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."

BuzzSkyline writes "Last month, math students published a model of a zombie infestation that explained how the disease might spread. A new physics paper offers help for the more immediate problem — how to avoid being eaten. The paper, which recently appeared in the journal Physical Review E, considers where best to hide when being pursued by zombie-like predatory 'random walkers.' Although the researchers weren't thinking of zombies when they wrote the paper, the abstract describes the research as focusing on 'the survival probability of immobile targets annihilated by a population of random walkers.' (Sounds like a zombie movie premise to me.) The bottom line is you're better off the more labyrinth-like your hiding place is. So take a lesson from Dawn of the Dead, and hunker down in the mall, not in a farmhouse (as in Night of the Living Dead)."

schwit1 writes "The Washington Times reports, 'The problems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were so pervasive they swamped the agency's inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars.' One senior executive at the National Science Foundation spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer, records show. The cost to taxpayers: up to $58,000. Why aren't they running a product like Websense?"

Barence writes "An undercover investigation has revealed how Dell's online sales staff take liberties with the truth when trying to sell customers new PCs. One member of staff told an undercover reporter that he would need a PC with a good graphics card to download digital photos. Another, who was more incompetent than devious, was asked how many photos could be stored on a 250GB hard disk. 'Its[sic] on average 2 MB then 1024 MB * 2,' came the bewildering reply. Meanwhile, a sales assistant at supermarket Tesco told the reporter that netbooks got their name because 'a Japanese man on a plane fell asleep with a laptop on his thighs and was horribly burned, so the industry has dropped the name laptop.'"

IamSmee writes "Russian Billionaire Roman Abramovich's 557 ft yacht, Eclipse, now boasts a paparrazi-foiling shield of laser beams. From the article: 'Infrared lasers detect the electronic light sensors in nearby cameras, known as charge-coupled devices. When the system detects such a device, it fires a focused beam of light at the camera, disrupting its ability to record a digital image. The beams can also be activated manually by security guards if they spot a photographer loitering.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Guns drawn, cops busted down the door of a suspected south Florida drug dealer, then proceeded to kick some ass on Wii bowling. A security cam captured some playing video games while others searched for drugs and weapons. Clearly they just misunderstood when they were told to search the house for Weed."

Matt_dk writes "No, this was not a comet. It was Space shuttle Discovery executing a water dump. The shuttle needed to get rid of excess waste water before landing the next day, and jettisoned it overboard via the waste water dump line, creating a spectacular visual effect as sunlight hit the spraying water. This dump occurred just as the shuttle was flying over North America last week, and lots of people witnessed this toilet flush."

yet-another-lobbyist writes to mention that Facebook addiction has finally caused real world consequences, at least for one would-be burglar. It seems that 19-year-old Jonathan Parker couldn't stay away from the popular social networking site, even long enough to rob a house. Parker not only stopped mid-robbery to check his Facebook status on the victim's computer, but left it logged in to his account when he left.

How do you know when your country is in dire straits? Having a booming trade in TB-infected saliva might be a good indicator. TB sufferers in Cape Town, South Africa are selling samples of their sputum to healthy people to pass off as their own in a scam to gain medical grants. John Heinrich, chief executive of the SA National Tuberculosis Association, said, "It is definitely happening. People are trying to get a grant by pretending to be TB positive. Instead of handing their own sputum in, they buy it from people who have TB-positive sputum."

The employees at Tesco seem to be immune to mind tricks, and have kicked out the founder of the International Church of Jediism. Daniel Jones, 23, who founded the religion based on the Star Wars movies, was asked to leave because his robes were against store rules which forbid the wearing of 'hoodies' in their premises. "I told them it was a requirement of my religion but they just sniggered and ordered me to leave," he told The Daily Telegraph newspaper. "I walked past a Muslim lady in a veil. Surely the same rules should apply to everyone." It's exactly this kind of stuff that turns young Jedis to the dark side.

Last month we ran a story about the Sea Life London Aquarium using Barry White music to convince their zebra shark Zorro to get romantic with their female shark. As crazy as it seems the plan worked, maybe too well. The aquarium is now warning guests about the shark's frisky frenzies as they are public, frequent and a little on the rough side. "We are absolutely delighted that Zorro is finally getting it together with his intended but the courtship rituals of the zebra shark can appear quite violent and some guests have been a little alarmed," says deputy curator Jamie Oliver.

