Booze good for your bones.

Damn, my bones must be like adamantium. From LiveScience:

A glass of wine or a bottle or two of beer a day may strengthen the bones of older men and women, but drinking more than that could actually weaken bones, according to new research from the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.

The research, on men and post-menopausal women over 60 years of age, found that regular moderate alcohol intake was associated with greater bone mineral density (BMD).

While earlier research had suggested the link between moderate drinking and improved bone density, the Tufts' study looked specifically at the "possible effects of three alcohol classes, beer, wine and liquor, on BMD," said Katherine Tucker, the director of the epidemiology research program at Tufts. "We saw stronger associations between higher BMD and beer drinkers, who were mostly men, and wine drinkers, who were mostly women, compared with liquor drinkers," she said.

Tucker and her colleagues speculated that silicon found in beer is contributing to the higher bone density in men. It is less clear why liquor and wine might protect bone density.

Man has stepdaughter sign sex abuse contract.

All sex abuse is bad, but this is just weird. From News.com.au:

A man lured his teenage stepdaughter into having sex with him by signing a "contract" which agreed she could keep child bonus payments when she got pregnant.

The years of abuse was condoned by the man's wife because she was afraid to have another baby in case it had a congenital disease.

The case has been called one of the most bizarre child-sex cases to come before an Australian court as the stepfather not only got the girl to sign the contract but also made her keep a false diary in which she recorded having sex with a fictional boyfriend named "Luke".

The plan was to blame "Luke" when she became pregnant.

UK couple die at assisted suicide clinic.

From CNN:

An elderly British couple who died together at an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland died "peacefully" after receiving "wonderful and humbling care" from their doctors, the couple's family said.

Peter and Penelope Duff from Bath, England, died in Zurich on February 27, according to a statement released Thursday by their family and reported by Britain's Press Association. Both had terminal cancer, the statement said.

"Penny had fought a rare cancer, GIST, since 1992 and Peter's colon cancer had spread to his liver," the statement said.

"Their decision in no way reflected on the wonderful and humbling care they have received from their consultant, doctors and nurses, for which the family, and they, were so appreciative."

[...] Dignity in Dying, a British charity that advocates the choice of assisted death for terminally ill patients, said it was "extremely sad" that the Duffs had to travel abroad to die.

"Had they had the option of an assisted death in this country they may still be alive, as their physical ability to travel would not have been a factor," said Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying.

Wootton called on Parliament to modernize laws on suicide to allow for assisted dying.

Even the Japanese PM can't read Japanese.

Seriously - kanji is hard, so desu ne.

Reading Japanese isn't easy — even for Japanese.

Take Prime Minister Taro Aso. He's made so many public blunders that an opposition lawmaker tried to give him a reading test during a televised session of the Diet.

The leader bungled the word for "frequent," calling Japan-China exchanges "cumbersome" instead. Another time, he misread the word "toshu" (follow), saying "fushu" — or stench — and sounded as if he were saying government policy "stinks."

While the media and Aso's political rivals have been quick to heap ridicule, many Japanese have seen a bit more of themselves in Aso's goofs than they would like to admit. Since his missteps, books designed to improve reading ability have become all the rage.

Mo ichido gozaimasu...

Dead goat left outside NY politician's home.

Maybe it was just a gift of delicious, free goat? From Raw Story:

A state assemblyman said he found a dead goat outside his suburban New York home and believes it represents a death threat against him.

Republican Greg Ball said Friday he has been battling corruption in Putnam County and believes the threat comes from "entrenched interests" he would not name.

State Police Sgt. Ted Daley says the incident is under investigation. He would not comment on any threat.

Vampire discovered in mass grave.

Great, I'm so glad we've awakened 500-year-old evil. From New Scientist:

A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the "vampires" widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice.

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by "vampires" which, rather than drinking people's blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.

Canadian asks US border inspector for manners, gets pepper sprayed.

Getting maced in the face is how Americans say hello! From Breitbart:

A Canadian says he got a face full of pepper spray after repeatedly asking a U.S. border inspector in Blaine, Wash., to say please. Desiderio Fortunato says he thought the inspector who told him to turn off his engine Monday was rude and asked him to say please.

