Police in Utica, Michigan put an end to a divorced man's weekend visitation with his son after it was discovered he was using the young boy to help pick up women. The 7-year-old would approach women in the park and ask, "if they would like to meet his dad so he could have a mother." If that didn't work, the world's youngest wingman would begin to cry and try to get the unsuspecting women to take him back to his father's car. Eventually, several men in the park figured out what was going on and alerted the police. The father was arrested, charged with disorderly conduct, and possession of steel testicles.

kstatefan40 writes "Hosting company WebHostingBuzz introduced a unique environmental policy this weekend, calling for executives at the company to use fraudulent complaints as toilet paper and donating $100 to the International Tree Foundation to apologize for the abuse of such precious resources by customers who fraudulently file complaints against their company. The story goes back a few weeks, but it ended with WHB CEO Matt Russell telling a fraudulent customer who filed a complaint against with the BBB, 'Cool. I look forward to tearing it up and wiping my ass with the piece of paper.' Read and enjoy the entire exchange."

doug141 writes "The four-star Crowne Plaza near Venice mistakenly offered rooms for 1 cent on its website, leading customers to book 1,400 room nights. Surprisingly, the hotel has decided to honor the 1 cent reservations, which means a loss of $129,000 by the hotel. From the article:'The hotel first thought the offer was posted by a hacker, sales manager Fulvio Danesin said Friday. But it turned out to be human error at the Atlanta, Georgia, offices of Intercontinental Hotels Group, the hotel's mother company, he said. The offer was supposed to be for a two-night stay at half price. A night at the 151-room hotel normally costs between $128 and $214.'"

Foehg writes "ForeignPolicy.com reports, 'A Belarusian textile company has developed a special school uniform that protects kids from electromagnetic radiation emanating from their cellphones. The uniform features a dedicated pocket that can store the phone and make it safe for those who wear it.'" Now someone has to create an oven mitt that can protect you from the harmful radiation given off by your microwave oven.

puroresu writes "Scientific American reports on the efforts of Selmer Bringsjord and his team at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who have been attempting to develop an AI possessed of an interesting character trait: pure evil. From the article, 'He and his research team began developing their computer representation of evil by posing a series of questions beginning with the basics: name, age, sex, etc., and progressing to inquiries about this fictional person's beliefs and motivations. This exercise resulted in "E," a computer character first created in 2005 to meet the criteria of Bringsjord's working definition of evil. Whereas the original E was simply a program designed to respond to questions in a manner consistent with Bringsjord's definition, the researchers have since given E a physical identity: It's a relatively young, white man with short black hair and dark stubble on his face.'"

Three-year-old Azeem Khan has been granted a motorcycle license by a panel of very optimistic or sadistic Indian judges. His dad built special extensions for the bike's controls so he could reach them. "Of course I won't let him drive on the busy roads without me on the bike as well. I trust Azeem but I don't trust other drivers," said his father Shantanu.

grrlscientist writes "Here is a short talk in which Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification — and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat their marshmallow."

Select constabularies in the UK have started giving out customer feedback forms to suspects held in cells. The 41 question form asks such things as: Were you happy with your food? Was your cell clean enough? and Was the reading material provided sufficient? Police chiefs say the program is designed to find out if there are "any areas our service that we can realistically improve." An anonymous officer said that the questionnaire gave suspected offenders the impression that they would be getting "room service." "These people are in the cell for a reason, it's not like they've come here on holiday. We are getting asked all sorts — to get them celebrity magazines, to put air con on, to bring them a salad. It's not funny after a while let me tell you," he added.

Biology professor Andrew Poyarkov thinks that stray dogs in Moscow have learned to use the subway to get around the city. He thinks they are using the rails in the morning to get to the center of town were food is more plentiful before returning to where they live each evening. "They do not just go to the subway station, they actually board the trains. They seem to have learned how long they need to stay on the train to leave at the right station. Sometimes they fall asleep and miss their stop. Then they get off take another train back to the center," he says.

The New Zealand Healing Rooms clinic cures all the usual stuff: cancer, stroke paralysis, broken bones, and mental illness with the power of prayer. What sets this clinic apart from the rest is its ability to fix the most horrible affliction of all, bad penmanship. The clinic is set up like a doctors office, with a waiting room that leads to treatment areas, where two pastors and divine-healing technicians pray for patients. Pastor Marie Rea says the "aggressive" prayer techniques used usually cure patients in as little as one 20-minute prayer session. Most remarkable is the testimony of Adele Marsh, who brought in her dyslexic daughter. After one session, Adele says, her daughter's illegible handwriting was miraculously made legible. A serious question still remains. Can she write an upper-case "Z" in cursive?

The best plan is often the simplest.

Spending some extreme quality time with dad.

An anonymous reader writes "Inhabitants of the planet Gliese 581d will need a radio receiver and the ability to interpret binary code if they are to understand a series of text messages to be sent from Australia. Hello from Earth will collect the messages over the next 12 days and transmit them to the closest Earth-like planet that has the potential to harbor life. All the messages will be collected and exported as a text file and sent to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where it will be encoded into binary code, packaged and tested before transmission."

Privacy Gulag style.

Police say there is a good reason Canal Livre, a Brazilian crime show, always seems to be first on the scene when someone is murdered: the host ordered the killings. State legislator and host of the show Wallace Souza is under investigation for ordering at least five murders highlighted on the program. "The order to execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police. [The killings] appear to have been committed to get rid of his rivals and increase the audience of the TV show," state police intelligence chief Thomaz Vasconcelos said.

In an effort to help Britain's declining bee population, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is urging gardeners to leave out a homemade energy drink for tired bees. The RSPB says that a mix of two tablespoons of sugar with a tablespoon of water makes a perfect bee-boosting drink. Val Osborne, head of wildlife inquiries at the RSPB, said, "Many people keep seeing bees on the ground and assume they are dead, but chances are they are having a rest. Much like us, a sugary drink could boost their energy levels and a simple sugar and water combination will be a welcome treat."

NASA plans on using $50 million in stimulus funds to seed development of a commercial passenger transportation service to space. Potential space taxi inventors have 45 days to submit their proposals. The proposals will be competitively evaluated and the winners will be announced by the end of September. It is unclear what other Commodore 64 games NASA plans on making a reality, but I hope Arkanoid makes the short list.

Looks like someone is going stag.

Six-year-old Miko Andres is the world's youngest sharp shooter. The title has earned Miko much fame in his native Philippines and the right to determine his own bedtime. The boy learned how to shoot from his family, who enjoy the sport of practical shooting. "It is within the family and friends that Miko was influenced to love and enjoy the practical shooting sport," says his father, Cresencio "Mike" Pascua Andres JR. "Because of his interest, we took turns in teaching, training and coaching him on the basics of the sport." Miko has gotten so good he hopes to travel to the US to compete in the USPSA 2009 national competition.

Okeke Ikechukwu, a 26-year-old man from Nigeria, has decided the best way to smother himself with love is to marry his pillow. Okeke says his severe stutter keeps him from being able to get a girlfriend and his pillow is his best option. "Since I am a stutterer, ladies have always laughed at me whenever I try to talk to them," he said. "I have needs, and so I have taken to sleeping with my pillow in my arms ever since I was 16. I have grown to fall in love with it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life with it."