Schumer: Strangle Palestinians until they believe in the Torah.

What a schmuck. From Think Progress (thanks Larissa!):

This past Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered a wide-ranging speech at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, D.C. The senator’s lecture touched on areas such as Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and several domestic policy issues.

During one point of his speech, Schumer turned his attention to the situation in Gaza. He told the audience that the “Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution,” and also that “they don’t believe in the Torah, in David.” He went on to say “you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.”

New York’s senior senator explained that the current Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip — which is causing a humanitarian crisis there — is not only justified because it keeps weapons out of the Palestinian territory, but also because it shows the Palestinians living there that “when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement.” Summing up his feelings, Schumer emphasized the need to “to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go.”

Engineers convince ground robots to come together and form flying machine.

From News.com.au:

It's true - the future gets a little bit closer every day.

For some, that's not such a great prospect, but for Voltron fans at least, news out of Switzerland this week will have them thinking it can't come fast enough

Engineers from the Federal Institute of Technology have built a flying drone that can rebuild itself.

Called the Distributed Flight Array (DAR), the flying platform is enough to bring a tear to the eye of those who remember the giant robot made of vehicles that came together whenever a giant evil adversary presented itself.

Instead of 15 cars, buses and planes, the DFR is made up of four hexagonal modules, although the engineers promise they'll have at least 12 working together within months.

Each of the modules are self-contained with motors, power and on-board computers capable of driving and flying them in their own right.

On the ground, they happily wheel around individually. Give them the signal, though, and they pull together randomly to form a single entity, capable of lifting off the ground.

Personalized toys give you a chance to play with yourself.

By the power of Grayskull! From Orange:

A US toy company is offering the chance to play with yourself - thanks to its personalised action figures.

Oregon-based That's My Face offer to create dolls with life-like mini heads based on photos provided by customers.

The firm uses advanced software to map out a 3D map of your features which they can apply to a scale version of your head.

It is then a matter of choosing a body from the range available - from soldier to photographer - or just buying a head and attaching it to an action figure or doll of your choice.

There is even an option to provide details of an outfit of your choice for your figure.

The company have used famous faces such as Twilight's Robert Pattinson and Colin Farrell to showcase their work.

Spokesman John Keaton says: "I've always been a fan of action figures and thought it would be a great idea to personalise them so you can, in essence, play with yourself."

Prices range from £27 for a head to more than £100 for a custom-made doll.

Indonesian census discovers 157-year-old woman.

From News.com.au:

Estimates of the size and composition of Indonesia's booming population may remain just that despite an ongoing census, if the "discovery" of a 157-year-old woman is anything to go by.

Census officials have said they believe the woman's claims to have been born in 1853, when Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata debuted in Venice, the Crimean War erupted and San Francisco got its first street signs at intersections.

"There's no authentic data to prove her age but judging from her statements and the age of her adopted daughter, who's now 108 years old, it's difficult to doubt it," statistics bureau official Jhonny Sardjono said.

The only person verified to have lived past 120 years of age was Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122.

South Sumatran villager Turinah would be fully 25 years older than Calment when she died, according to officials.

Even more incredible, she still works around the house and has smoked clove cigarettes all her life, Mr Sardjono said.

"Despite her age she still has an incredible memory, clear sight and has no hearing problems. She speaks Dutch quite fluently," he added. Indonesia was a Dutch colony for hundreds of years until 1945.

He said Turinah burnt all her identification documents to avoid being linked to an alleged communist coup in 1965.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country with a population of about 240 million people.

Men are willing to die for sex.

Study published in No Duh Monthly. From Live Science:

Men evolved willing to risk death for sex, partly explaining why men die faster than women in virtually every country worldwide.

But monogamy and economic equality could counteract this trend — by assuring men they are likely to get some loving, a new study suggests.

The study was published in the current issue of the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

"The name of the game in evolution is to get your genes in the next generation," said study researcher Daniel Kruger of the University of Michigan.

Reproductively speaking, men have more to gain, and less to lose, from risk-taking behavior than women, researchers have long said. Essentially, it's okay if the guy dies, because at least once he's done the initial deed, there a chance his offspring will survive.

Fed-up father of three fights his drug dealing neighbors, makes arrest.

From the Daily Mail:

When a notorious drug dealer moved in next door, Charlie Skinner feared for his young family.

The father of three contacted police after Xiao-Po He started to peddle cocaine and crystal meth on his doorstep.

But when officers failed to respond, telling him instead to keep a log of the activities of the illegal immigrant - who was already on bail at the time for supplying drugs - Mr Skinner decided to take matters into his own hands.

The property developer risked his own life, posing as a customer to slip into his neighbour's flat and challenge the 26-year-old.

He fought off an attack by two of his henchman before chasing the dealer down the street and wrestling him to the ground.

Then the 47-year-old held him in a headlock until police arrived.

Searches revealed the former chef was carrying 3.6g of crystal meth and a search of his home uncovered another 4.48g of the drug. Yesterday Mr Skinner was hailed a hero after the dealer was jailed for six years.

He had been on police bail after being caught in November last year with a stash of drugs worth £12,000 including crystal meth, cocaine, the rave drug ketamine and ecstasy pills in a flat in Camberwell, South London.

But when a court granted him bail, the dealer simply moved and set up shop in a flat next door to Mr Skinner, who lives with his wife Sian, 44, and daughters Florence, 12, Maisie, 11, and son Teddy, nine, in Kennington.

New Cassini findings show possible signs of methane-based life on Titan.

From PopSci:

Something is consuming hydrogen and organic molecules on Saturn's moon Titan, and the recipe matches astrobiologists' theories about possible methane-based life. Granted, there may be other chemical explanations -- it's just that no one knows what they are yet.

New data from the Cassini spacecraft show hydrogen is disappearing near Titan's surface. What's more, scientists have not been able to find acetylene, an organic molecule that should be pretty abundant in the moon's thick atmosphere.

All this fits very nicely with a theory from NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay, who proposed five years ago that microbial life on Titan could breathe hydrogen and eat acetylene, producing methane as a result.

Scientists emphasize that the findings are not proof of life, and there's plenty of work to do before non-biological causes can be ruled out. Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice after all non-biological explanations are addressed," says Mark Allen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a NASA release.

The good news is that even if life is ruled out, the non-biological explanations are still interesting. According to previous studies, hydrogen should be distributed pretty evenly throughout Titan's atmosphere. But it's disappearing at the surface.

Animal-human hybrids banned in some states.

From ABC News:

Dren, the half-human, half-animal hybrid set to terrorize Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley in the new movie "Splice," is pure science fiction, but politicians across the country aren't taking any chances.

In the last month Ohio and Arizona have both passed laws forbidding research of animal human hybrids.

Proponents of the laws fear Dren-like creations and object morally to the combining human and animal cells. But scientists say the research could lead to cure for AIDS, immunize people against cancer, or grow replacement organs.

The potential for medical cures or advances is huge, said Esmail Zanjani, a scientist at the University of Nevada Reno who has created sheep that produce livers that are up to 20 percent human.

"But just because we can do something doesn't mean we should," said Zanjani. "We need to have a full discussion with the public," about this kind of research.

Coozer-Bits.

List: Top 10 worst film & tv characters.

Eats: Guidelines created and to be enforced on what makes olive oil "extra virgin."

PSA: McDonalds recalls 12 million Shrek glasses for containing toxic cadmium.

Awesome: California to expand plastic bag ban.

Awesome: It's National Doughnut Day!

Kellogg's ordered to stop saying its cereals make you healthier.

From Consumerist:

For the second time in a year, Kellogg Company has been called to the principal's office at the Federal Trade Commission and slapped on the wrist for misleading customers into thinking its cereal products offer unproven health benefits.