The 54-year-old British Columbia resident told The Bellingham Herald that the inspector repeatedly ordered him to turn the car off and then said he would spray him if he didn't.

Fortunato says he was stunned and blinded by the pepper spray and was pulled out of the car and handcuffed. He was detained about 3 hours.

Customs and Border Protection spokesman Mike Milne (MILL'-en) in Seattle says it was a lawful order that travelers must obey. He says the use of force is under review.

Octopus gets inside locked lunchbox.

From Breitbart:

What is 7 feet long, weighs 30 pounds, has eight arms and fits in a box slightly larger than a milk crate? Truman the octopus. Truman squeezed into a clear, acrylic box while trying to snag his lunch at the New England Aquarium in Boston.

Aquarium workers often place food inside locked boxes for the intelligent animals to crack open. It's what the aquarium calls an "enrichment activity," but it didn't go as planned Thursday.

In this case, crabs were locked in a smaller box inside the bigger box, which is 14 inches per side. The impatient Truman bypassed the locks and squeezed his body through a 2-inch hole in the exterior box.

He spent about 30 minutes inside before slithering out, delighting staff and guests who witnessed the spectacle.

He never did get the smaller box open.

Australian politican saves would-be suicide.

From News.com.au:

FORMER Victorian premier Steve Bracks and his wife Terry saved a man seconds before he was about to jump from the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne.

"Terry and I did what any other Victorian would have done and helped another person in trouble," Mr Bracks said yesterday.

The Bracks were returning home on Thursday night when they saw a large man "standing on the railings obviously looking as though he was about to throw himself off".

Mr Bracks and two other men - one of them an off-duty police officer - pulled him to safety.

Obama gives DVDs to British PM as official gift.

Kind of a Bush move, no? From the Daily Mail:

As he headed back home from Washington, Gordon Brown must have rummaged through his party bag with disappointment.

Because all he got was a set of DVDs. Barack Obama, the leader of the world's richest country, gave the Prime Minister a box set of 25 classic American films - a gift about as exciting as a pair of socks.

Mr Brown is not thought to be a film buff, and his reaction to the box set is unknown. But it didn't really compare to the thoughtful presents he had brought along with him.

The Prime Minister gave Mr Obama an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.

The unique present delighted Mr Obama because oak from the Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute, was carved to make a desk that has sat in the Oval Office in the White House since 1880.

Mr Brown also handed over a framed commission for HMS Resolute and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.

In addition, Mr Brown and his wife showered gifts on the Obama children giving Sasha and Malia an outfit each from Topshop and six children's books by British authors which are shortly to be published in America.

In return, the Obamas gave the Browns two models of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, to take home to sons Fraser and John.

Woman bites off partner's tongue.

He can't even lick his wounds! From BBC:

A Tyneside woman deliberately bit off her boyfriend's tongue during a drunken birthday kiss, a court has heard.

Tracy Davies, 40, bit a third of Mark Coghill's tongue off, Newcastle Crown Court was told.

They were celebrating Mr Coghill's 45th birthday at his Newcastle bedsit in October 2008, when she grew upset because she was not pregnant.

[...] Mr Coghill, a former customer service advisor, told the court he could no longer work, struggled to speak, and had lost many of his taste buds.

"I will never enjoy a curry again," he said. "I can't distinguish between certain foods, like the difference between cheese and toast, and just toast.

Russia threatens gas war with Europe.

Interesting article that delves into the shadowy, twisty world of Eastern European business, politics, and good ol' cutthroat corruption.

Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, today raised the spectre of a new gas war in Europe and warned that Russia could cut off supplies to European consumers unless Ukraine paid its gas bill by Saturday.

Putin said that if Kiev failed to pay there could be a repeat of January's gas war, which saw much of Europe shivering without Russian gas. There would be "a suspension of the supply of our fuel both to consumers in Ukraine and to consumers in Europe," Putin told his government.

Naftogaz, Ukraine's state-owned gas company, claimed this afternoon that it had paid its debt for February to Gazprom, Russia's state energy company. Gazprom earlier said it had received $310m (just under £220m) but was still owed $50m.Ukraine now has to settle its bill every month.

Putin's threat follows a raid yesterday by armed secret service agents on the Kiev headquarters of Naftogaz.

