Anna Ramirez came home to find all her stuff on the lawn, the police chaining her door shut, and a stranger telling her that he had just bought her home for $87,000. Anna and her family have lived in the home for 3 years and had recently refinanced. Somehow there was a paperwork mishap at the Miami-Dade Clerk's Office and her house was put up for sale. The sale was reversed by a Miami-Dade judge two days later. "I have never seen anything like it. They literally threw all her stuff on the front lawn. I didn't sleep that night and it wasn't even my house," said neighbor Martha Taylor. I hope Anna got a really good rate on her refinance.

kamapuaa writes "According to a study published in the upcoming October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the average US video game player is 35 years old, overweight, and tends toward depression. Specifically, female video game players tended towards depression, while males tended towards large BMIs. While the study itself points to several conclusions, one researcher noted: '... habitual use of video games as a coping response may provide a genesis for obsessive-compulsive video-game playing, if not video-game addiction.'" On the flip side, the Washington Post is running a story about the mental health benefits of playing video games.

Officials at the Sea Life London Aquarium are hoping that "The Walrus of Love" can work his magic on Zorro, their six-year-old zebra shark. For some reason Zorro hasn't been able to seal the deal with his potential mate, Mazawabee. The aquarium hopes that playing White's, "Baby We Better Try To Get It Together" and "My First, My Last, My Everything" will heat things up between the two sharks. If Barry doesn't do the trick they plan on giving Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie a shot. "Zorro has something of a reputation as a 'ladies' shark'' and as Mazawabee has been 'single' for a number of years now we really thought they would get together very quickly. But it's been months since their first introduction and although there are certainly signs that Zorro has been making advances, we would really have expected some serious mating by now. Research suggests that fish can not only hear music but can appreciate different tunes and melodies so we have decided to see if some good old fashioned love songs will get them in the mood," said Paul Hale, the aquarium curator.

The cats aren't smiling.

Individuality runs downhill.

suraj.sun writes "A Verizon customer filed a lawsuit after the tech the company sent out got a little punchy. Instead of fixing the customer's problem, the tech allegedly hit him in the face. The New York Post says the tech attacked the customer after he asked to see some ID before allowing access to the apartment. From the article, '"You want to know my name? Here's my name," Benjamin snarled, slapping his ID card into Isakson's face, according to Isakson's account of the December 2008 confrontation. "The guy essentially snapped. He cold-cocked me, hit me two or three solid shots to the head while my hands were down," said Isakson, a limo driver. He said the pounding bloodied his face and broke his glasses. But things got uglier, Isakson said, when Benjamin squeezed him around the neck and pressed him up against the wall. "He's prepared to kill me," Isakson said. "That's all I could think of." The customer broke free and ran away. The Verizon tech then chased the customer until he was subdued by a neighbor who was an off-duty cop.'"

RevWaldo writes "A Brooklyn man can't sleep at night knowing that the bizarre inter-gadget relationship between his Sony Erickson PDA and his Maytag Magic Chef stove might leave him burned. Last Monday Andrei Melnikov discovered that his cellphone was turning on his stove when he got a call in the kitchen. The phone had been on the kitchen counter when it rang, and as he answered it and walked away, he recalls hearing a faint beep. Minutes later, he smelled smoke, and discovered that some plastic cookware left in the oven was on fire. The incoming call had somehow turned the broiler on high, a phenomenon which Melnikov demonstrated for his landlord and reporters. They believe this is the first time this has happened in the three years since Melnikov has owned the stove and the phone, but since neither device is talking, nobody really knows how long this hot affair's been going on. Melnikov and his girlfriend have put a stop to it by unplugging the oven, and they're afraid to plug it back in because of their pet chinchillas. Maytag is sending someone to "fix" the problem, but will the lonely old Maytag man really have the heart to stand in the way of such fiery passion?"

You can actually hear the earth cry when this thing starts up.

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.