anticlone writes "Note to self: When traveling abroad with your spouse remember keep it quiet in the UK: 'A woman who was given an anti-social behavior order banning her from making loud noises during sex has admitted breaching the order.'"

klwood911 writes "What do you get when you combine a former Disney imagineer, Guitar Hero, a house and 21,268 Christmas Lights? Probably one of the coolest light displays you will see. Ric Turner turned his house into an interactive Guitar Hero Display. As he explains: 'Christmas Light Hero is using 7 light controllers from Light-O-Rama built from kits to control 21,268 lights and LEDs. Each controller has 16 outputs and 2-3 TTL level control inputs that are used by the game system to fire different programmed light sequences depending on what happens in the game. It relies on the fact that the game sequence is very consistent. If the game and the lighting sequences start together, they will stay in very good sync through the length of the song. The light program allows branching and overlays for fail, star power and "ready." I have some ideas to automate the initial show/game sync, but for now you have to push doorbell buttons at the right moments.'"

iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

In an attempt to curb water pollution, farmers in southern Taiwan have started to potty-train their pigs. Farmers have set up special pig toilets in the area to keep from having to pay a planned pollution fee. Pig farmer Chang Chung-tou says, "The pig toilets on my farm help me collect about 95 percent of all pig waste, making cleaning much, much easier." Now we just need them to learn how to cure and smoke each other.

A study at Queensland's James Cook University has proved that removing a band-aid quickly hurts less than taking it off slowly. Scientists found the pain involved with removal to be more of a psychological issue than a physical one. "It's fascinating that if you had a preconception that slow was going to be more painful in fact it was, so it also suggests that pain is not just what you perceive but what you think you will perceive when you get the painful stimulus," Researcher Dr Carl O'Kane said. The study also proved that researchers have an abundance of free time at the university.

adeelarshad82 writes "Pavel Valkovich of Sherman Oaks, CA has pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder, admitting that he attempted to hire hit-men to kill witnesses working with Federal authorities in their investigation of Valkovich's ID theft activities and subsequent crimes. According to the Justice Department: '...Valkovich and others had stolen personal identifying information and used that information to transfer funds from victims' bank accounts to PayPal accounts.'"

44-year-old Carolyn Brown took some marriage advice from the trolls and poured hot grits on her boyfriend. The two had spent the day arguing about various things. Should they break up? Which was better, Emacs or Vi? Authorities arrested Mrs. Brown and have alerted a zombie-fighting Natalie Portman of a possible petrification attempt.

xbeefsupreme writes "Frederick and Gerrit Braun of Hamburg, Germany began working on 'Miniatur Wonderland,' a massive model train set, in 2000. Although it is not complete yet, it covers 12,380 square feet of space, has six miles of track and so far has six sections representing different countries. Landmarks within the set include Mount Rushmore, the Matterhorn in Switzerland, and a 4-foot-long passenger ship floating in a miniature Scandinavian fjord."

Duke graduate student Ken Ilgunas has come up with a plan to make it through school debt free. He plans on living in his 1994 Ford Econoline van. He showers and exercises in the campus gym, and knows where all the 24-hour buildings are so he can keep warm, and connected to the Internet. "I'm rarely in the van. Just to eat and sleep. Generally it's not the most convenient place. The closest bathroom is a quarter-mile away and there's no source of water nearby. But with that said, I live pretty comfortably. I bring a water jug to campus and fill it up," he said.

Tony Callaghan, Executive President of the World Pie Eating Championships, won't have the integrity of his sport sullied like baseball's — so he's introduced random drug testing to this year's competition. He says, "Gravy has traditionally been the performance-enhancing drug of choice amongst pie eaters at this level, but since we banned it after a series of questionable concoctions were created by contenders, they've been trying to find other ways of generating lubricative advantage — and we're hearing rumors that cough mixture is the new Bisto. In tests we've found this can take around two seconds off the time taken to eat a regulation Championship pie."

Want to give someone a gift this Christmas that they won't forget? Why not give them a ring embedded with your teeth? Artist and super fan of the macabre, Polly van der Glas, can offer you custom made jewelry set with teeth. The 28-year-old says she got interested in the body from her grandfather who was a professor of microbiology. She says, "I have been collecting hair, teeth and fingernails for years, they line the shelves of my apartment in beautiful jars, where the textures and color variations are amazing. Fingernails actually look like delicate shells when collected together in a jar."

Marie Ripley's neighbors have a simple request. Please stop feeding the vultures. Over 60 of them have taken up roost in the neighborhood since Mrs. Ripley starting providing them chicken and ground beef. Requests from the Montpelier Community Association to stop feeding the birds have so far fallen on deaf ears.

"And Tiger waves off the ball washer."

Aspiritech, a Chicago based non-profit company, has launched a program to train high-functioning autistic people as testers for software development companies. The company says autistics have a talent for spotting imperfections, and thrive on predictable, monotonous work. Aspiritech is not the first company to explore the idea of treating this handicap as a resource. Specialisterne, a Danish company founded in 2004, also trains autistics. They hire their workforce out as hourly consultants to do data entry, assembly line jobs and work that many would find tedious and repetitive.

coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."

A 25-year-old Ukrainian student, who had a habit of dipping his chewing gum in citric acid, died when the gum he was chewing exploded. An examination of the gum showed that it was covered in an explosive substance. Officers found citric acid packets and a substance which looked similar, believed to be some kind of explosive material, on a table near the young man. It is suspected that the student forgot which packet was which.

An anonymous reader writes "CNET reports on the world's most geeky Christmas card, and also the most expensive. The card is made out of a 1st gen iPhone, hacked into a Christmas card using cardboard, paper and glue. The card includes a virtual 'bauble' which uses the iPhone's accelerometer to recreate Christmas decorations that bounce and move with the card. The makers of the card say that because of the iPhone's battery life 'you probably don't want to post it anywhere it will take more than 3 days to arrive.'"

Jbabe writes "Two men have been charged after cooking a rat and serving it with rice as a meal for fellow contestants on a reality TV show. D'Acampo, 33, and Manning, 30, were confronted by RSPCA and were both charged with animal cruelty offenses and ordered to appear in court on February 3. If found guilty, the pair face up to three years in jail. Broadcasters of the program in Britain could also face charges. RSPCA NSW chief inspector David O'Shannessy said it was unacceptable for the rat to have been killed for a TV show. The concern is this was done purely for the cameras. The show's producers were ordered by the RSPCA to hand over footage showing how the rat, which was believed to be tame, was killed."

Someone in Guadalajara, Mexico is about to get the best present in gift exchange history. A remote-controlled dinosaur robot worth £60,000 has been stolen from a Walking with Dinosaurs show that opened on Friday. "Only in Mexico! How it happened, we don't know. We don't even know if whoever stole it knows its value," said Karla Arroyo, a spokesman for the show.