The raid is part of a bitter power struggle between Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, and the country's prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Yushchenko, who controls Ukraine's SBU security service, ordered the raid in an apparent attempt to seize the contract signed by Tymoshenko and Putin, which ended January's gas war.

The deal with Gazprom led to the resumption of transit gas supplies to Europe after Ukraine agreed to pay a price for its own gas approaching market levels.

Yushchenko is now trying to sabotage the deal in an attempt to undermine Tymoshenko, his former ally turned bitter adversary, analysts suggest.

The Putin-Tymoshenko deal eliminated the shadowy intermediary company RosUkrEnergo – whose owners have allegedly agreed to back Yushchenko's attempts to win re-election in next year's presidential election, they add.

Tymoshenko has furiously accused Yushchenko of corruption. Yesterday she criticised the raid on Naftogaz and said that the security forces loyal to the president were "out of control".

"The SBU is blatantly breaking the law and the president is covering up for them," she said, adding that the raid violated the constitution.

This morning a group of unarmed men turned up at the offices of Ukrtransgaz, the company that runs Ukraine's pipelines.

According to Naftogaz, the group left the company's premises an hour later after a standoff with members of parliament who had rushed to the scene. An SBU spokeswoman, Maryna Ostapenko, said its officers were conducting a criminal investigation into "abuses in the gas sector".

Yushchenko accuses Tymoshenko of effectively stealing $5bn worth of gas, transferred from RosUkrEnergo and gifted to Naftogaz.

And so on and so forth...

Dalek found in pond.

As my friend Sean put it: "Wreckage from the Time War is everywhere. And everywhen." Be afraid.

Volunteer Marc Oakland was stunned when he pulled the head of a Dalek from the murky depths of a pond he was helping to clean.

The 42-year-old sales executive found part of Doctor Who’s arch nemesis as he pushed a rake along the surface while wading waist-high in water.

He said: ‘I’d just shifted a tree branch with my foot when I noticed something dark and round slowly coming up to the surface.

‘I got the shock of my life when a dalek head bobbed up right in front of me.’

His group, who were clearing rubbish near Beaulieu, Hampshire, had already fished out an old table football game, dozens of lager cans and even a muddy skateboard.

But the last thing they were expecting to find was a full size head from one of the Time Lord’s most feared adversaries complete with its distinctive eye stalk.

‘It must have been down there for some time because it was covered in mould and water weed, and had quite a bit of damage,’ said Mr Oakland.

More on the end of Mankind here.

Coozer-Bits: Science Edition.

tDuh: Study finds emotions hold sway over physical health worldwide.

Dorky: First virtual reality technology created that lets you see, hear, touch, taste and smell. (Taste?)

Awesome: Genetic study finds treasure trove of new lizards.

Hot Cha Cha: Prawnography shows captive bred shrimp lack lust.

Duh: Stress unravels brain structure.

Duh: Power gives people the illusion of control.

Tech: Nanostitching could strengthen airplane skins.

Quantum paradox directly observed.

Sooo... what happened? From EurekAlert:

In quantum mechanics, a vanguard of physics where science often merges into philosophy, much of our understanding is based on conjecture and probabilities, but a group of researchers in Japan has moved one of the fundamental paradoxes in quantum mechanics into the lab for experimentation and observed some of the 'spooky action of quantum mechanics' directly.

Hardy's Paradox, the axiom that we cannot make inferences about past events that haven't been directly observed while also acknowledging that the very act of observation affects the reality we seek to unearth, poses a conundrum that quantum physicists have sought to overcome for decades. How do you observe quantum mechanics, atomic and sub-atomic systems that are so small-scale they cannot be described in classical terms, when the act of looking at them changes them permanently?

In a journal paper published in the New Journal of Physics, 'Direct observation of Hardy's paradox by joint weak measurement with an entangled photon pair', today, Wednesday, 4 March, authored by Kazuhiro Yokota, Takashi Yamamoto, Masato Koashi and Nobuyuki Imoto from the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University and the CREST Photonic Quantum Information Project in Kawaguchi City, the research group explains how they used a measurement technique that has an almost imperceptible impact on the experiment which allows the researchers to compile objectively provable results at sub-atomic scales.

