32-year-old Aleh Kot couldn't decide if he wanted a 2010 Honda Accord he saw at a dealership in West Springfield, Massachusetts so he took it, and a salesman on a 15 hour trip to Wisconsin. Kot reached speeds in excess of 120mph during his test drive. The salesman was able to escape when the car was stuck in traffic, but Kot was not caught until Wisconsin State Patrol pulled him over 20 miles north of the Illinois state line. “For him not to be stopped by a state trooper until then is astonishing. We’re just glad they caught him and our salesman was not injured,” said Larry Bass, general manager for Balise Honda.

Laurent Vernet has a taste for beef, such a good taste for it that he can tell gender, maturation, breed, feed, time of year the cow died and whether it was under stress prior to slaughter with one bite of steak. "There's almost no science involved. I've met farmers and butchers who can immediately identify the same things I can, but they do it informally," he says. The real question is, can he tell where a can of Beefaroni was packaged by taste?

someyob writes 'From the article, "Astronomers at the University of Western Ontario have recovered a golf-ball sized fragment of a meteorite that hit an SUV in southern Ontario." First of all, no one was hurt. With that out of the way, (a) do we need more proof SUVs are too big, and/or (b) is this a message of some kind?'

In an attempt to win the coveted worst samaritan/friend award, a group of climbers abandoned their disabled friend not once, but twice, on a mountain climbing trip. The group was carrying their wheelchair-bound friend on a sponsored charity climb up Mount Snowdon in North Wales. Before reaching the top, the group decided the handicapped man was too heavy to carry any more, so they left him behind while they continued to the peak. Unfortunately, this final push also left the compassionately challenged group unable to bring the man and his wheelchair back down. Rescuers were called in to save the man and hopefully find him some better friends. Climber Dave Morrell, 44, who saw the rescue, said, "The poor bloke was sitting there in his wheelchair for quite a while. It was a bit mean of them to leave him there while they carried on to the top. But other climbers went over to talk to him. He was just getting very cold."

Dan Seddiqui has spent the past year fighting a one man war on unemployment. After being unable to get a job and finding himself around $150,000 in debt, Dan came up with a scheme in which he would take a year going state to state and trying out the career that each state was most famous for. His favorite job was bartending in Louisiana during the middle of Mardi Gras, and he would be happy to never work on a lobster boat for the rest of his life. Dan learned a lot about people and the country on his journey. Most importantly he learned that publishers are falling over themselves to get the rights to his book. After writing his memoirs, Dan plans on becoming a dietician, a job that he did for a week while in Mississippi.

The city of Stockholm has an interesting way of dealing with the thousands of rabbits killed every year to protect trees and shrubbery in the city’s parks. The bunnies are transported to a special heating plant, where the bodies are burned as a form of bioenergy. Last year Stockholm burned over 6,000 bunny briquettes. As to be expected many animal rights activists say they would rather go cold. "Those who support the culling of rabbits surely think it's good to use the bodies for a good cause. But it feels like they're trying to turn the animals into an industry rather than look at the main problem," said Anna Johannesson of Vilda kaniners ("Society for the Protection of Wild Rabbits").

Philips Electronics, a Netherlands-based company, has come up with a device designed to protect day traders from emotionally based trading decisions. The Rationalizer measures your galvanic skin response and lets you know when you are under stress. An online trader can then take a "time-out, wind down and re-consider their actions," according to the company. This may have come too late for us, but at least future generations won't have to live through the horror of angry day trading.

Police have arrested a South Carolina teen and charged him throwing a deadly missile at a moving vehicle. The "deadly missile" in this case just happens to be a burrito. According to the police report, the teen threw the burrito at an oncoming Honda, leaving the car's windshield cracked and the driver covered in refried beans. The victim suffered no injury as a result of being struck by the burrito as he had once taken a class about defending yourself from fresh fruit and Mexican food.

Chris Jackson has proven how strict the UK is when it comes to regulating psychologists by having his cat certified as a hypnotherapist with three industry bodies. Chris's cat George was registered with the British Board of Neuro Linguistic Programming (BBNLP), the United Fellowship of Hypnotherapists (UFH) and the Professional Hypnotherapy Practitioner Association (PHPA). A spokesman for the PHPA said his organization makes great effort to ensure every applicant is a fully-qualified hypnotherapist. He has a point. It's not as if Mr. Jackson's pet had been a horse. Who ever heard of a horse hypnotherapist?

