More than 200,000 Swedes joined a Facebook group to help earthquake victims in Haiti before it was revealed as a hoax by the “Swedish Necrophilia Association”. The group promised to send 2 kronor ($0.30) per member when 200,000 people joined. When the mark was reached it was revealed that the group had been created by a made-up organization calling itself the Swedish Necrophilia Association. A statement from the group read: "As many already know, it is the Swedish Necrophilia Association which is now sending 500,000 kronor to ensure that the bodies which are brought home from Haiti are in as good shape as possible." I must admit the threat of being scammed by fictitious Swedish Necrophiliacs has never occurred to me.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a radio commercial for implying Germans are tyrants. The advertisement for a Reed recruitment website features an angry boss speaking in German. The ASA says: "We noted the ad used a German speaker, rather than someone speaking English, to portray the boss as 'a bit of a tyrant' and the humour derived from a stereotype at the expense of German people. We considered that the portrayal suggested that German people were more likely to be unreasonable or aggressive to others. We concluded that, given the extreme reaction and aggressive tone of the German-speaking boss, the ad reinforced a negative and outdated cultural stereotype of German people as overpowering and tyrannical and therefore the ad had the potential to cause serious offence to some listeners."

Trijicon, a Michigan company that makes high-powered rifle sights for the military, has come under fire for inscribing coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ on their products. The sights contain references to Second Corinthians 4:6, "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" and John 8:12, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." The company has acknowledged that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the US military, but says there is nothing wrong or illegal about adding them. Spokespeople for the US Army and the Marine Corps both say that they were unaware of the biblical markings, and are discussing what steps, if any, to take. I personally think this is ridiculous. Everyone knows that Jesus was such a good shot he never used sights.

Here's a list of the best fictional firearms of all time. My only complaints are: It's a list of the top 16, which seems to be an odd arbitrary number for an arbitrary list, and the BFG 9000 didn't make the cut.

A little thing like death hasn't stopped Ralph B. White from traveling the world. In the last 2 years, he has visited the mountains of Nepal, the Australian Outback, the Chinese-Mongolian border, a Rwandan volcano, Iceland, Benin and the waters off Zanzibar. In life, Ralph loved to travel and was a contract cameraman for National Geographic. After his passing, tiny portions of White's ashes were measured out in plastic bags and given to friends and family. They have been scattering the ashes all over the earth ever since.

They may not have the food, water, or medicine they need, but earthquake survivors in Haiti will soon get solar powered bibles. The "Proclaimer" is a solar-powered audible Bible that can broadcast scriptures in Haitian Creole to large groups of people. An Albuquerque-based organization is sending 600 of the bibles in the hopes that they will provide comfort to survivors. Problem solved.

garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"

gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."

SpuriousLogic writes "NASA is trying to sniff out which employee brought a baggie of cocaine into the hangar that houses Space Shuttle Discovery at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week. The space agency is preparing the shuttle for a launch to the International Space Station in March. Spaceport officials said an employee found the bag Thursday morning outside a bathroom in the restricted shuttle hangar, Orbiter Processing Facility No. 3. The employee notified security, which conducted tests confirming that a 'small amount' of cocaine remained in the bag."

Attila Dimedici writes "This story does a great job of showing how statistics are misused by comparing the incidence of voting for Democrats to the incidence of cancer. While the story has a strong ideological bias, it does a good job of poking fun at the way politicians (and others) misuse statistics."

Sockatume writes "Residents in Craigavon, South Africa complained of '[h]eadaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns' after an iBurst communications tower was put up in a local park. Symptoms subsided when the residents left the area, often to stay with family and thus evade their suffering. At a public meeting with the afflicted locals, the tower's owners pledged to switch off the mast immediately to assess whether it was responsible for their ailments. One problem: the mast had already been switched off for six weeks. Lawyers representing the locals say their case against iBurst will continue on other grounds."

The latest internet sensation is the Sleep Talkin' Man. The blog was created by Karen Slavick-Lennard and is a collection of things her husband Adam says during his sleep. The site has attracted a lot of attention, getting half-a-million views from more than 50 countries this week alone. Some of Adams best utterances include: "Don't leave the duck there. It's totally irresponsible. Put it on the swing, it'll have much more fun"; "Ooh! My balls are itchy. Have you got the cheese grater?"; and "I've got a badger, a dog, a cat and a sack." Back in 92' my sleeping college suitemate told a group of us, "A girl, a loincloth, and a small car. that's all you need." Looks like I missed the boat on this one.

kandela writes "The Telegraph is reporting that for a mere $1.99 you can download a new punctuation mark that will revolutionize communication online. The SarcMark, described as 'a dot inside a single spiral line,' is to be used just like a question mark or exclamation mark to indicate sarcasm. And for those worried that this company's unique invention may be shamelessly copied by eager and unscrupulous grammarians – grammarians being the type to quickly adopt new ideas without heed to proper procedure – fear not, the Michigan based company has applied for a patent to protect their invention."

fredrik70 writes "It seems that last month's light show over Norway is still on a lot of minds. Those minds have had over a month to come up with theories, some of which seem a little out there. From a crazy article: 'Russian scientists are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that the high-energy beam fired into the upper heavens from the United States High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) radar facility in Ramfjordmoen, Norway this past month has resulted in a “catastrophic puncturing” of our Plant’s thermosphere thus allowing into the troposphere an “unimpeded thermal inversion” of the exosphere, which is the outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere.'" On the other hand it might just be a failed missile test. I'm going to warm up the infinite improbability drive just in case.

chipmunk82 writes "Pat Robertson has blamed Tuesday's 7.3 magnitude earthquake on the Haitians' 'pact with the devil' two centuries ago while seeking liberation from the French."

Widgett writes "After hearing about the ATMs in Antarctica, I got curious. So I pinged Wells Fargo and got an interview with one of their VPs. The end result is a story about how one services machines at the end of the world, plus — and most importantly — what are the service fees like?"

Terminal illness got you down? Does your future seems bleak? Channel 4 and production company Fulcrum TV would like to brighten your day by making you the star of an upcoming documentary. They would like to offer you the chance to be mummified on TV and maybe even displayed in a museum afterward. An advertisement for the project reads: "We are currently keen to talk to some one who, faced with the knowledge of their own terminal illness and all that it entails, would nonetheless consider undergoing the process of an ancient Egyptian embalming."

artemis67 writes "A man studying in London has taken a mathematical equation that predicts the possibility of alien life in the universe to explain why he can't find a girlfriend. Peter Backus, a native of Seattle and PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, near London, in his paper, 'Why I don't have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK,' used math to estimate the number of potential girlfriends in the UK. In describing the paper on the university Web site he wrote 'the results are not encouraging. The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.'"

An anonymous reader writes "During several months of 2009, Moscow police looked at fake pictures displayed on their monitors instead of what was supposed to be video from the city surveillance cams. The subcontractor providing the cams was paid on the basis of 'the number of working cams,' so he delivered pre-cooked pictures stored on his servers. The camera company CEO has been arrested."

laejoh writes "As of the April-May 2010 issue, The Beaver magazine will be renamed Canada's History. The stated reasons are that the name has become so associated with the sexual euphemism that online material by the magazine using its name in the header is being blocked by spam filters. Use of the word 'beaver' on the Internet has taken on an identity that nobody could have anticipated in 1920."