hasn't occurred to anyone that they might try to peddle away or maybe French prison guards just like a challenge, but a select group of French prisoners will be let out of jail next month to participate in their own Tour de France. Almost 200 prisoners will hit the open road and race 1,400 miles around France, closely watched by 124 guards and prison sports instructors. "This project aims to help these men re-integrate into society by fostering values like effort, teamwork and self-esteem. We want to show them that, with some training, you can achieve your goals and start a new life," said Sylvie Marion of the prison authority.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports on the revolutionary 'STAIR' (St Andrews Air) battery could now pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, laptops and mobile phones. The cells are charged in a traditional way but as power is used an open mesh section of battery draws in oxygen from the surrounding air that reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery, which creates more energy and helps to continually 'charge' the cell as it is being discharged. The battery has a greater storage capacity than other similar-sized cells and can emit power up to 10 times longer. 'The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery,' says Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews. 'Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries.'"

When you only have a 38% chance of being able to read, live in a country that has been in a civil war since 1990, and have a life expectancy of 47.8 years, a Dutch Prison might seem like paradise. Dutch legal experts are warning that some pirates are allowing themselves to be captured in order to take advantage of asylum laws. One recently captured pirate said, "Life is good here. I appeal to the government not to send me back to Somalia. The people who live here respect human rights. I wish to settle here." A defense attorney representing another pirate added, "My client feels safe here. His own village is dominated by poverty and sharia [Islamic law] but here he has good food and can play football and watch television. He thinks the lavatory in his cell is fantastic."

You haven't tried everything to get your kids to study until you've tried the Study Ball. The Study Ball is a 21-pound prison-style device that locks onto your child's leg and only unlocks after a predetermined amount of study time has passed. The homework manacles can't be locked for more than four hours, and come with a safety key. The product website states, "Quite often, students who are having problems concentrating tend to get up every ten minutes to watch TV, talk on the phone, take something out of the fridge, and a long list of other distractions. Were they to dedicate all this wasted time to studying, they would optimise their performance and have more free time available. Study Ball helps you study more and more efficiently." Stop Teasing Your Brother Pepper Spray coming soon.

Father David Buckley, of the Our Lady Immaculate and St Philip Neri Catholic church, stopped watching Dogma long enough to unveil a Marcus Cornish bronze statue dubbed "Jesus in jeans." The seven-foot high statue depicts Christ in jeans and a button-down shirt, with neatly trimmed hair and beard, a man of the 21st century. The £35,000 sculpture was funded with money left by Winifred Gregory, a member of the church who died last year. Father Buckley said, "You are always looking for new ways to enrich people in the experience of Christianity and it is good people can be open-minded to appreciate it. On the continent you often encounter modern representations of Jesus but it is not so common over here. We wanted a figure of Christ not in suffering but dynamic and welcoming. We felt this design summed up the spirit and activity of Christ perfectly and I think it speaks for itself."

If you've ever thought that the living room could really use a chair covered in spikes, or that you'd love to get your grandmother another tongue clamp for her collection, an upcoming auction in New York may be for you. Guernsey's Auction house has 252 different torture implements for sale, most which date back to the 17th century or earlier. The entire collection is estimated to be worth $3-$4 million and some individual pieces come with rare books showing "early engravings of scenes of torture." Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey's Auctions, said, "These are devices created to cause pain ... very diabolical devices. There is one pretty much to cause pain to any part of the body. It's fascinating but terrible."

The Kelly Tarlton Arctic Encounter in Orakei, New Zealand, is gearing up to hold the first ever "Penguathlon". The five events that the King and Gentoo penguins will be competing in are: football, Frisbee, surfing, swing ball and waddle races. There are even special penguin games for children, who wear giant penguin feet (leopard seal insurance available at the ticket office). "New Zealand has the greatest diversity of penguin species and is arguably the best place in the world to see them. As well as being great fun, the Penguathlon gives people a fantastic chance to get up close with them as well as gaining a better understanding about their welfare," said Gregg Anderson, Tourism New Zealand's Regional Manager for UK and Europe.

whoever57 writes "In response to the school shooting in March in which 16 people were killed, the German Government plans to ban all games in which players shoot at each other with pellets. The rationale for this is that 'paintball trivializes violence and risks lowering the threshold for committing violent acts.' Fines could be up to 5,000 euros."