This time, Kellogg was under fire for an ad and marketing campaign for Rice Krispies that touted the snapping, crackling and popping cereal “now helps support your child’s immunity,” with “25 percent Daily Value of Antioxidants and Nutrients - Vitamins A, B, C, and E.” On the back of the packaging, customers were told, “Kellogg’s Rice Krispies has been improved to include antioxidants and nutrients that your family needs to help them stay healthy.”

Problem is, Kellogg had just been caught red-handed making false claims about their Frosted Mini-Wheats product. In that case, ads and packaging for the cereal claimed it had been “clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by nearly 20%.” Except that wasn't exactly true.

As part of their settlement in the Frosted Mini-Wheats dust-up, Kellogg swore not to make "claims about the benefits to cognitive health, process, or function provided by any cereal or any morning food or snack food unless the claims were true and substantiated."

So the FTC was understandably upset when they saw Kellogg blabbing about how Rice Krispies was some sort of miracle food.

Reaching a settlement once again, expanding the order from just a few month's ago. Under the new agreement, Kellogg is barred from "making claims about any health benefit of any food unless the claims are backed by scientific evidence and not misleading."

Feeling grumpy is good for you.

From BBC:

In a bad mood? Don't worry - according to research, it's good for you.

An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.

In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.

While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.

The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".

Canada is home to Vulcan.

Live long, prosper, and watch Hockey Night. From BBC:

Fewer than 2,000 people live in the small prairie town of Vulcan in Alberta, Canada.

But the town sees its population swell every June as it trades on its name and its association with Vulcan, the home planet of Mr Spock in Star Trek.

Fans in costume, or wearing Spock's signature pointy ears, come from around the world for Vulcan's annual three-day Star Trek convention: the "VulCON Spock Days Galaxyfest".

Hard-core enthusiasts, or Trekkies, admire the town and its replica of the USS Enterprise. Vulcan even has a tourism centre designed to look like a spacecraft coming in to land.

"The whole community gets involved," says Cricket Courtney, who travelled from the US and dressed as a Klingon, the villains of the show, for last year's Galaxyfest.

"We went to the bakery where the baker was wearing his Spock ears. The mayor dresses up in a Star Trek uniform, people come and talk to you on the street, take your picture. I feel like you come home to Vulcan."

Man keeps crashing funerals for the free food.

From Orange:

Undertakers in New Zealand have issued a warning to a fake mourner, dubbed 'the Grim Eater', who gatecrashes funerals for the food.

The man attended up to four funerals a week, even taking home leftovers in a 'doggy bag', reports the Daily Telegraph.

Danny Langstraat, a director of Harbour City Funeral Home in Wellington, said his company had distributed a photograph of the intruder and had also alerted grieving families to his presence.

"He was showing up to funeral after funeral and, without a doubt, he didn't know the deceased," Mr Langstraat said. "We saw him three or four times a week.

"Certainly, he had a backpack with some Tupperware containers so, when people weren't looking, he was stocking up," he told the Dominion-Post newspaper.

Mr Langstraat said the man, in his 40s, was respectably dressed and did not look like someone who lived on the streets.

"He was always very quiet and polite, and did as the rest of the mourners did in paying his respects."

The man has stopped turning up since a staff member took him aside and had a stern word in his ear, telling him he could not take food home.

PSA: "Sack tapping" game may result in loss of testicles.

It's all fun and games until someone loses a testicle. From News.com.au:

A Minnesota teenager had to have his testicle amputated after being punched in the groin by a classmate.

KARE11.com said David Gibbons, 14, was changing classes in his Crosby high school when he was attacked by another student playing a game called "sack tapping".

David’s mother, Christy Gibbons, said it wasn't until hours later that they realised something was wrong.

"One o'clock in the morning he woke me up and told me he was in excruciating pain," she said.

David was taken to St Joseph's Hospital in Brainerd, Minnesota where surgeons removed his right testicle.

And David is not the only student who has suffered the consequences of the "sack tapping" game.

"It's just gotten way out of control," said Dr Scott Wheeler, a urologist in Brainerd, Minnesota who says he performs three to four surgeries a year on boys with ruptured testicles and other complications as a result of "sack tapping".

"All parents, you need to have this talk with your kids not to do it. It's lost its humour. It's not a game anymore. People get hurt," he added.

Rush releases two new songs on iTunes.

From a press release spotted by my bro! (Too bad the songs are the sludgy, grungy, flat, uninspired crap of their last couple of albums. And I say that as their biggest fan evarr!!11!)

Rush pre-release 2 new songs, “CARAVAN” and “BU2B” from the forthcoming album Clockwork Angels album (due in 2011).

Buy the 2 songs together and also get the artwork & lyric booklet where supported by the digital provider.

The band will be performing these 2 songs on the Time Machine Tour, which kicks off in just a few short weeks on June 29th! Visit rush.com for a full tour listing.

Please request the single “Caravan” to be played at your local radio station!

Also, thanks to your support and demand, the documentary has further screens added in many markets. Please check for your country/city at www.rushbeyondthelightedstage.com

For now, US fans are able to enter now at www.dandeentertainment.com/rushcontest/ There will be further custom Epiphone Les Paul guitar promotions that are open to international fans, stay tuned for details on that very shortly!

Porn actor goes on machete rampage.

Witnesses say the machete was curved to the left. From LA Times:

The man believed responsible for a rampage at a Van Nuys video production facility that left one dead and two wounded is a struggling porn actor who faced the loss of his job, authorities said.

Stephen Hill, 30, allegedly used a machete-style weapon in the attack, which occurred about 10:20 p.m. at a video distribution business on Hayvenhurst Avenue and Saticoy Street.

Los Angeles Police Department Det. Joel Price said Hill was both working and living at the offices of Ultima DVD Inc.

Price said Hill did production work and acted in several porn movies. But on the night of the attack, he apparently faced the loss of his job and eviction from the office.

Hill allegedly fled after stabbing the three co-workers. The victims were rushed to a hospital, where one was pronounced dead. There were seven people in the office when the attack occurred.

The LAPD is investigating the attack as a case of workplace violence. The suspect fled in a blue Toyota RAV4 with license plate 5YTC423.

Nun excommunicated for saving life.

From ABC News:

Sister Margaret McBride was forced to make a decision between her faith and a woman's life last year, when a 27-year-old mother of four rushed into St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix only 11 weeks pregnant.

"I think [McBride] prayed and prayed and I'm sure that this weighed on her like a ton of bricks. This was not an easy decision for her," says her long-time friend Mary Jo Macdonald.

As a key member of the hospital's ethics board, McBride gathered with doctors in November of 2009 to discuss the young woman's fate.

The mother was suffering from pulmonary hypertension, an illness the doctors believed would likely kill her and, as a result, her unborn child, if she did not abort the pregnancy.

In the end, McBride chose to save the young woman's life by agreeing to authorize an emergency abortion, a decision that has now forced her out of a job and the Catholic Church.

Despite being described as "saintly," "courageous," and the "moral conscience" of the Catholic hospital, McBride was excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted for supporting the abortion.

[...] Although many medical ethicists say it was the right decision, the hospital confirmed McBride has been removed from her position as senior administrator and reassigned.

Critics are arguing McBride's punishment is a double standard. Many are pointing out that it has often taken years for priests who sexually abuse children to be even reprimanded, let alone excommunicated.

Great Rush item in Toronto Sun.

Full article is great. Here's a snippet:

A glimmer of recollection and smiles pass over Geddy Lee’s and Alex Lifeson’s faces when I tell them Rush played a dance at my Thunder Bay high school in 1973.

