A French hotel is offering a unique opportunity for pathological hamster lovers everywhere. For 99 euros a day a guest can stay in the "Hamster Villa," where they can eat hamster grain, run inside a giant wheel, and sleep in a pile of hay. "The hamster in the world of children is that little cuddly animal. Often, the adults who come here have wanted or did have hamsters when they were small," said owner Yann Falquerho, who was dressed as a hamster.

Anyone eating kabobs in Moscow might want to stop right now. Police have arrested a group of homeless cannibals who have been selling bits of people to a kabob shop. "After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up: part was eaten and part was also sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies," said a statement from the Prosecutor-General's main investigative unit for the Perm region.

54-year-old Lawrence Demaio didn't think a ticket he received from a trooper was fair so he did what any reasonable person would. He called the New York State Trooper's mom. Demaio told the woman that her son "was involved in a serious car crash and was at Mercy Hospital." He hung up on her after she started asking questions. An investigation revealed that the calls came from Lawrence and phone records showed that he even called her old number first.

coondoggie writes "A Tang soufflé perhaps? Yum. A new book out this week will tell you everything you wanted to know about cooking and eating in space. The Astronaut's Cookbook: Tales, Recipes, and More — penned by NASA veterans Charles Bourland and Gregory Vogt — offers up a number of recipes as well a history of space feasting just in time for Thanksgiving, if you are so inclined. The book includes a number of interesting space food facts: Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov was the first human to consume food in space."

destinyland writes "A science writer discovered it's possible to finance your cryogenic preservation using life insurance — and then leave a huge death benefit to your future thawed self. From the article, 'Most in the middle class, if they seriously want it, can afford it now. So by taking the right steps, you can look forward to waking up one bright future morning from cryopreservation the proud owner of a bank account brimming with money!' There's one important caveat: some insist that money 'will have no meaning in a future dominated by advanced molecular manufacturing or other engines of mega-abundance.'"

oatworm writes "From ForeignPolicy.com, 'Six years after a civil war that killed 250,000 and displaced hundreds of thousands more, justice is at the top of Liberia's list of needs. But in this small West African country of 3.5 million, the problem isn't a lack of courtrooms or trained lawyers. Liberia is wanting for the actual laws themselves. The country's legal code doesn't exist in print except for a few mismatched volumes here and there, sequestered in incomplete sets in libraries in the capital, Monrovia. And right now, as far as legal advocates can tell, even Liberia's national parliament doesn't have a full copy of the law. Why not? Because the few volumes that do exist have been quietly copyrighted — and subsequently held ransom — by the man in charge of Liberia's legal reform. Across the country, lawyers, courtrooms, and even the government are operating blindly; it's impossible to be certain if they are following a legal code they don't have.'"

Noishe writes "A man involved in a motorcycle accident in the UK has been given an alternative to the dreaded colostomy bag. He now carries around a remote control to activate his "bionic bottom" made out of muscles taken from above his knee. The muscles were wrapped around his sphincter and then attached to electrodes that are controlled by a remote control he now carries in his pocket."

Stephen Scott, director of research at the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners, says that lesbian couples have traditional couples licked when it comes to raising children. He cites research that suggests children with two female parents are more aspirational than those with opposite-sex parents. From the article, "Research at Birkbeck College, part of London University, and Clark University in Massachusetts suggests that same-sex couples make good parents because children cannot be conceived accidentally — parents must make an active decision to adopt or find a sperm donor. "

100 years ago, British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton had to abandon his 1909 Antarctic expedition. Among the items left behind were two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey, now the company has decided it would like them back. A team from New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust will try to drill down to the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds. Sounds like this would go great with some Titanic cigars.

A group of Colombian culinary students have come up with a dish that combines the two things they like best, prescription drugs and dessert. Their creation mixes a slightly sweet passion fruit preparation with some Viagra for texture. "We got the idea four months ago when we were dealing with a nutrition project for older people. It occurred to us that we could use passion fruit, with all its connotations.. and Viagra, and we came up with this dessert," aspiring chef Juan Sebastian Gomez said at an international gastronomy fair.