A study of 3,000 women aged 18-65 has found that the average woman cannot keep a secret for longer than 47 hours. The study also found that four out of ten admitted that they were unable to keep a secret, no matter how personal or private. Michael Cox, UK Director of Wines of Chile, which commissioned the research, said, "It's official - women can't keep secrets. We were really keen to find out with this survey how many secrets people are told. What we didn't bank on was how quickly these are passed on by those we confide in. No matter how precious the piece of information, it's often out in the public domain within 48 hours."

DocVM writes "A Nova Scotia farmer is opposing the construction of a microwave tower for fear it will eventually mutate his organic garlic crop. Lenny Levine, who has been planting and harvesting garlic by hand on his Annapolis Valley land since the 1970s, is afraid his organic crop could be irradiated if EastLink builds a microwave tower for wireless high-speed internet access a few hundred meters from his farm."

The Southampton City Council has given 98-year-old Mary Plaisted 28 days to leave her £65-a-week flat, making her one of the oldest people in the UK to be evicted from their home. It seems in 98 years Mary hasn't learned how to play nice with others. Mrs Plaisted is accused of assaulting caretakers and council staff at her apartment complex and harassing neighbors by banging on their windows. She was also accused of hitting her panic alarm 563 times in a month and calling the police 264 times over the past two years. Nick Cross, head of housing management for Southampton City Council, said, "It is regrettable when any action is taken by the council to repossess a property, particularly when the individual is very elderly. However, the council is left with no alternative when anti-social behaviour by one tenant leads to other residents' lives being made a misery."

wolfspirittt writes 'I know what you are thinking.. not another device that tweets something! Yup, another device that tweets something. This time it's a humidor and it tweets the status of its relative humidity and temperature levels. For cigar aficionados, this means a lot.' For everyone else it means that the tweeting ice cube tray can't be far off.

Fluffeh writes "Violins made by the Italian master Antonio Giacomo Stradivarius are regarded as being of unparalleled quality even today, with enthusiasts being prepared to pay millions for a single example. Stradivarius himself knew nothing of fungi which attack wood, but he received inadvertent help from the Little Ice Age which occurred from 1645 to 1715. During this period Central Europe suffered long winters and cool summers which caused trees to grow slowly and uniformly ideal conditions in fact for producing wood with excellent acoustic qualities. Now scientists are turning to fungi to recreate some of these amazing sounding instruments."

miller60 writes "Torrential rains last week in Istanbul led to a flood that overwhelmed a data center for Vodafone. The event was captured on the data center security cameras, which shows waters rising and then raging through the security area before flooding the raised-floor equipment area."

An anonymous reader writes "Using human urine as a fertilizer produces bumper crops of tomatoes that are safe to eat, scientists have found. Their research was published last month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and may help cheaply boost crops in the developing world. From the article, 'Yields for plants fertilized with urine quadrupled and matched those of mineral-fertilized plants. The urine-fertilized tomatoes also contained more protein and were safe for human consumption.'"

A Vermont company, Real Self-Defense, has created an umbrella specially designed to help you fight off an attack. The company says the umbrella is made of hi-tech steel, can hold the weight of a man without breaking, and can be used like a bat in an emergency. In a promotional video put out by Real Self-Defense, a man uses the umbrella to split watermelons and smash a punching bag. A company spokesman says, "Our Unbreakable Umbrella has no unusual parts, no more metal than an average umbrella, it does not arouse suspicion, can be carried legally everywhere where any weapons are prohibited. Anyone who can use a stick for defense can use this umbrella. Do you know how to swing a baseball bat? Do you know how to strike with a sturdy stick? If you do, you know all you need to know." I'm glad to see that someone is finally making self-defense products based on Batman Villain Technology.

An anonymous reader writes "Newt Gingrich as part of his 'American Solutions for Winning the Future' program selected pinkvisual.com's Allison Vivas as entrepreneur of the year for 2009. An aide for Mr. Gingrich faxed out the invitation to the awards ceremony with a letter expressing his anticipation of meeting her 'face-to-face' and getting her ideas and opinions. Newt apparently received criticism for nominating the head of a web based porn power-house for this award from the media and political circles and he has rescinded the invitation."