“How’d we go over?” Lee asks.

“Pretty much exactly as described in the movie,” I reply, to bursts of laughter from Lifeson and Lee.

The movie is Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a comprehensive filmic journey from the makers of Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey that begins in the lifelong friends’ own Willowdale high school and follows them through their evolution and eventual icon status. (It plays in select theatres across Canada for one day only, June 10, before heading to DVD.)

[...] The film carries on from their days as a self-styled blues-rock band, to their first word-of-mouth single Working Man (which broke on a Cleveland radio station), to the departure of drummer Rutsey in 1974 and the hiring of an introverted bookworm named Neil Peart, whose Byzantine poetry would become Rush’s lyrical trademark. (The band’s first hit album Fly By Night also included their first “epic,” the Peart-penned By-Tor and the Snow Dog, with its images of “the tobes of Hades” and a battle of good and evil across the river Styx.)

Lee says seeing the hair and costumes — the band went through a muumuu phase during their prog-rock heyday — “made me feel grossly uncomfortable.

“Obviously looking back that far exhorts a number of feelings, from embarrassment at all the fashion crimes we committed to this kind of strange out-of-body experience watching yourself as, basically, a child.

Boy uses video game skills to save sister from moose.

This gives me hope that someday my chocobo-breeding skills will save me. From CANOE:

If anyone's ever told Hans Jorgen Olsen that video games are a waste of time, they'll have to eat their words.

Olsen, 12, saved his sister from a moose using the knowledge he gained playing World of Warcraft, reports the Norwegian online newspaper Nettavisen.

The pair were walking through the woods in the central Norwegian town of Leksvik when they came face-to-face with an angry moose.

Olsen knew what he had to do, thanks to the countless hours spent playing WOW, a multi-player online role-playing game.

First, he taunted the animal to get it away from his sister. In WOW, players use taunting to get monsters off their less well-armed team members.

Then, when the beast came after him, he played dead.

"When you reach level 30, you learn a trick called the fake death. That's what I did - I pretended I was dead, and then the moose lost interest," he said. "It went really well."

Canada considering plan to kill 220,000 seals.

From Treehugger. Sent in by reader Jen, bearer of sad news.

What is a troubled industry to do in order to survive? Well, if you're a lobbyists for Canadian fisheries, the answer may be to simply massacre the competition. A recently disclosed proposal calls for the killing of a whopping 220,000 grey seals to combat declining fish stocks in the waters off Nova Scotia--lobbyists say the seals have been eating too much cod. The details of the plan are quite nightmarish, involving the use of guns, clubs, incinerators, and even logging equipment to aid in the slaughter of unsuspecting seals, during nursing season, no less, when the beaches will be crowded with newborn pups.

The proposed seal slaughter, according to a study obtained by The Coast, would be carried out on Sable Island in Nova Scotia, one of the species' main breeding grounds. It all stems from the fact that fisheries have been facing declines in fish stocks over the years, a reality they're blaming on the grey seals and not on their own activity. So industry lobbyists have urged the government to snuff out their competition, and the commissioned study confirms that officials are considering the grim plan.

As it turns out, killing 220,000 seals over the next five years poses a logistical challenge. Rifles would be used to take down adults while pups would be bludgeoned to death with clubs, amounting to 100,000 seals killed in 25 days the first year. Foresters, equipment normally used to collect felled trees, would gather the carcasses into dumpsters where they would then be set alight.

"At this production rate, a tandem dump truck would be filled with seals approximately every 10 minutes...seven hours a day for 25 days," notes the study.

Granted, as long as they're in the business of seal killing, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) would much rather turn a profit from animal's parts than burn them, but the market just isn't there. So, The Coast reports, a spokesman for the DFO visited China to tout the taste of seal meat and to suggest that there may be some value in the animal's penises.

A slightly more humane alternative to the outright seal slaughter was outlined by the study. Instead of killing the animals, 16,000 females different would be selected and sterilized each year for five years.

The uncovered proposal comes on the heels of what environmentalists considered a victory for the island's wildlife, reports The Coast. Recently the government decided to make Sable Island a national park, a designation that would add protection to its rich biodiversity. Just one caveat, though: seals wouldn't receive the same benefits.

Human mind "time travels" when pondering movement.

So if I think about moving to Germany, my brain can kill Hitler when he was a baby? From Live Science:

Just thinking about moving through space can make your mind wander in time as well, scientists now find.

The ability to mentally meander through time by remembering the past or imagining the future sets humans apart from many other species, helping us to learn from what came before and plan for what lies ahead. However, remarkably little is known about how such mental time travel works.

Past research showed that our perceptions of time are tightly linked with space. For instance, pondering the future makes us lean forward, while recalling the past makes us lean back, experimental psychologist Lynden Miles of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and his colleagues found.

Now Miles and his collaborators have discovered another interesting feat of the mind: Thinking about moving forward prompted speculation about the future, while imagining moving backward triggered reflections on the past.

Robots with human vision to work in nuclear reactors.

Time to build that bunker... From Daily Mail:

Scientists are developing robots that have eyesight that works in the same way as human vision.

The robots will be able to determine what is the most important object in its field of vision and act accordingly, just like humans do.

Scientists hope that the technology will let 'intelligent' robots operate inside dangerous places like nuclear reactors where it would too dangerous for humans to enter.

The advanced robot vision is being developed as part of a European project that uses a sensor that employs a complicated digital imaging process known as ‘3D foveation’.

Current laser scanning technology means that robots sample everything in their field of vision equally.

‘This means an object that is uninteresting for the robot will be sampled as equally dense as the object the robot is interacting with,’ the technical leader of the project, Jens Thielemann, told The Engineer magazine.

‘For instance, in case of a robot navigating a hallway and trying to avoid obstacles, a normal laser scanner will spend the same amount of time sampling objects that are far away and pose no danger to the robot, as it will spend on those nearby that can pose more imminent danger.’

The project team will correct this problem by adapting the robot’s vision so it mimics the processes carried out by the human eye.

Israeli forces kill 19 peace activists on relief aid ships to Gaza.

From Daily Mail:

The Foreign Secretary today 'deplored' the loss of life during the interception of a flotilla of ships carrying aid to Gaza.

Up to 19 people were killed after Israeli commandos boarded ships carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid en route from Cyprus.

Another 26 people are being treated in two Israeli hospitals for injuries sustained in the assault. Details of what happened remain sketchy after Israel imposed a news blackout, preventing activists on board the ships from contacting the outside world.

Palestinian rights group Friends of Al-Aqsa said that 28 British citizens were assisting in the breaking of the blockade, including its chairman Ismail Patel.

William Hague said the British embassy was in 'urgent contact' with the Israeli government, asking for more information.

He said: 'I deplore the loss of life during the interception of the Gaza flotilla. Our embassy is in urgent contact with the Israeli government.

Man crosses English Channel with helium balloons.

From Yahoo! News:

In a goofy yet mesmerizing stunt, an American adventurer crossed the English Channel on Friday carried by a bundle of helium balloons, ending a quiet and serene flight by touching down in a French cabbage patch.

Jonathan Trappe, 36, of Raleigh, North Carolina, was strapped in a specially equipped chair below a bright cluster of balloons when he lifted off early Friday from Kent, in southeast England.

About five hours later, he lowered himself into a French field by cutting some of the balloons away.

"It was just an exceptional, quiet, peaceful experience," Trappe told Sky News television, which covered the adventure.

Asked why he went, Trappe replied: "Didn't you have this dream, grabbing on to a bunch of toy balloons and floating off? I think it's something that's shared across cultures and across borders — just this wonderful fantasy of grabbing on to toy balloons and floating into open space."

