Spontaneous rave party bursts out at IKEA.

From Ananova. You know, I once tried constructing a party at IKEA but it fell apart.

Ikea shoppers were stunned when 300 dancers held a spontaneous rave amongst the flatpack furniture.

[...] Pregnant women and families with their children were among the party crowd who danced for around five minutes in the textiles department, reports Sky News.

Video footage shows them jumping up and down, some wearing fluorescent vests and others blowing whistles.

Robot helicopter teaches itself how to fly.

Oh shit. We are so screwed now.

From Yahoo! News:

A new artificial intelligence system allows a robotic helicopter to teach itself how to fly and even do challenging stunts, just by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers.

[...] The artificial-intelligence helicopter, an off-the-shelf model other than its new brains, can do traveling flips, rolls, loops, stall-turns with pirouettes and more. It can even do the "tic toc," in which the helicopter, while pointed straight up, hovers with a side-to-side motion as if it were the pendulum of an upside down clock.

Yeah, good idea, let's give a hunk of flying metal some brains and a hatred of mankind. (The latter being inherent in all metal things.)

Trend Spotting: Talking into teddy bears.

A hot new trend has hit the streets of Tokyo - mobile teddy bear phones!

That's right - what could be easier than carrying around a giant teddy bear and then talking into its crotch? From CScout Japan:

At the 2008 Good Design Expo PHS mobile provider Willcom showed off their concept Kuma Phone (Bear Phone), a stuffed bear that holds a SIM card and can actually be used for making and receiving phone calls by holding it up to your ears.

[...] The bear seems a bit silly and, yes, “Japanese” by cuteness standards, but the idea is fun and was adored by the expo crowd. You can save up to four speed dial numbers in the bear, one in each paw, which are activated by pinching internal sensors. It vibrates and makes custom noises for incoming calls, which can be answered and finished by pressing the tail.

Shopping center creates special parking spots for women.

You know, for all the time women spend calling this sexist, they could be baking delicious cakes. From Ananova:

A Croatian shopping centre has introduced special parking spaces for women drivers.

But the move has not gone down well as female motorists resent the implication that they need the extra wide bays, while men resent the fact women are getting special treatment.

[...] Decorated with pink flowers, the prime spots are wider, further apart, better lit and easier to get in and out of than ordinary spaces.

"Do they think we're disabled or something?" fumed one woman shopper.

ZombieWatch: Corpses, including Alistair Cooke's, plundered and sold.

This article is worth reprinting in full. A little graverobbing is no cause for concern, but if you read carefully, this guy has been hit with a hundred charges. 100 corpses, led by Alistair Cooke, would be an unstoppable army.

Two brothers who ran a Philadelphia funeral home have pleaded guilty to selling corpses, Among them that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke, to a company that trafficked in stolen body parts.

Louis and Gerald Garzone pleaded guilty Tuesday in Philadelphia to charges including conspiracy, theft and abuse of corpse. The pleas came on the day their trial was to begin.

The mastermind of the scheme, Michael Mastromarino, pleaded guilty Friday to hundred of charges that could send him to prison for life.

Mastromarino's company took bodies from funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and carved them up without families' permission and without medical tests.

And did you notice this guy's name is Mastromarino? Sounds like an evil necromancer name to me..

McCain fought teen pregnancy prevention programs.

According to HuffingtonPost, "Republican John McCain, whose running mate disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, has opposed proposals to spend federal money on teen-pregnancy prevention programs and voted to require poor teen mothers to stay in school or lose their benefits."

Whoops.

Turn your loved one into a diamond!

Hideously tacky, or the only foolproof (if flashily pricey) way to prevent a zombie apocalypse? From Reuters:

Diamonds really are forever. Algordanza, a small company based in the mountainous southeast of Switzerland, uses the ashes of dead people to make diamonds as a permanent memento for their nearest and dearest.

[...] Algordanza -- which means "remembrance" in the local language Romansch, spoken in some parts of the Swiss canton of Grisons -- is one of a handful of companies offering artificial diamonds that have sprung up as the technology has improved.

U.S.-based LifeGem and Britain's Phoenix Diamonds, for example, also offer diamonds made from hair, which contains more carbon than ashes meaning a gem can be created from the hair of a living person, or from someone who has been buried rather than cremated. LifeGem even offers diamonds made from dead pets.

US army to have weaponized lasers by 2013.

I'll give Boeing $36 million if they can add these lasers to Pink Floyd planetarium shows.

From New Scientist:

Laser weapons mounted on trucks could be ready to roll into battle within five years. This week Boeing won a $36 million contract from the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command to build the optics needed to track and focus lethal laser energy onto rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds. The High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator will use a new solid-state laser powered by electricity from a truck-mounted diesel generator, rather than bulky and dangerous chemicals.

Scientists finally figure out how Post-Its work.

The science nerd in me is fascinated by the ongoing mystery of adhesives; the 12-year-old in me though snickers at "liquid stickiness." *snort*

From Live Science:

Recently physicists discovered there are two distinct ways for adhesives to release their grip, with no middle way and no smooth transition. A sticky substance can either act like a liquid or like a solid, it turns out.

"The goal of the study was really to try to understand the intermediate state between what happens when you have a sticky liquid and when you have a sticky solid," said researcher Costantino Creton, a physicist at the École Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) in Paris. "We found there was no real continuous transition in behavior but a very sharp change from a very solid-like behavior to a viscous fluid behavior. We were surprised that there was no intermediate regime."

Viscous fluid! *giggle giggle snort*

It can?

Oddest headline I've seen today in reaction to the Palin pregnancy thing.

Err... really?

Gyoza-Gate coming to a close?