Hugh Pickens writes "The 'hobbits,' dubbed homo floresiensis, caused a worldwide sensation when they were discovered five years ago, when some scientists claimed that the 18,000-year-old human-like fossils found on the Indonesian island of Flores represented an entirely new species. Now researchers at the Natural History Museum in London believe that the creatures' small brains could have developed to reduce the creatures' energy needs, crucial for surviving in an isolated area with limited resources. 'It could be that H. floresiensis' skull is that of a Homo erectus that has become dwarfed from living on an island, rather than being an abnormal individual or separately-evolved species, as has been suggested,' says palaeontologist Eleanor Weston. 'Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the same could be true for H. floresiensis, and the result of being isolated on the island.' Although the phenomenon of dwarfism on islands is well recognized in large mammals, an accompanying reduction in brain size has never been clearly demonstrated before."

In an attempt to reverse declining attendance figures, many American churches are starting to ask WWJD in 140 or fewer characters. Pastors at Westwinds Community Church in Michigan spent two weeks teaching their 900-member congregation how to use Twitter. 150 of them are now tweeting. Seattle's Mars Hill Church encourages its members to Twitter messages during services. The tweets appear on the church's official Twitter page. Kyle Firstenberg, the church's administrator, said,"It's a good way for them to tell their friends what church is about without their friends even coming in the building."

Hugh Pickens writes "Industry experts claim the market for vintage whiskey has been flooded with fakes that purport to be several hundred years old but instead contain worthless spirit made just a few years ago. Now researchers at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit have developed a method that can pinpoint the date a whiskey was made by detecting traces of radioactive particles created by nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s. '"It is easy to tell if whiskey is fake as if it has been produced since the middle of the twentieth century, it has a very distinctive signature," says Dr. Tom Higham, deputy director of the facility. Nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s saw levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere rise around the world so the amount of isotope absorbed by living organisms since this time has been artificially elevated. Whiskey extracted from antique bottles is sent to the laboratory where scientists burn the liquid and bombard the resulting gas with electrically charged particles so they can measure the carbon-14 in the sample. In one recent case, a bottle of 1856 Macallan Rare Reserve was withdrawn from auction at Christies, where it was expected to sell for up to £20,000, after the scientists found it had actually been produced in 1950. "So far there have probably been more fakes among the samples we've tested than real examples of old whiskey," says Higham.'"

If you thought pulling a sword out of stone was hard, you should try to evict a druid. Mr. "King Arthur Pendragon" — formerly known as John Rothwell — has been camped out at the edge of Stonehenge since June 2008. Last week local official were granted an eviction notice for Mr. Pendragon. He had until 4pm on Sunday to leave, but failed to do so saying that he is fighting for the protected world heritage to be open to all, currently visitors are restricted to a visitor center and confined to marked-out trails. "We have opened a bottle of mead and we are drinking to Stonehenge. I have done a short ritual and spell of protection, calling on the kings of old. I am still here so I am in breach of the order as they see it but I have as much right as anyone else to be here," he said.

Three government centers in the UK have been working on a way to use digital technology to help the elderly and the disabled. One of their ideas is a supermarket satellite navigation system to help elderly people who get confused by changing layouts in the aisles. Professor Paul Watson, of Newcastle University, said: "Many older people lack the confidence to maintain 'normal' walking habits. This is often due to worries about getting lost in unfamiliar, new or changing environments." A kitchen for Alzheimer's patients packed with hidden sensors and projectors is also in the works.