An anonymous reader writes "Here's Avatar stripped of the distracting special effects. Rudyard Kipling would be proud." It's funny how something so visually amazing can have such an underwhelming and rehashed story.

JamJam writes "Air Canada has been told to create a special 'buffer zone' on flights for people who are allergic to nuts. The Canadian Transportation Agency has ruled that passengers who have nut allergies should be considered disabled and accommodated by the airline. Air Canada has a month to come up with an appropriate section of seats where passengers with nut allergies would be seated. The ruling involved a complaint from Sophia Huyer, who has a severe nut allergy and travels frequently. Ms. Huyer once spent 40 minutes in the washroom during a flight while snacks were being served."

Lanxon writes "Swaroup Anand, 23, from Bangalore, was fully conscious as he underwent open-heart surgery. An epidural to the neck, administered at the city’s Wockhardt Hospital, numbed his body during the procedure. Dr Vivek Jawali pioneered the technique ten years ago and has recently released a tutorial on DVD, which gives a step-by-step guide to the procedure for other surgeons to watch and learn from."

tugfoigel writes "A Swiss court has slapped a local millionaire with a record speeding fine of $290,000.The man was reportedly caught driving a red Ferrari Testarossa at 137km/h (85mph) through a village.The penalty was calculated based on the unnamed motorist's wealth — assessed by the court as $22.7m — and on his status as a repeat offender."

The party's over for Alkis Gerd'son. The University of Victoria has won a court decision and plans on evicting him from student housing almost 13 years after he graduated. Gerd'son had been arguing that the university was trying to evict him because he is disabled; while the university maintained that his failure to enroll in credit courses since 1997 was the real reason.

innocent_white_lamb writes "Starbucks brought out a line of cups with prehistoric Aztec images on them. Now the government of Mexico wants them to pay for the use of the images. Does the copyright on an image last hundreds of years?"

alfredos writes "Physicists and engineers at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory built tracks inside a fusion reactor and ran a toy train for three days to help them with their calibrations. From the article: 'The modified model of a diesel train engine was carrying a small chunk of californium-252, a radioactive element that spews neutrons as it falls apart. “We needed to refine the calibration technique to make sure we are measuring our neutrons as accurately as possible,” said Masa Ono, the project head of the National Spherical Torus Experiment.'"

A new plan calls for Chinese residents in council housing estates in the city of Guangzhou to be evicted if they are caught spitting in public or littering. The plan sets up penalty points for residents who break the rules. Spitting in public carries a three-point penalty, littering is on a sliding 5-7 point scale depending on what floor you are on when you litter. Anyone who racks up 20 points will be asked to leave.

Do you think soda tastes best from a fountain? A team of microbiologists from Hollins University have found that extra flavor might just be coliform, a fecal bacteria. 48% of the sodas they tested from soda fountains had the bacteria. Even better news, the study also found that most of the bacteria were resistant to antibiotics. From the abstract: "...Coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages and 20% had a heterotrophic plate count greater than 500 cfu/ml. [...] More than 11% of the beverages analyzed contained Escherichia coli [E. Coli] and over 17% contained Chryseobacterium meningosepticum. Other opportunistic pathogenic microorganisms isolated from the beverages included species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the identified bacteria showed resistance to one or more of the 11 antibiotics tested."

A funeral home is being sued by members of a New Mexico family after they received a bag of their grandmother's personal effects which just happened to include her brain. The brain was discovered when relatives smelled a foul odor coming from a bag they received from DeVargas Funeral Home and Crematory. Funeral home owner Johnny DeVargas says the mix-up is not the fault of his business. It could have been worse. They could have sent her whole head.

Under a new law, France will become the first country in the world to ban "psychological violence" between married or cohabiting couples. The law applies to both men and women and covers such things as: repeated rude remarks about a partner's looks, false allegations of cheating, and threats of violence. French premier Francois Fillon said, "The creation of this offense will allow us to deal with the most insidious situations — situations that leave no visible scars, but which leave victims torn up inside."

The suspicious material found inside luggage that shut down Bakersfield's Meadows Field Airport turned out to be five soft drink bottles filled with honey. A routine swabbing of the luggage tested positive for TNT. When the bag was opened authorities found the bottles filled with an amber liquid. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said, "Why in this day and age would someone take a chance carrying honey in Gatorade bottles? That itself is an alarm. It's hard to understand."

afabbro writes "Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 once offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home. Now with Japan enduring its worst recession since World War II, it is becoming an affordable option for people with nowhere else to go. The Hotel 510’s capsules are only 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide. Guests must keep possessions, like shirts and shaving cream, in lockers outside of the capsules. Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas says, 'It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep. You get used to it.'”

I knew these couldn't all be scams!

Cytalk writes "Working at Google is a dream job for many engineers. So the Googlle Institute of Software Studies might seem like the perfect place to get an education if only it weren't for the extra letter. From the article: 'Yes, it appears that some jokers in India are attempting to leverage not only Google's name, but their logo and even favicon to trick people into thinking they their quite-possibly-bogus online university is related to the real Google somehow. Dubbed the 'School For Future Software Engineers,' the Googlle Institute has a website that looks like it could be some sort of legitimate online training school — if it weren't for the sketchy naming, branding, and plethora of dead links.'"

the4thdimension writes "Online dating site BeautifulPeople.com has apparently decided to cancel over 1,500 of its customers because they were found to have put on too much weight this holiday season. The site, which bases its business model on having only attractive people on its site, requires that a user be voted in by current members as being beautiful in a 48 hour period. The site claims that having overweight people on its site is directly damaging to its business model, but promises that expelled members can register again once they lose the weight."

Police in Southland, New Zealand are using a new strategy in their work. They now take a less heavy-handed approach which includes visiting criminals at home for friendly chats. Commander Inspector Barry Taylor says they now focus on reducing crime rather than just arresting criminals. As a result the overall crime in Southland was down 17 per cent for the first five months of the reporting year. "We have just had a bit of a look at how we are going about our business and we felt we could do it a bit smarter, and the initial indicators are we are on the right track. A lot of it is problem-solving work. For example, houses we may regularly visit over the weekend may be visited again during the week to work out why we were called and what interventions can be put in place to prevent us being called the following weekend," he said.

Greg Lindahl writes "From the woman who jumped in a swollen creek to rescue her drowning moped, to the man who hopped over the divider at the edge of the highway to take a leak, and plunged 65 feet to his death, 2009 was a year both exceptional and unexceptional for Darwin Award-worthy behavior!"

krou writes to tell us that according to a new study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, a team from King's College London has found no evidence to suggest that the G-Spot actually exists, and they believe it may be a myth encouraged by magazines and sex therapists. The study performed is the largest of its kind, including some 1,800 women, and still was unable to find meaningful proof. Of course, the studies were probably all led by men, who everyone knows can't find the G-Spot anyway.

ectotherm writes "See the most obvious scientific discoveries of 2009, actually backed up by scientific studies. These include such no-brainers as 'Men are much more interested in casual sex than women.'"