If you've been following my blog, you know that no story is more interesting to me than the escalating tensions between Japan and China over a handful of contaminated frozen dumplings. China has finally admitted that it may have been their fault (duh). Here's the latest:

Chinese authorities have told Japan it is highly likely that frozen dumplings linked to food poisonings in China in June were contaminated by workers at the Chinese factory where they were made, sources close to Japan-China relations said Sunday.

Tokyo and Beijing have been at odds over where the "gyoza" dumplings were contaminated with a toxic substance, with both denying tampering in their countries.

China's effective acknowledgment came after authorities there interrogated 55 employees of Tianyang Food in Hebei Province, suspecting one or more may also have been responsible for separate food poisoning incidents that occurred in Japan, the sources said.

Monogamy gene discovered.

Gene found that predicts how faithful a dude will be. I'm just glad there's a genetic excuse for why I run to the tv whenever there's a nip-slip. From New Scientist:

They found that variation in a section of the gene called RS3 334 was linked to how men bond with their partners. Men can have none, one or two copies of the RS3 334 section, and the higher the number of copies, the worse men scored on a measure of pair bonding.

Not only that, men with two copies of RS3 334 were more likely to be unmarried than men with one or none, and if they were married, they were twice as likely to have a marital crisis.

US postal truck eyed in fatal hit & run.

As if the postal service doesn't suck enough... From the NY Daily News:

Cops are searching for a U.S. mail truck that fatally mowed down a father of three Sunday as he crossed a Queens street on his way home from work.

Shakoor Khan, 75, died from injuries suffered when the Postal Service tractor-trailer rig clipped him in the crosswalk at Rockaway and Farmers Blvds. in Jamaica.

Detectives were reviewing surveillance videos from nearby businesses, looking for clues to identify the truck and driver involved in the 7 a.m. accident, police said.

A U.S. Postal Service spokesman did not return phone or e-mail messages yesterday.

Lamest hospital staff meeting ever.

I get that Australians drink a lot and wave knives at each other, but this is pretty lame...

ONE of Queensland's most senior surgeons is threatening to sue the State Government after a booze-fuelled staff meeting where doctors joked about a patient who bled to death on the operating table.

[...] "I think it is unethical to be drinking alcohol in a hospital staff meeting and making jokes at the expense of patients and surgeons," Dr Steffen told The Courier Mail. "It is typical of the culture within the hospital."

Only 5% of rapes reported in Britain end in a conviction.

I don't care much about this article about Helen Mirren except for this crazy statistic:

Only 5 percent of reported rapes in Britain end in a successful prosecution, according to a report from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate -- one of the lowest conviction rates in the developed world. Campaigners argue that British attitudes often partially blaming a raped women for her behavior is part of the reason why so few sexual attacks are reported and successfully prosecuted.

That's messed up. Only 5%?? Jesus. I wouldn't be surprised if Pakistan has a better conviction rate of rapists than the UK. Appalling.

Palin's daughter's pregnancy a big deal.

I don't get what all the hoopla is. I mean, this is what happens when you open up virgin Alaskan land for pipe-laying.

From ABC News:

The news that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant rocked the political world Monday almost as much as Palin's joining the Republican ticket did just three days ago.

[...] The news -- released to the public on the first day of a Republican National Convention severely truncated by Hurricane Gustav -- sent shockwaves through St. Paul, the convention site. Many Republicans expressed relief that the timeline of her pregnancy apparently means that Internet reports that Palin pretended to be the mother of a child who was actually her daughter's cannot be true.

Trailer: Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django

A huge departure from his usual stylistic ultraviolent gorefests, Takashi Miike's new one is a spaghetti western. Looks a bit campy and Quentin Tarantino in an acting role is always a bad sign. But I'm intrigued...

Neighbors peed off at/on new club with glass roof.

I've heard about this restaurant and had wanted to check it out. But given their disregard for their neighbors, screw them. From the NY Post:

The glass-roofed lounge, which opened with red carpets and loud trance music in July, has neighbors at 265 Lafayette St. up in arms over the riotous party atmosphere.

But one unidentified building resident has taken matters into his own hands, emptying his bladder on the see-through ceiling from his apartment window above.

The stream of discontent prompted another apartment dweller to post a sign in the hallway that reads:

"I know not everyone is happy with Delicatessen but, please stop urinating on the glass roof. I have to buy a new a/c because you did not aim correctly! Thank you!"

[...] More than 10 of the building's 99 apartments look directly down on the leather couches, partying patrons and cocktail-carrying waitresses. The thin layer of glass barely holds back the noise, they gripe.

Liar gets zapped by lightning.

This type of divine intervention just goes to show that God is a dick. *ducks for cover*

From Ananova:

A Chinese man who swore to God that he didn't owe money to a neighbour was hit by lightning a minute later.

The man, named Xu, made the oath in front of a crowd of neighbours in Fuqing city, reports Southeast Express.

[...] "I told him that if he dared to swear to God that he didn't owe me the money, then I would waive his debt," said Huang.

Xu made the oath, but was suddenly struck by lightning a minute later.

Coozer-Bits.

San Diego Union Tribune: Not only God can make a tree. Columbia University geophysicist creating synthetic trees to suck up CO2.

Live Science: 10 Species You Can Kiss Goodbye. Sad..

Game Info Wire: New Resident Evil 5 screenshots!

Houston Chronicle: Gustav might be twice the size of Katrina.

AdWeek: US Army sets up recruitment center disguised as hip Apple-like store in mall.

ABC News: University president resigns after photos surface of him doing keg stands with students.

News.com.au: 80-year-old man becomes sex monster after taking Viagra.

Yahoo! Canada: Dead: Killer Kowalski

NY Daily News: Bush for once putting human life and presidential responsibilities ahead of politics.

NY1: Brooklyn man arrested for stealing 87 parking meters.