The experiment, based on Lucien Hardy's thought experiment, which follows the paths of two photons using interferometers, instruments that can be used to interfere photons together, is believed to throw up contradictory results that do not conform to our classical understanding of reality. Although Hardy's Paradox is rarely refuted, it was only a thought experiment until recently.

West Virginia considering banning Barbie dolls.

They should ban Ugly Dolls, too, for teaching kids it's okay to have three eyes and tentacles. (Submitted by Jennifer C.)

A lawmaker in West Virginia has introduced a new bill that if passed would ban the sale of Barbie dolls in the state. Democratic Delegate Jeff Eldridge says that toys like Barbie place too much importance on beauty and have an unhealthy influence on girls which could affect their "intellectual and emotional development."

As reported by MSNBC, Edlridge told a local news station last week that he "just hates the image that we give to our kids that if you're beautiful, you're beautiful and you don't have to be smart." He admits that he knows the bill has little chance of being passed.

More here.

Coozer-Bits.

WTF: 13-year-old kills brother to take over family drug ring.

D'oh: British National Party accidentally uses Polish plane in anti-Eastern European immigration ads.

Yipes: EasyJet comes within 15 seconds of crash after control system switches off.

Lame: Dad, 36, charged with orchestrating bawdy teen party that included booze and stripper pole.

Sad: Rare jaguar euthanized.

Creepy: Aquatic animals emit laughing gas.

Russian Crime Watch: Woman knifes husband in eye for refusing to peel potatoes.

Duh: Russia still certain that emo culture causes murder, cannibalism.

Interesting: Geographic map of the US recession.

Sad: Deforestation causing animal stampedes into Sumatran villages.

Yipes: Man jumps out of moving American Airlines plane.

Lame: Japan and US protecting rapists in the US Army, refusing justice to victims.

Hero: Cat saves elderly woman from fire.

Lame: Groom robbed banks to pay for lavish wedding.

Wal-Mart customer finds 10 teeth in wallet.

From Breitbart:

FALMOUTH, Mass. - A customer shopping at a Wal-Mart for a wallet claims he found something that definitely didn't fit the bill: human teeth.

Police say the man found 10 human teeth last Saturday when he unzipped a compartment in the wallet. One tooth had a filling. The customer turned the wallet and the teeth over to employees at the Falmouth, Mass., store but left without giving his name.

Police investigating the incident told The Cape Cod Times that the teeth belong to an adult, but since there was no blood or gum tissue on the teeth, they would be unable to perform DNA tests.

A Walmart spokeswoman said the company believes it's an "isolated incident" but will investigate.

Future of Japan's anime industry in doubt.

Truly, a sad day for out-of-work tentacle monsters. From Japan Times:

The deepening recession and rapid shift in the overall landscape surrounding the industry have caused many to fear for the future of one of the nation's most prized cultural exports.

"The global fan base for Japanese 'anime' is increasing, but with the old business model crumbling it isn't translating into profits," said Yasuo Yamaguchi, executive director of the Association of Japanese Animations.

For the past decade, the industry has been hammering out average annual sales of ¥200 billion in what experts described as an "animation bubble."

Yamaguchi predicted, however, that the industry's proceeds for fiscal 2008 — which have yet to be calculated — would be lower than 2007, when total sales dropped almost ¥20 billion from 2006, a record high year, according to AJA statistics.

"The financial crisis is forcing sponsors to cut down on television advertisement fees, and this in turn is shrinking the budgets for animations, pressuring everyone involved in the production," Yamaguchi said.

"I think we'll see a major decrease in the number of anime programs broadcast. Agencies dependent on television as a primary financial source will need to search for alternatives."

UK beer tax closes down 2,000 pubs, costs 20,000 jobs.

From the Guardian:

A record 2,000 British pubs have closed with the loss of 20,000 jobs since the chancellor, Alistair Darling, increased beer tax in the 2008 budget, new figures published by the British Beer and Pub Association reveal today.

The figures came alongside a separate forecast by Oxford Economics that 75,000 more jobs in the drinks industry are at risk. The finding is based on the impact of last year's 18% increase in excise duty and the implications of the four-year drinks tax escalator.

The two beer tax increases placed an additional £520m cost burden on the sector, the data show.

Publication of the new figures comes on the day that five ministers are due to be questioned on the issue by MPs at a Commons emergency summit.