Thanks to twitter we need a new word for being a jerk to someone behind their back while they are speaking, and that word is tweckle. From the article, "The Twitter 'back channel' can be a powerful tool to quickly knit a gathering of strangers into an online community, a place where attendees at meetings broadcast bits of sessions, share extra information such as links, and arrange social events. But the same technology can also enable a 'virtual lynching.'"

A missing 13-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome has been found after living in the subway for 11 days. The boy's mother says police were slow to search for the missing child because she's a Mexican immigrant. Police say they did all they could. The boy was found in a Coney Island subway station. He says he rode a few trains, but mostly slept and lived on snacks and water for the 950,400 seconds he was missing.

An anonymous reader writes "At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid renowned magician John Mulholland $3,000 to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document were believed to be destroyed in 1973. Turns out one survived — and is now available on Amazon."

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

Three Navy SEALs are facing assault charges after the capture of one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, Ahmed Hashim Abed. Abed is believed to have organized the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah. The accused terrorist, who had a bloody lip, claims that he was punched in the face and not giving a foot massage, or allowed to listen to his iPod as one might expect when a SEAL team captures you. The SEALs have requested a trial by court-martial.

mario.m7 writes "Poste Italiane, the Italian postal service, suffered yesterday from an abnormal computation in ATM and credit card operations, since the decimal comma was not taken into account. The whole sum was therefore multiplied by 100, resulting in a 115,00 Euro transaction being debited as 11.500 Euro! Thousands of accounts are deep in the red and locked (link pumped through translator), so that no more operations are possible. Poste Italiane is gradually recovering the problem, fixing the error and re-crediting the sum debited in excess. Consumer associations have offered support to clients in case this lasts longer and causes damage."

Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."

RichZellich writes "Police arrested a senior vice president from Island Def Jam Records, saying he hindered their crowd-control efforts by not cooperating. The crowd at a mall where Justin Bieber was appearing got out of control, and police wanted the man to send a tweet asking for calm; he refused and they arrested him on a felony assault charge 'for putting people in danger.'"

cohensh writes "A Purdue engineering student was arrested for terroristic mischief. After receiving a parking ticket and having a boot put on his car he put the ticket, boot and payment in a box and left it at parking services. Someone thought the box was suspicious and the building was evacuated. Eventually it was traced back to the student who was arrested for 'leaving something that a reasonable person may think is a weapon of mass destruction.'"

10 North Naples middle school students were suspended for participating in "kick a Jew day." South area council for the Florida Anti-Defamation League, David Barkey said, “You are talking about an incident that has anti-Jewish bias if not anti-Semitism. You have Jewish students being singled out, harassed and assaulted. If the allegations are true, it is possible these students violated Florida’s new anti-bullying law. And, if students were physically assaulted, it could rise to the level of criminal conduct.” How the students knew it was kick a Jew day remains unclear but the school district has now set aside the first 20 minutes of each day to focus on character traits. I can't think of anything that can't be fixed in 20 minutes a day, problem solved.

overcaffein8d writes "A man who was paralyzed and thought to be comatose for 23 years had his nightmare ended. A hi-tech scan showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally. From the article: 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr. Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegetative state. "I dreamed myself away," he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer. Mr. Houben said: "I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me — it was my second birth. I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead."'"

Movement rules, combat order, and spells are not the limit to a Dungeon Master's knowledge. How different is keeping track of a hobgoblin village than keeping track of a heart? Here's a collection of questions and answers about love and relationships specifically for role players. "Warn your parents that Charisma is your girlfriend’s dump stat" is a personal favorite.

Right after "be careful what you wish for" in the idiom dictionary is a picture of 41-year-old Matthew Roberts. 12 years ago, Roberts began to search for the identity of his biological parents. He eventually found his birth mother and was shocked to learn that his father was none other than Charles Manson. Roberts said, "I didn't want to believe it. I was frightened and angry. It's like finding out that Adolf Hitler is your father. I'm a peaceful person — trapped in the face of a monster."

destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine 'Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction,' but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description. 'In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me: "I think my world looks dystopian if you're a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993... There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I'm writing about."' And earlier this month William Gibson shared his response to a blog post about the event. 'Gol' dang! It's news to me!'"

An anonymous reader writes "Ever wondered how much the internet physically weighs? 498,438,559,990kg, according to CNET. To reach this figure, they added together public data on the weight of every computer, server and connecting cable. To this they added 6,075,000kg of iPhones, and over 6,800,000kg of Blackberries. Finally, they added the weight of 287,524 viruses and 85 billion+ webpages."

An anonymous reader writes "Take a look at this awesome new product on Amazon. The laptop steering wheel desk is just the thing for the person who can't be sufficiently distracted by newspapers, eating, or cell phones while they drive. The user comments and reviews are great."

nk497 writes "London tech workers have stripped off to create their very own naked calendar for charity. Created by TechCrunch Europe contributing editor Milo Yiannopoulous, London Nude Tech 2010 isn't half as frightening as you'd think. It features photos (a few included at the link) of female and male tech entrepreneurs — one with strategically placed Mac — for every month of the year. It's raising funds for Take Heart India, so pick up your copy — it's for charity, right?"Click here to check out a few pics from the calender.

Since 1954, the US Postal Service, with the help volunteers from the small Alaskan town of North Pole, have responded to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. All that has come to an end. It was discovered last Christmas that one of the volunteers opening children's letters was a registered sex offender. The scare was enough for the Postal Service to drop the program. North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson said, "It's Grinchlike that the Postal Service never informed all the little elves before the fact." I can see how it would be confusing for a child to get a letter back with all the things Santa wants for Christmas.

Peruvian officials have arrested four people for allegedly killing at least 60 people to sell their fat and other tissues to Italian co-conspirators for cosmetic use in Europe. The indictment says the fat harvesters went after farmers and indigenous people in remote areas, tricking them by offering jobs. The arrests have revived the Andean legend of white foreigners called "Pishtacos." The Pishtacos were said to suck the fat out of people traveling on lonely roads at night, making fine soaps, lubricants, healing salves and beauty creams out of the tissue. We call them cosmetic surgeons.

An anonymous reader writes "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken pity on it's loverlorn engineers and is now offering to help find dates for them. From the article: 'Jim McDermott, chief human capital officer of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, thinks he's found a foolproof way to convince young engineers to come to his agency: Find them dates. "There are incentives, and then there are incentives," McDermott told a crowd of human resources officials at the HCMF Conference in Arlington, Va., earlier today. "When we’re hiring, we say, 'Is there a significant other in the picture'; If there’s no significant other, I tell them, 'We can help.''"