US toll passes 1,000 deaths in Afghanistan.

A sad milestone and a reminder that we're in the midst of two wars. From Army Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The American military death toll in Afghanistan reached 1,000 at a time when President Obama’s strategy to turn back the Taliban is facing its greatest test — an ambitious campaign to win over a disgruntled population in the insurgents’ southern heartland.

More casualties are expected when the campaign kicks into high gear this summer. The results may determine the outcome of a nearly nine-year conflict that became “Obama’s war” after he decided to shift the fight against Islamist militancy from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Afghan insurgents find sanctuary.

The grim milestone was reached in a roadside bombing just before the Memorial Day weekend.

The NATO statement did not identify the victim or give the nationality of the service member killed Friday in southern Afghanistan. U.S. spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the trooper was American — the 32nd U.S. war death this month by an Associated Press count.

Already the new focus on the once-forgotten Afghan war has come at a heavy price. More than 430 of the U.S. dead were killed after Obama took office in January 2009. The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has now surpassed the total in Iraq — roughly 94,000 in Afghanistan compared with 92,000 in Iraq, where the war is winding down.

Michelangelo hid dissected brains in Sistine Chapel.

From Huffington Post:

At the age of 17 he began dissecting corpses from the church graveyard. Between the years 1508 and 1512 he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo Buonarroti, known by his first name the world over as the singular artistic genius, sculptor, and architect, was also an anatomist, a secret he concealed by destroying almost all of his anatomical sketches and notes.

Now, 500 years after he drew them, his hidden anatomical illustrations have been found -- painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, cleverly concealed from the eyes of Pope Julius II and countless religious worshipers, historians, and art lovers for centuries -- inside the body of God.

This is the conclusion of Ian Suk and Rafael Tamargo, in their paper in the current issue of the scientific journal Neurosurgery. Suk and Tamargo are experts in neuroanatomy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 1990, physician Frank Meshberger published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association deciphering Michelangelo's imagery with the stunning recognition that the depiction in God Creating Adam in the central panel on the ceiling was a perfect anatomical illustration of the human brain in cross section. Meshberger speculates that Michelangelo surrounded God with a shroud representing the human brain to suggest that God was endowing Adam not only with life, but also with supreme human intelligence.

Now in another panel The Separation of Light from Darkness, Suk and Tamargo have found more. Leading up the center of God's chest and forming his throat, the researchers have found a precise depiction of the human spinal cord and brain stem.

Mystery solved on 500 million-year-old squid creature.

I'm pretty sure H.P. Lovecraft has already explained this creature. From One India:

A research by Canadian palaeontologists has shed new light on a hitherto unclassifiable 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore known as Nectocaris pteryx.

Martin Smith of University of Toronto's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), said: "We think that this extremely rare creature is an early ancestor of squids, octopuses, and other cephalopods.

"This is significant because it means that primitive cephalopods were around much earlier than we thought, and offers a reinterpretation of the long-held origins of this important group of marine animals."

The new interpretation became possible with the discovery of 91 new fossils that were collected by the ROM from the famous Burgess Shale site (Yoho National Park) in the UNESCO World Heritage Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, British Columbia over the past three decades, and examined by PhD student Martin Smith along with U of T EEB and Geology assistant professor and ROM palaeontologist Jean-Bernard Caron.

Lead author Smith said: "Previously, all knowledge of Nectocaris came from a lone specimen described in 1976. Due to the ambiguous characteristics evident on that specimen, Nectocaris has remained unclassified until now.

"Our study reveals that Nectocaris is similar to known members of the modern cephalopod group, which includes squid, octopus, cuttlefish and the nautilus, as well as common fossils such as ammonites and belemnites, which are now extinct."

[...] "Our findings mean that cephalopods originated 30 million years earlier than we thought, and much closer to the first appearance of complex animals in the 'Cambrian explosion.'"

Bakery worker fired for eating single hazelnut.

From News.com.au:

A British woman who worked at the same bakery for 17 years was sacked on the spot for eating a single nut.

The Bolton News said Susan Longworth slipped a chunk of chopped hazelnut into her mouth while sprinkling them on toffee cakes.

The peckish factory worker, 54, thought nothing of it until her furious boss called her into his office at Park Cakes Bakery in Lancashire, northwest England.

Within minutes gobsmacked Ms Longworth had been suspended and escorted from the premises. She was subsequently sacked.

"He said he was taking into consideration my honesty and the length of time I had been working there and I thought he was going to give me a warning," Ms Longworth told the Bolton News.

"I could not believe it when he said he was sacking me.

"Everybody is shocked by what has happened, people keep saying they cannot believe it.

"Most of all, I am just annoyed by what I have done for that company and this is how they have treated me after 17 years."

New crop circle contains "beautiful and profound" mathematical message.

The aliens are among us and they use ASCII. From The Independent:

It is perhaps little known that the beautiful county of Wiltshire, famed for Stonehenge and the white horses carved into its hills, is the most active area for crop circles in the world, with nearly 70 appearing in its fields in 2009.

It is unsurprising then, that the appearance of a phenomenally complex 300ft design carved into an expanse of rape seed on a Wiltshire hillside has caused excitement. But it's not just the eye-pleasing shape which has drawn attention to it. The intersected concentric pattern has been decoded by experts as a “tantalising approximation” of a mathematical formula called Euler’s Identity (e ^ ( i * Pi ) + 1 = 0), widely thought be the most beautiful and profound mathematical equation in the world.

The design (pictured above) appeared beside Wilton Windmill late on Friday night. Lucy Pringle, a founder of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies, was one of the first on the scene. She says: “What has happened in this particular crop circle is that there are 12 segments and within each segment there are 8 partly concentric rings. Each of these segments indicates a binary code based on 0 and 1. If you use an Ascii Table [computer calculation system], the pattern transposes itself into a tantalising approximation of Euler’s equation.”

Man infects himself with computer virus.

If you want your computer to make you sick, just go to Drudge Report. From Live Science:

University of Reading researcher Mark Gasson has become the first human known to be infected by a computer virus.

The virus, infecting a chip implanted in Gasson's hand, passed into a laboratory computer. From there, the infection could have spread into other computer chips found in building access cards.

All this was intentional, in an experiment to see how simple radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips like those used for tracking animals can host and spread technological diseases.

The research shows that as implantable bionic devices such as pacemakers get more sophisticated in the years ahead, their security and the safety of the patients whose lives depend on them will become increasingly important, said Gasson.

"We should start to think of these devices as miniature computers," Gasson said. And just like everyday computers, they can get sick.

Herbal supplements often contain lead, other contaminants.

From the NY Times:

Nearly all of the herbal dietary supplements tested in a Congressional investigation contained trace amounts of lead and other contaminants, and some supplement sellers made illegal claims that their products can cure cancer and other diseases, investigators found.

The levels of heavy metals — including mercury, cadmium and arsenic — did not exceed thresholds considered dangerous, the investigators found. However, 16 of the 40 supplements tested contained pesticide residues that appeared to exceed legal limits, the investigators found. In some cases, the government has not set allowable levels of these pesticides because of a paucity of scientific research.

Investigators found at least nine products that made apparently illegal health claims, including a product containing ginkgo biloba that was labeled as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and a product containing ginseng labeled as a treatment to prevent diabetes and cancer. They also described a salesperson at a supplement specialty store who claimed that a garlic supplement could be taken instead of blood pressure medication.

Any product that claims to treat, cure, prevent or mitigate a disease is considered a drug and must go through strict regulatory reviews.

Another bird species is now extinct.

From BBC:

The Alaotra grebe is extinct, according to the latest assessment of the world's rarest birds.