Officials in Malaysia are trying to slow down the divorce rate by offering feuding couples a three-day honeymoon package to help bring that spark back into their marriages. After all, what could be more romantic than three days of talking about your faults over a lovely fruit plate, and three drunken nights at the hotel bar watching the love of your life flirt with some random guy on a business trip? Terengganu Welfare Community Development and Women Affairs committee chairman, Ashaari Idris says, "We can understand newlyweds having problems understanding one another, where a slight skirmish could lead to a separation but it is unacceptable for those married more than two decades to file for divorce."

caffiend666 writes "'Marge Simpson is posing for Playboy . The magazine is giving the star of The Simpsons the star treatment, complete with a data sheet, an interview and a 2-page centerfold. 'We knew that this would really appeal to the 20-something crowd,' said Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey. Playboy even convinced 7-Eleven to carry the magazine in its 1,200 corporate-owned stores, something the company has only done once before in more than 20 years." Worst issue ever!

samzenpus writes "Have you been craving an athletic competition that combines the raw physical energy of a chess match and the strategic acumen of boxing? Crave no more. Chessboxing is here. No really, Chessboxing. As the name suggests, Chessboxing combines rounds of chess alternating with rounds of boxing. If there is no winner after 11 rounds, the match is awarded to the fighter with the most points in the boxing ring. Dutch artist, Iepe Rubingh, created chessboxing in 2003. He says, 'I got the idea from a Serbian comic. It looked great. I wanted to see if it would work.'"

eldavojohn writes "BoingBoing is reporting that, allegedly, Carl Sagan wrote a piece for 'Marihuana Reconsidered' under the pseudonym Mr. X that appears to look fondly upon the science of trippin' balls. Puff the Magic Sagan's full piece can be found here. It opens with 'It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life — a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences.' Too bad old Mr. Cosmos couldn't enjoy his latest vocals."

T Murphy writes "A study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry links daily consumption of candy at the age of 10 to an increased chance of being convicted of a violent crime by age 34. The researchers theorize the correlation comes from the way candy is given rather than the candy itself. Candy frequently given as a short-term reward can encourage impulsive behavior, which can more likely lead to violence. An alternative explanation offered by the American Dietetic Association is that the candy indicates poor diet, which hinders brain development. The scientists stress they don't imply candy should be removed from a child's diet, although they do recommend moderation. The study controls for teachers' reports of aggression and impulsivity at age 10, the child's gender, and parenting style. The study can be found here, but the full text is behind a paywall."

nk497 writes "With businesses increasingly using digital tech like virtual worlds and Twitter, their staff will have to be given guidelines on how they 'dress' their avatars, according to analysts. 'As the use of virtual environments for business purposes grows, enterprises need to understand how employees are using avatars in ways that might affect the enterprise or the enterprise's reputation,' said James Lundy, managing vice president at Gartner, in a statement. 'We advise establishing codes of behavior that apply in any circumstance when an employee is acting as a company representative, whether in a real or virtual environment.'"

samzenpus writes "A 27-year-old man serving six years for stealing £6.5million using forged credit cards over the internet was recruited to help write code needed for the installation of an internal prison TV station. He was left unguarded with unfettered access to the system and produced results that anyone but prison officials could have guessed. He installed a series of passwords on all the machines, shutting down the entire prison computer system. A prison source said, 'It's unbelievable that a criminal convicted of cyber-crime was allowed uncontrolled access to the hard drive. He set up such an elaborate array of passwords it took a specialist company to get it working.'"

eldavojohn writes "Star Wars Uncut has taken a novel approach to remaking Star Wars IV: A New Hope. You merely sign up for a 15 second clip, film it and submit it. The trailer is now complete and I will suspect you might enjoy the high quality (and low quality) of some of the already accepted scenes. 251 scenes remain in need of claiming with 688 claimed and 291 finished. Do your part to remake one of the greatest movies by filming fifteen seconds of yourself and your friends!"

samzenpus writes "A restricted 2,400 page-document put out by the MoD designed to help intelligence personnel with information security has been leaked onto the internet. Wikileaks notes that Joint Services Protocol 440 (JSP 440), was published in 2001 and lays out protocols to defend against hackers, journalists, and foreign spies. it says, 'Leaks usually take the form of reports in the public media which appear to involve the unauthorized disclosure of official information (whether protectively marked or not) that causes political harm or embarrassment to either the UK Government or the Department concerned... The threat [of leakage] is less likely to arise from positive acts of counter-espionage, than from leakage of information through disaffected members of staff, or as a result of the attentions of an investigative journalist, or simply by accident or carelessness.' " Looks like it's time to write JSP 441.

alphadogg notes that the 2009 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded yesterday evening in Cambridge, MA. (You may find that site has been pre-Slashdotted; and improbable.com's video feeds of the ceremony don't work at the moment either.) News.com.au has coverage of the bra that converts quickly to two gas masks, a study of why pregnant women don't tip over, the award for literature, and other gems. "Ireland's police won the literature prize from writing more than 50 traffic tickets to a frequent visitor and speeder named Prawo Jazdy. In Polish, this means 'driver's license.' Pathologist Stephan Bolliger and colleagues at the University of Bern in Switzerland won for a study they did to determine whether an empty beer bottle does more or less damage to the human skull than a full one in a bar fight."

Sabre Runner writes "As if computer accessories weren't weird enough as it is, a new art project presents the Mechanical Tumor, a pulsating brown body that attaches to your computer and whose size indicates the stress on your machine at the moment."