A judge has ruled that 46-year-old quadriplegic James Cap has the right to bear arms even though he is, "physically unable to hold a gun or pull a trigger." Cap was an avid hunter until a spinal injury sustained in a college football game left him wheelchair bound. He applied for a gun permit in May 2007 and was turned down by the Manville, New Jersey police because he "couldn't’t control, load or unload a firearm himself." James is now looking for a suitable weapon to use in the upcoming deer season.

An anonymous reader writes "CNET demonstrates that the internet is actually slower than every major animal. It's even slower than the apocryphal tortoise over a mile. In order to prove this they 'pitted the world's top animals against the Web over a one-mile course, transferring 32GB of data.' The results of the experiment showed the Internet to be the worst way to transfer data over short distances. 'If you put 32GB of data on a bite-proof USB key and strapped it to a cheetah, for example, it would be available to read at the destination 11 times faster than the Internet. The cheetah takes 30.9 minutes, the Internet over 6 hours!' Pigeon, horse and dog also perform very well at transferring 32GB of data, and even the lowly rat is over 8 times faster than the internet. CNET suggests the internet 'should hang its head in shame over its ranking in the one-mile speed test.'" Since it's already been proven that a pigeon was faster, I guess it was time to quantify mammals.

AC writes "Got $2 million in assets? Then you can join BillionaireXchange; just the place to find a 2006 Bugatti Veyron with a Start Bid of $1,050,000.00. Or perhaps you are looking for a boat like the Disco Volante (from James Bond), for example the 2000 Azimut Motor Yacht, a lovely 85-footer with a Start Bid of $2,700,000.00. On the other end of the deal, did your hedge fund leave you in the lurch? This is the place to sell those extravagant toys you thought you could afford."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control have now developed a scheme for protecting implantable medical devices against wireless attacks. The approach relies on using ultrasound waves to determine the exact distance between a medical device and the wireless reader attempting to communicate with it." I had no idea that things have gotten so bad that hearts are being hacked.

richardkelleher writes "It seems it doesn't always roll downhill, sometimes it is armor. The case-bearing leaf beetle apparently protects itself by constructing armor made from excrement. Females of these species typically construct bell-shaped receptacles made of feces around an egg immediately after they lay one."

A German car thief got a little more than he bargained for when he stole a van that was transporting Circus Probst's five-year-old lion. A few hours later the van was found crashed into a road sign and the thief has yet to be found. Caesar the lion was unhurt but appeared to be suffering from some indigestion.

The Edinburg, Texas police department gave the local prison a donation of fruit seized from a truck that was used to smuggle drugs. In addition to the fruit they were also kind enough to include 25 pounds of pot. The drugs were missed in the initial search of the produce truck. Prison officials rewarded the inmates who reported the drugs by strip searching them.

Ponca City, We love you writes "Juliet Eilperin writes in the Washington Post that while for years, humans have thought of great white sharks as wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore, it turns out we were wrong. Scientists lured 179 great white sharks to their boat with a carpet decoy designed to look like a seal, and used a lance to attach satellite tags with the aid of 2.3-inch titanium darts to track the sharks and discovered that Pacific white sharks spend months near the northern and central California coast between August and February, foraging among elephant seals, sea lions, and other prey. The sharks were spotted as far inland as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, east of the Golden Gate Bridge. 'It shows you how wild it is off our West Coast of North America. This is Yellowstone,' says Stanford University marine sciences professor Barbara A. Block. The fact that 'a major concentration' of great whites can ignore humans 'shows us the sharks are really minding their own business. The number of interactions with people is very small, considering,' says Salvador J. Jorgensen."

A brilliant fundraiser at a Goldsboro, North Carolina middle school was stopped after school district administrators became concerned that it might not be a very good idea. Instead of selling candles, candy, or magazine subscriptions the middle school was selling grades. $20 would get you 10 extra credit points on two tests. Principal Susie Shepherd defended the practice, saying "Last year they did chocolates, and it didn't generate anything." I'm with Susie, bribery is something you want to ingrain in a child early.

IamAHack writes "I heard this story this morning on public radio's 'Marketplace Morning Report' about an Alaskan bush pilot whose plane was mauled by a grizzly bear. A judicious application of duct tape was all that was needed to make the plane airworthy again. Another life changed forever by duct tape."