The last known sighting of the bird was in 1985 and experts have now confirmed its demise, killed off by a combination of poaching and predatory fish.

The Malagasy species, which lived in Lake Alaotra, is the first confirmed bird extinction since 2008.

However, fortunes have improved for rare birds such as the Azores bullfinch and Colombian yellow-eared parrot.

The Alaotra grebe (Tachybaptus rufolavatus) was a medium-sized bird with small wings that inhabited Lake Alaotra and surrounding areas in Madagascar.

Due to its tiny wings, the bird was thought incapable of flying long distances, living a mainly sedentary lifestyle on the lake and in surrounding ponds and highland lakes.

Google's Pac-Man logo costs businesses $120 million.

But no business lost more than the law firm of Inky, Blinky, Pinky & Clyde. From NY Daily News:

On Friday, when Google embedded a playable Pac-Man game in its logo to celebrate the game's 30th anniversery, the Daily News predicted that productivity would take a serious hit as gaming enthusiasts stopped working to play.

According to a new study, we were right.

RescueTime, a company that helps businesses analyze how workers spend time on the job, took a random sample of its users and found that:

* Workers distracted by Google Pac-Man cost businesses a whopping 4.82 million hours of work -- an estimated loss of $120,483,800 (assumes the average Google user had a cost of $25/hour).

* That $120 million sum is more than the combined earnings of all Google employees -- including company founders Larry Page and Serge Brin -- for six weeks.

RescueTime also estimates that the average user spent 36 seconds more on Google on Friday than on an average day -- an uptick apparently caused by online Pac-Man fever.

Distillery turns whiskey into electricity.

Whiskey also turns sadness into happiness. From CNN:

Creating renewable energy from whisky might sound like a harebrained scheme conceived at the end of a long evening drinking the amber nectar.

But an independently-owned Scottish distillery is hoping that the installation of a new biogas generator will prove to be a lasting moment of environmental clarity and help solve their energy problems.

This month, Bruichladdich -- one of eight distilleries to be found on the Scottish isle of Islay -- will take delivery of an anaerobic digester which will start turning their whisky waste into electricity.

Mark Reynier, owner of Bruichladdich Distillery, hopes the digester will meet around 80 percent of its electricity needs and save the company up to £120,000 ($175,000) every year.

Reynier told CNN: "Our waste product is basically water left over after you've stripped all the alcohol out. It's called, rather unromantically, pot ale."

Every year, several hundred thousand liters of pot ale waste are taken away by a tanker and poured down a pipeline that feeds it into the Sound of Islay off the eastern coast of the island.

Researchers achieve quantum teleportation over 10 miles.

From PopSci:

Scientists in China have broken the record for quantum teleportation, achieving a distance of about 10 miles, according to a new study in Nature Photonics. That's a giant leap from previous achievements.

The feat brings us closer to communicating information without needing a traditional signal transmission, the researchers note.

Although it's called teleportation, no matter is really moved. Rather, the quantum state of one object is transferred to another object.

It works by entangling two objects, like photons or ions. The first teleportation experiments involved beams of light. Once the objects are entangled, they're connected by an invisible wave, like a thread or umbilical cord. That means when something is done to one object, it immediately happens to the other object, too. Einstein called this "spooky action at a distance."

Until now, this has only been achieved with particles that are at most a couple hundred feet apart. And those distances have been accomplished with fiber channels, which help preserve the photons' state.

In the latest experiment, researchers entangled two photons and zapped the higher-energy one through a special 10-mile-long free-space tunnel, instead of a fiber one. The distant photon was still able to respond to the changes in state of the photon left behind, an unprecedented achievement.

It worked because the team "maximally entangled" the photons, using spatial and polarization modes, according to Ars Technica. About 89 percent of the information was maintained, also an improvement over previous experiments.

New robot stands-in for office workers.

First they take our jobs. Then our families. Then our lives. From Orange:

Officer workers will soon be capable of being in two places at once - virtually - thanks to their very own robot.

Californian company Anybots has developed the 5ft robot called QB which can act as your stand-in if you're working from home, away on business or stuck in a meeting.

Controllable by internet from anywhere in the world, you simply log-in online and activate your QB which you park at your usual desk.

QB can even trudle around the office joining conversations with colleagues in real time.

A camera in the robot's head let's you see where it's going, and if you spot anyone you want to talk to you simply power over to them and engage in conversation through your headset.

An Anybots spokesman said: "When you're logged in, the robots eyes are glowing so your colleagues know you're there.

"They can just come up to you and ask questions, and you can answer back. If you're needed in a meeting or in the lab, just drive the robot there.

"The robots can be shared among as many people as you like. People who work from home will probably prefer to have their own private robot, which they might customise to represent themselves."

Anybots is currently working on an application so you can control your QB from you iPhone. Each QB will cost $15,000 and will be available from this autumn.

Umbilical cords cut too soon.

Or if you're Jewish like me, it's never cut. From Live Science:

Usually within the first minute of birth, the umbilical cord running between mother and infant is clamped. But this may be too fast, researchers say.

Waiting until the cord stops pulsing could give the newborn significant health benefits, suggests a review article in the most recent issue of the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

"Ob-gyns and parents should think about giving the cord blood to the baby," said lead researcher Paul Sanberg of the University of South Florida. "It only takes a few minutes."

The umbilical cord carries nutrients and oxygen from mom-to-be's placenta to the developing infant's abdomen. (It leaves a life-long impression in the form of the belly button.) When the practice of immediate cord clamping first began about a half century ago, the value of cord blood, especially its stem cells, which can develop into a suite of other cells, was not known. But now we know that stem cells have many therapeutic properties, Sanberg told LiveScience.

"It is not just regular blood going in," he said. "It is nature's first stem cell transplant."

Common problems in newborns are usually related to their underdeveloped organs, which might be helped by the regenerative properties of stem cells, Sanberg theorized.

After reviewing the majority of research in the field, Sanberg and his colleagues concluded that delaying cord clamping could reduce the infant's risk of many illnesses, including respiratory distress, chronic lung disease, brain hemorrhages, anemia, sepsis and eye disease.

The risk of such problems, and thus the potential benefit of delaying cord clamping, is particularly significant for premature babies and those born malnourished or suffering from other complications.

Coozer-Bits.

Lame: 22,000 NYC cabbies ripped off passengers.

TV: 100 things we'll miss about LOST.

Ha: Funny test answers.

Sports: Phillies fan arrested for purposely vomiting on cop.

RUW: Computers can now detect sarcsam. Why, that's just greeeeat.

Health: Caffeine counteracts cognitive decline.

Awesome: Video gamers can control dreams.

Man gets sucked into sausage seasoning machine.

I'm glad the police mustard the strength to free him. From NY Daily News:

DANVERS, Mass. – Police said a cleaning man was taken to a hospital after being sucked into a machine at a sausage-making company in Danvers. The accident happened Thursday night as the man was cleaning the vacuum-type machine that is used to season the meat at DiLigui Sausage Co. Police said the man's head and shoulders became stuck in the machine after it somehow activated while being cleaned.

Lt. Carole Germano told The Salem News that the man — whose name was not released — was freed from the machine and showed no obvious sign of trauma, but was taken to a hospital as a precaution.

Ninjas rescue student from muggers.

From News.com.au:

A student has been saved from a vicious assault - not by the boys in blue but the men in black.

Ninjas scared off three thugs who had the misfortune to attack the 27-year-old medical student outside their warrior school.

The German exchange student had been targeted by the men while he was riding the late-night train home, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

They demanded he give them his wallet but when he refused and got off the train, they followed.

They pounced as he made his way through a dark alley in Sydney's west. They grabbed his phone and iPod and kicked him while he lay on the ground.

