College campus offers pr0n for Bibles.

From FOX News, dispensers of much Bible porn:

A Texas college campus is locked in a fierce debate after a group of students launched the "smut for smut" campaign, trading bibles and other religious texts for porn, MyFoxSanAntonio.com reported.

Atheist students at the University of Texas at San Antonio announced that any student over the age of 18 will receive pornographic materials if they trade in religious materials, according to MyFoxSanAntonio.com.

Leaders of this atheist campaign allege that porn is no worse than what's written in religious texts.

A university spokesman says that this controversial cause is completely legal, though he admits a majority of the students on campus do not agree with it, according to MyFoxSanAntonio.com.

The group will continue its activities on campus through the middle of the week, according to the site.

Investigation reveals that ACORN were set up.

Small, buried item today. From NY Post, item in full:

The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a "heavily edited" splice job that only made it appear as though the organization's workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.

The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed.

Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.

Hella way to describe massive numbers!

From New Scientist:

We need a way to describe super-high numbers. So says an online petition with over 20,000 supporters, advocating the prefix "hella" for 10²⁷.

Yotta (10²⁴) is the largest prefix in the International System of Units (SI), followed by zeta (10²¹), exa (10¹⁸) and peta (10¹⁵), according to Physics World

Hella units could prove handy for numbers such as the sun's wattage, according to physics student Austin Sendek of the University of California, Davis, who set up the webpage on Facebook. He writes:

"Designating a prefix for 1027 is of critical importance for scientists in all fields. This number is significant in many crucial calculations, including the wattage of the sun, distances between galaxies, or the number of atoms in a large sample."

Sendek argues that the prefix "hella" would be an appropriate way to honour the science of North California, where he is based.

New gadget turns your arm into touchscreen.

From Daily Mail:

Those who find the touchscreens on their ever shrinking gadgets too fiddly to handle, will be glad to hear scientists are developing a new touch surface... your own arm.

Developers at Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University are working together to create an armband that projects an interface directly on to your skin.

They have combined a mini projector which creates a changing display with a sophisticated sensor that can tell which part of your arm is being tapped.

The researchers showed Skinput can be used to control audio devices, play simple games like Tetris, make phone calls and navigate simple browsing systems.

The gadget effectively turns your arm into a touchscreen surface by picking up various ultra-low sounds produced when you tap different areas.

Zombie Watch: Family misinformed about grandmother's death.

Or were they?? From ABC:

A local family got quite a surprise after they were told their grandmother had died at a hospital in Brooklyn. They began making funeral arrangements and notifying relatives.

But when they showed up at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, they found out 93-year-old Ella Abrams was very much alive.

"Jasmine went in there, and Jasmine started hollering, crying, she says, "Oh my God, she's alive, she's alive," Abrams' daughter Martha Covington said.

Great-granddaughter Jasmine Goodwin says a hospital staffer told her on the phone Wednesday that her family's matriarch had passed away. But when the family went to the ICU to gather her things, they saw her name on the door and Ella inside.

[...] With the family horrified in the hall, Jasmine ventured in the room, saw the ventilator still on and felt Ella's hand.

"She was warm, and she moved her head," Goodwin said. "So I started screaming. I screamed and ran out, and I was like, 'Mommy, Mommy, she's alive!"

Some iPhones, iPods made with child labor.

Maybe this is why they no longer make iPod Minis? From NY Daily News:

Parts of your iPod or iPhone could have been manufactured by a child.

At least eleven 15-year-old kids were working in three factories that supply Apple, according to the Telegraph.

Apple, which has factories in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic, the United States, Taiwan and Singapore, would not release information about the specific factories using child labor. It did, however, say that it no longer employs children in its factories.

“In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment,” Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers.

This is not the first controversy to surround Apple factories. Last week, 62 workers were poisoned by n-hexane at a factory that supplies Apple and Nokia. Last year, a worker at one of Apple's main suppliers in Taiwan committed suicide after accusations emerged that he stole the iPhone prototype.

Spider-Man joins unemployment line.

From NY Post:

Even a résumé that boasts of saving the city from Doctor Octopus and sparkling references from the likes of Captain America can't keep Spider-Man off the unemployment line.

The wall-crawler's hard-luck alter ego, Peter Parker, will get canned by boss J. Jonah Jameson and join the country's out-of-work millions in a storyline that starts in this Wednesday's "Amazing Spider-Man" No. 623.

"He couldn't have lost his job at a worse time," said "Spider-Man" editor Steve Wacker.

"He's going to struggle with unemployment and trying to save the city while he can barely afford to keep a roof over his head," Wacker said.

While the Queens native has been jobless before -- he's been a personal assistant and teacher and has tried to get a hack license in the past couple of years -- he's always been able to fall back on freelance photography, selling shots of himself in action as Spider-Man.

Disabled AC/DC fan impaled in mosh pit.

From News.com.au:

A quadriplegic man was seriously hurt at an AC/DC concert after his friend accidentally hit the joystick of his motorised wheelchair and catapulted him into the mosh pit.

Witnesses said a metal pin used by the 31-year-old man to manoeuvre objects became a spear and imbedded in his eye as his chair crashed more than a metre to the Brisbane centre's floor.

Queensland Sport and Athletic Centre, where the concert was held, faces criticism for not placing a proper barrier in front of the special wheelchair podium.

[...] The man was last night in a serious, but stable condition.

Sex-crazed elephant ruins wedding.

From News.com.au:

An elephant ran amok at a lavish wedding ceremony in India, causing $303,000 worth of damage.

The elephant, one of three hired for the wedding reception of two politicians' children in New Delhi, went on the rampage after trying to reach an in-heat female elephant.

According to Bangkok-based Thaindian News, the elephant charged a lawn full of wedding guests before flipping over about 20 cars in a nearby parking lot.

It was finally brought under control by a tranquilizer around six hours later, after ramming a police truck and narrowly avoiding injuring two officers within.

Wildlife Trust of India said that the elephant was in "mast", or rutting stage, which happens once a year.

Lottery winner eats $15,000 winning ticket.

From FOX News:

One airline passenger became so irate that he could not claim his $15,000 winning scratch card while on board a flight that he took rather odd action — he ate his ticket.

Cabin crew on a Thursday flight from Krakow, Poland, to the U.K.'s East Midlands airport congratulated the winner and advised him to claim his prize directly from the company which runs the lottery, according to TheAustralian.com.

But he apparently became so upset that he was not able to collect the prize mid-flight that he decided to digest his winning scratch card ... invalidating his claim.

The airline was asking visitors to its website to decide which charity should get the $15,000 prize.

"Passengers have always been delighted to claim their large cash prizes after returning home," Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said.

"Unfortunately our latest winner felt that we should have his €10,000 prize kicking around on the aircraft."