However, the men were spotted by a member of a nearby dojo.

Nathan Smith told his sensei and the rest of the students at Ninja Senshi Ryu and they rushed out to confront the thugs - all dressed in traditional black ninja garb.

On seeing the ninjas, the men fled, only to be later arrested by police.

"You should have seen their faces when they saw us in ninja gear coming towards them," the school's sensei, Kaylan Soto, told the Herald.

They also failed to notice a ninja, Nathan Smith, standing in the shadows outside the dojo. Mr Smith immediately alerted his sensei, or teacher.

Another ninja, Steve Ashley, said: "It was probably the worst place in Sydney where they could have taken him."

Processed meats are bad for you.

There is no way I'm cutting out my morning hot dog. From NY Daily News:

Eating bacon, sausage, hot dogs and other processed meats can raise the risk of heart disease and diabetes, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that identifies the real bad boys of the meat counter.

Eating unprocessed beef, pork or lamb appeared not to raise risks of heart attacks and diabetes, they said, suggesting that salt and chemical preservatives may be the real cause of these two health problems associated with eating meat.

The study, an analysis of other research called a meta-analysis, did not look at high blood pressure or cancer, which are also linked with high meat consumption.

"To lower risk of heart attacks and diabetes, people should consider which types of meats they are eating," said Renata Micha of the Harvard School of Public Health, whose study appears in the journal Circulation.

"Processed meats such as bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs and processed deli meats may be the most important to avoid," Micha said in a statement.

Based on her findings, she said people who eat one serving per week or less of processed meats have less of a risk.

NASA spacecraft hijacked by aliens.

From Orange:

A UFO expert claims aliens have hijacked a Nasa spacecraft and are using it to try to contact Earth.

Voyager 2, an unmanned probe that has been in space since 1977, is sending strange messages that are confusing scientists.

German academic Hartwig Hausdorf believes it is because it has been taken over by extraterrestrial life.

Since its launch, Voyager 2 has been sending streams of data back to Earth for study by scientists, but on April 22, 2010, that stream of information suddenly changed.

Nasa claimed that a software problem with the flight data system was the cause but Mr Hausdorf believes it could be the work of aliens.

This is because all other parts of the spacecraft appear to be functioning fine.

He told the German newspaper Bild: "It seems almost as if someone has reprogrammed or hijacked the probe - thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth."

Voyager 2 carries a disk with greetings in 55 languages on it in case the craft encounters other life forms.

Dr Edward Stone, a scientist on the project, said the desk, called the Golden Record, is "a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.

"The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth."

Tokyo couple married by robot.

The Coozer Files does not recognize this union. From BBC:

Japan has hosted the world's first wedding to be conducted by a robot.

The automated creature, known as the I-Fairy, oversaw the wedding of Tomohiro Shibata and Satoko Inoue in the capital, Tokyo.

The couple decided to use the robot as they are both connected with Japan's thriving robotics industry.

Since robots had brought them together in the first place, they said, having one officiate at their wedding was a natural choice.

During the ceremony, I-Fairy - which has flashing eyes and plastic pigtails - instructed the groom to lift the bride's veil for the kiss.

The wedding took part in a rooftop restaurant in the Japanese capital.

Coozer-Bits.

Karaoke Kills: Jury deadlocked on NJ's "Karaoke Killer."

Duh: Woody Allen defends Roman Polanski.

Local: The Village Voice is releasing hundreds of hours of secret tapes of the NYPD behaving badly.

PSA: Army recalls 44,000 helmets.

Awesome: Butterfinger searching for 4th member of their Butterfinger Defense League (featuring Erik Estrada, Lou Ferrigno, and Charisma Carpenter).

Duh: Woman dies trying to reverse park.

US warns on Thailand travel, evacuates embassy staff.

From Raw Story:

The United States warned its citizens Saturday to avoid non-essential travel to Thailand and began evacuating non-essential embassy staff and families due to unrest in the country.

The State Department said in a statement it would allow non-essential US personnel and their dependents to leave Bangkok if they chose due to escalating violence.

"US citizens should defer all travel to Bangkok and defer all non-essential travel to the rest of Thailand," a statement said.

"The Department of State has authorized the departure of all non-emergency US government personnel and eligible family members from Bangkok," the statement added.

The announcement came following two days of street battles between soldiers and anti-government "Red Shirts," which caused fatalities and injuries. The military declared one area of Bangkok a "live fire zone" as troops struggled to regain control.

Scenes of urban warfare erupted on the southern and northern fringes of the Red Shirts' sprawling encampment in the heart of Bangkok, after the army moved in Thursday to seal off the area.

The United States Thursday closed its embassy in Bangkok and said it was "very concerned" about the violence between the Thai government and protesters there.

US embassy personnel who live in affected areas are being relocated to housing outside of the affected areas, the State Department said.

Scientists discover gene that lets you live to 100.

No thanks. From Times Online:

Scientists have discovered the “Methuselah” genes whose lucky carriers have a much improved chance of living to 100 even if they indulge in an unhealthy lifestyle.

The genes appear to protect people against the effects of smoking and bad diet and can also delay the onset of age-related illnesses such as cancer and heart disease by up to three decades.

No single gene is a guaranteed fountain of youth. Instead, the secret of longevity probably lies in having the right “suite” of genes, according to new studies of centenarians and their families. Such combinations are extremely rare — only one person in 10,000 reaches the age of 100.

The genes found so far each appear to give a little extra protection against the diseases of old age. Centenarians appear to have a high chance of having several such genes embedded in their DNA.

“Long-lived people do not have fewer disease genes or ageing genes,” said Eline Slagboom of Leiden University, who is leading a study into 3,500 Dutch nonagenarians. “Instead they have other genes that stop those disease genes from being switched on. Longevity is strongly genetic and inherited.”

"Holy grail" cancer vaccine blasts tumors without damaging other cells.

From Daily Mail:

Scientists have developed a new jab which they hope will be a 'holy grail' cancer cure.

The treatment, which will be tested on British patients over the next few months, can reverse and even cure malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer.

If it proves successful in large- scale trials, there are hopes that new forms could be developed to fight other forms of cancer, such as breast and prostate.

Experts say it may even stop people getting cancer in the first place.

Lead researcher Professor Lindy Durrant, of Nottingham University, said:

'This is huge. We could now have a vaccine that can target a tumour and kill it without damage to surrounding healthy tissues or cells.

'In the short term, this could cure some patients with the disease, and in the long term it could be used to prevent people developing it in the first place.'

Professor Karol Sikora, a leading cancer expert, said: 'This is a very clever vaccine and I believe it will increase the cure rate for patients in the future.' More than 10,000 people are diagnosed with malignant melanoma every year in Britain.

Numbers have quadrupled over the past 30 years as more people enjoy sunshine holidays abroad or use tanning booths.

Dead: Ronnie James Dio.

Heaven, not Hell. RIP, Dio. From the Houston Chronicle:

Ronnie James Dio, legendary vocalist for Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell and Dio, has died after a battle with stomach cancer, according to his wife, Wendy Dio. He was 67 years old.

The heavy metal singer died early this morning. He was being treated at M.D. Anderson in Houston.

A rumor circulated Saturday night on Twitter about Dio's death. His wife quickly shot that down: "He is not doing well, but he is not dead."

His wife released a statement to blabbermouth.net today:

"Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45 a.m. [on Sunday] 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private goodbyes before he peacefully passed away.

"Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all.

"We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us.

"Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss.

"Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever."

Arizona governor signs bill banning ethnic studies.

From Raw Story:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure.

State schools chief Tom Horne, who has pushed the bill for years, said he believes the Tucson school district's Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people.

Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said.

"It's just like the old South, and it's long past time that we prohibited it," Horne said.

Brewer's signature on the bill Tuesday comes less than a month after she signed the nation's toughest crackdown on illegal immigration — a move that ignited international backlash amid charges the measure would encourage racial profiling of Hispanics. The governor has said profiling will not be tolerated.

The measure signed Tuesday prohibits classes that advocate ethnic solidarity, that are designed primarily for students of a particular race or that promote resentment toward a certain ethnic group.

The Tucson Unified School District program offers specialized courses in African-American, Mexican-American and Native-American studies that focus on history and literature and include information about the influence of a particular ethnic group.

For example, in the Mexican-American Studies program, an American history course explores the role of Hispanics in the Vietnam War, and a literature course emphasizes Latino authors.

Subway restaurant tells other eateries to stop using word "footlong."

I hope they don't sue my shmeckle too! From NY Daily News:

It's a controversy that has grown more than a "footlong."

The Subway restaurant chain has mailed cease-and-desist letters to mom-and-pop eateries nationwide that use the term "footlong" to describe menu items.

"I saw that and I said, 'You gotta be kidding me,'" said Blair Hensley, 31, the owner of the Coney Island Drive Inn in Brooksville, Fla., who received one. He said his shop has been advertising footlong hot dogs since 1960.

Subway officials have applied to trademark the term "footlong."

A spokesman for the sandwich giant said the company is recanting the threat made to hotdog stand owners such as Hensley. But it's still targeting shops advertising footlong sandwiches.

Scientists invent DNA robots.

What could go wrong? From Technology Review:

Its precise structure and ability to bind with other molecules makes DNA an attractive scaffolding material for nanotech researchers. Scientists have already used DNA to construct two-dimensional patterns, three-dimensional objects, and simple shape-changing devices. Now two teams of researchers have separately made complex programmable machines using DNA molecules.

Researchers from Columbia University, Arizona State University, and Caltech have made a device that follows a programmable path on a surface patterned with DNA. Meanwhile, researchers from New York University, led by DNA nanoarchitecture pioneer Ned Seeman, have combined multiple DNA devices to make an assembly line. The nano contraption picks up gold nanoparticles as it tumbles along a DNA-patterned surface.

The two machines, described in today's Nature journal, are a possible step forward in making DNA nanobots that could assemble tiny electrical and mechanical devices. DNA robots could also put together molecules in new ways to make new materials, says Lloyd Smith, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Robots might have the ability to position one molecule in a particular way so that a reaction happens with another molecule which might not happen if they randomly collide in solution," he says.

Coozer-Bits: Goldblum Edition.

Lame: Kate Gosselin is making the moves on The Goldblum.

Lame: The Goldblum is in another bland Jennifer Aniston rom-com - and he's not even the hunky male protagonist.

Duh: TV.com's top 10 horror remakes includes The Fly.

Awesome: Adam Resurrected gets a good review!

Walgreens to sell DNA tests.

From NY Times:

Genetic tests that assess a person’s risk of getting various diseases are heading to the corner drug store.

Pathway Genomics, a start-up company, is expected to announce on Tuesday that it will sell such a test through most of the nation’s 7,500 Walgreens stores.

The tests sold by Pathway, and others by its competitors, look at specific variations in a person’s DNA to derive information about their risk of getting diseases like diabetes, heart disease and various forms of cancer. Such tests have until now been sold directly to consumers through the Internet or through doctors’ offices.

By capitalizing on the foot traffic in drug stores, Pathway hopes to gain an edge on rivals 23andMe and Navigenics, which are older and better known.

“It’s more consumer awareness than we could get from advertising online,” said Jim Woodman, vice president for corporate strategy at Pathway, which is based in San Diego and is privately held.

The personal genomics companies appear to have garnered fewer than 100,000 customers combined since starting nearly three years ago. Pathway, which started last summer, will not say how many customers it has.

The tests, which generally cost $300 or more, have also stirred controversy. Some genetics experts say the tests cannot provide accurate or significant information because not enough is known yet about the genetic causes of disease. Some critics say doctors should be involved in interpreting the tests.

New York State considers these medical tests, not consumer information, and requires a license. Pathway does not yet have one, so its test will not be carried by Walgreens in New York.

Chicago cops mistreated half a million people.

From the Chicago Tribune:

More than half a million people could be eligible for cash awards in a proposed $16.5 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit accusing Chicago police of mistreating suspects, city officials said.

The City Council Finance Committee on Monday recommended approval of the settlement in the federal civil rights case, filed in 2004 on behalf people who claimed they were subjected to an "institutionalized system of police torture" that included being deprived of adequate food and water.

If approved this week by the full council, up to 514,000 people could be eligible for awards between $90 and $3,000. The amounts could be reduced if too many people apply.

Some one-time suspects might be eligible for three separate awards totaling $5,090, according to case documents. The city would pay the first $15 million in costs, and an insurer would cover the rest, said Mara Georges, the city's top lawyer.

At one point, plaintiffs sought far more, Georges said. "In a case where you have a demand of over $100 million, to settle it for $16.5 million is a good result," she said.

Loevy & Loevy, a civil rights law firm, could receive legal fees of up to $5 million from the $16.5 million settlement fund, out of which administrative costs also would be paid, according to court documents. Attempts to reach the firm's attorneys were not successful.

According to the lawsuit, people were arrested without warrants, shackled to a wall or metal bench and given infrequent meals, few bathroom breaks and no bedding in a manner "consistent with tactics of 'soft torture' used to extract involuntary confessions in other parts of the world."

Mets to become Quidditch team.

I suppose this is good; I don't think that whole baseball thing was working out for them. From the NY Daily News:

When Brooklyn middle-schooler Olivia Wargo invented a game inspired by Quidditch, she never dreamed she'd see a professional athlete play it.

So she was thrilled when Mets pitchers Jonathon Niese and Fernando Nieve turned up at her school to give it a whirl.

The Amazin's appeared as part of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign to help kids get fit.

Olivia, an eighth-grader at Mark Twain Intermediate School in Coney Island, dubbed the experience "really cool." But she admitted she was nervous explaining the rules to the two Mets and others there to record the moment.

"It was really nerve-racking talking in front of all the cameras," Olivia said. "I was shaking."

Niese and Nieve took to the game like Harry Potter, which was fortunate because the kids are admitted to the school based on their athletic talent. And the youngsters already knew how to play.

"It was fun to watch the kids going 100 per cent," Niese said. "I hope they take away that they can have fun in school as well as get in shape. But the main thing is having fun."

Olivia figured out a way to play the wizarding world's signature game without flying broomsticks.

She taped three goals made of hula hoops to the walls at each end of the gym and had players bounce a small ball within the circles to score.

The Mets' "School Is Amazing" program, co-sponsored by EmblemHealth insurance, also brought players to schools in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens yesterday and today.

Topless woman battles blaze, saves neighbors.

It's Kekko Kamen! From NY Daily News:

One moment she was tanning herself by the pool, the next Tash Bennett was saving her fellow neighbors from a fire - while topless.

The Australian fitness instructor had been enjoying the afternoon sun when she noticed a palm tree had caught fire, Australia's Northern Territory News reported.

"I was just lying there when some ash fell on top of me," she said. "I wasn't really paying attention because I was listening to my iPod."

Fearing it could ignite the building, she snapped into action. Bennett quickly ran to the reception area for help, then went back to the pool to use a hose to battle the blaze.

She didn't realize until several minutes later that she had failed to put her top back on.

"I was sunbaking. I wasn't exactly prepared," Bennett said. "But you've got to put out the fire before you deal with that."

She may not have noticed her missing bikini top, but that didn't stop others from seeing the half-naked woman putting out a fire for several minutes.

Woman attacks husband for being bad in bed.

From News.com.au:

A US woman has been accused of stabbing her husband with scissors because she was unhappy with his performance in bed.

Michelle Thomas, 26, was arrested on Tuesday after police were called around 1am to the couple’s house in the east Texas town of Hudson, Lufkin Daily News reports.

The man told police Ms Thomas became angry with him after a sex session left her unsatisfied.

He said Ms Thomas grabbed a pair of scissors and began slashing him, according to court papers.

The court affidavit states police found the man with superficial cuts to his chest, thumb and knee.

Ms Thomas alleges her partner was drunk, threw her onto the bed and began choking her.

But police found no injuries on Ms Thomas, according to the affidavit.

The man said he only touched Ms Thomas during the sexual encounter.

Ms Thomas was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, although the man told officers he didn’t want to press charges, according to Lufkin Daily News.

Ms Thomas faces up to 20 years in jail.

New blanket saves stinky marriages.

From Orange:

A viral ad for a blanket made with activated carbon fabric to absorb the odour of flatulence has become an online hit.

The campaign for the so-called Better Marriage Blanket has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.

The ad claims that the blanket, designed by Denver science teacher Francis Bibbois, is a "real solution to a very real problem".

Mr Bibbo apparently got the idea for the blanket when he was hunting in a suit made of similar materials and realised he could break wind undetected.

He created the prototype more than 15 years ago but the world is only now getting wind of it.

The machine washable blanket is said to completely absorb the smell of flatulence - and only needs washing every four years.

The product's website claims the blanket contains the same type of fabric used by the military to protect against chemical weapons.

Phone software can now detect a broken heart.

Sounds cute, but companies are now using this against you when you call them, or they call you. From ABC News:

Less than two minutes into a cell phone conversation, a new computer program can predict a broken heart -- literally and figuratively.

An Israeli company called eXaudios has developed a computer program, known as Magnify, that decodes the human voice to identify a person's emotional state.

Some companies in the United States already use the system in their call centers. eXaudios is even testing the software's use in diagnosing medical conditions like autism, schizophrenia, heart disease and even prostate cancer.

"When agents talk with customers over the phone, they usually focus on content and not intonation, unless the customer is screaming," said Yoram Levanon, President and CEO of eXaudios, which recently won a $1 million prize at the Demo 2010 conference. "If a customer is screaming, you don't need the software. But if we can identify the other emotions of a customer, we can save customers and companies money."

When Discovery News' technology correspondent's voice was decoded using the Magnify software, the output read like a psychologist's notebook: "Struggling to contain an inner excitement. Keeping emotions and/or creativity in check. Warm and fuzzy."

Advertisers to rebrand beef as health food.

I wish I could go on a beefscape.... From AdWeek:

The nation’s beef producers want consumers to think "lean protein," as they launch a major ad campaign this week.

Known as the Beef Checkoff Program, the group is running print ads that pitch beef as a good source of protein and the variety of lean cuts it offers. Appropriately, the ads will carry the tagline: “29 lean cuts. One powerful protein.”

An ad for T-bone steak, for instance, shows a mouthwatering shot of the beef alongside grilled vegetables. “When all the steaks get together, they call this one boss,” the ad copy reads. This ad, along with others touting beef filets, ground beef, and top round, appear in this month’s issues of magazines like Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, Men’s Health and Self. Radio spots are also launching mid-month.

The Chicago office of Publicis Groupe-owned Leo Burnett handled advertising duties. Starcom is the Beef Checkoff Program’s media buying agency.

This is the first major campaign for the Beef Checkoff Program since its 2008 effort, dubbed “Beefscapes,” which touted beef as a good source of protein. Now, the group is focused on educating health-conscious consumers, said Kim Essex, svp, marketing at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the organization that manages and executes the Beef Checkoff Program’s marketing plans.

“We’re on a storytelling journey with our ‘Beef. It’s what’s for dinner [campaign],’” Essex said, referring to the group’s iconic tagline. “We’re keeping those equities that are really recognizable to us,” but at the same time, stressing the lean side of beef, she said.

Chicago!

Hi guys, sorry I haven't posted lately, but I was vacationing in lovely Chicago - home of the generous definition of "pizza" and the unholy marriage between hot dogs and celery salt. I'd post pictures but left my camera at home. Suffice it to say, there were buildings and nice neighborhoods and the occasional park. Anyway, updates to recommence.

Prisoner hacks off own ear, escapes during trip to hospital.

From the Daily Mail:

A prisoner cut off part of his ear so he could escape from an ambulance on the way to hospital, Greater Manchester Police said today.

Michael O'Donnell, 28, told staff at Forest Bank prison in Salford at around 1.30am yesterday that he had been injured in his cell.

An ambulance was called to take him to Hope Hospital, also in Salford, but on the way four masked men pulled up in a stolen BMW.

They smashed the ambulance windows with baseball bats and bolt-cutters and O'Donnell, who was escorted by three prison guards, escaped.

He was handcuffed to one officer, who released him during the ambush.

O'Donnell was waiting to be sentenced for conspiracy to rob and commit burglary.

Johnny Depp foils mugger.

From the NY Post:

Johnny Depp isn't just a swashbuckler on screen.

The "Pirates of the Caribbean" star rescued a friend who was getting mugged in Los Angeles.

And when the bandit saw who had jumped into the fight, he said, "I ain't stealing from Captain Jack," The Sun in Britain reported.

The mugger, armed with a broken bottle, approached Depp's pal, British singer, Stephen Jones, and demanded money.

After Depp intervened, the thief dropped the weapon and the actor gave him some money -- and some advice: "Straighten up your life," the paper said.

Rush documentary wins Tribeca audience award.

It's a great doc. Everyone should see it - you, your loved ones, your goldfish, your evil robot arch-nemesis, EVERYONE. From a press release.

The ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival (TFF), co-founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, and presented by founding sponsor American Express, announced the winner of The Heineken Audience Award – “RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage” – tonight at The Altman Building in New York City. The film’s directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn will receive a cash prize of $25,000.

Throughout the Festival, which kicked off on April 21, audiences have been able to vote for The Heineken Audience Award by completing nomination ballots upon exiting screenings of TFF films. Final results were tabulated and announced during this evening’s Festival wrap party.

“RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage” – a mesmerizing music documentary of the legendary Canadian band Rush – made its world premiere at this year’s Festival, capturing the hearts of fans and newcomers. In the film, directors McFadyen and Dunn embark on a comprehensive exploration of this extraordinary power trio, from their early days in Toronto through each of their landmark albums to the present day. Audiences were able to sit back and revel in the words, music and wonder of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart.

“The best documentary films are just great stories with characters who jump off the screen, and that is certainly the case with ‘RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage,’” said Nancy Schafer, Executive Director of the Tribeca Film Festival. “Scot and Sam have told a great story with their film, which is insightful and entertaining to audiences whether or not they are part of the band’s formidable fan base. An intimate but energetic portrayal of one of the most prolific rock bands, ‘RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage’ highlights the juxtaposition of music and film as an art form and we hope that Rush fans and audiences around the world embrace the film the way Tribeca audiences have.”

"Receiving the Heineken Audience Award at Tribeca means a lot to us as RUSH has always been a band of the people,” said directors McFadyen and Dunn. “It was great to see RUSH fans and non-fans enjoy the movie together.”

“What wonderful recognition for the hard and diligent work Sam and Scot did to bring this film to the public. We are so thrilled that they have received such a prestigious honor from the Tribeca Film Festival,” said Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart of RUSH.