It's heavier than it looks.

In an attempt to boost test scores, some Austrian students will be able to "phone a friend" if they get stuck on a test question. The students will be able to call teachers, doctors, or other experts for help when they don't know an answer. Teacher Reinhard Peter came up with the idea while watching "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," and says, "They can call doctors, teachers and other people to ask their help. Many of them suddenly have exam anxiety as though they were sitting in the classroom taking the exam. They get nervous on the phone and feel that if they give the wrong answer they are not only failing themselves but the pupil who is calling them as well." Peter adds that all of his students have passed their exams since he allowed the calls, and he has no plans for installing a 50:50 policy.

The city of Bridgewater, South Dakota is suing meat plant owner and "sell by date" denier, Ilan Parente, for having to clean up his abandoned meat plant. The city spent between $5k-$7k on volunteers, city and county personnel, fire department, emergency management and ambulance personnel to clean up the 44-ton mountain of rotting meat left in the plant. Parente says that he received the bill but will have to consult with his advisers to decide if he would pay. Bridgewater residents speculate that he left the meat behind as payback for past run-ins with local officials. Parente denies these claims and says the putrefying pile was a simple mishap he has been trying to correct for the past month.

The family that replaces the human race together, stays together.

More than 500 workers at Japan's, Keihin Electric Express Railway, must have their faces scanned each morning to determine their optimum smile. The "smile scan" analyzes a smile based on facial characteristics, from lip curves and eye movements to wrinkles. After the program scans you, it produces a smile rating that ranges from zero to 100 depending on the estimated potential of your biggest smile. If your number is sufficient, you can go about your day grinning like a maniac. If your smile number is too low the computer will give you a message such as, "lift up your mouth corners" or "you still look too serious." Every morning employees receive a printout of their daily smile which they are expected to keep with them throughout the day.

It would be a shame if an engineer on a recent Thomas Cook Airlines flight doesn't get a complimentary first class upgrade every time he flies. The engineer was on flight TCX9641 when it was announced that the trip would be delayed eight hours, while a mechanic was flown in to fix a problem. Luckily for the other passengers, the engineer happened to work for Thomsonfly Airlines, which has a reciprocal maintenance agreement with Thomas Cook. After about 35 minutes the man fixed the problem and the flight was on its way. A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook said, "When they announced there was a technical problem he came forward and said who he was. We checked his licence and verified he was who he said he was, and he was able to fix the problem to avoid the delay. We are very grateful that he was on the flight that day."

If you're looking for a cheap vacation spot this year, Afghanistan's newly built Tourist Information Center, sure hopes you give their country a chance. Government officials are training tour guides and teaching restaurant owner's about customer service expectations. "Afghanistan is definitely a good brand. People will come... They go to Nepal this year, they go to Chile the next year, they're off to Afghanistan if it's accessible," said Andrew Scanlon, a protected areas expert working on an U.N. mapping project. Afghanistan: come for the calcium carbonate-laden ground, stay because the airport got bombed.

Luke Tipping, the Michelin-starred executive chef of Simpsons' in Birmingham, and Laslan's British Curry Award-winner Aktar Islam, have decided your baby should only eat the finest. They've come up with baby food that is worthy of a Michelin star including such favorites as: warm vermicelli pudding, scented with cinnamon and green cardamom, sprinkled with crush pistachio and rusk croutons, and dill-seasoned cheddar cheese fish pie accompanied with fresh broccoli and sweetcorn. Mr Tipping said, "There's nothing wrong with a baby eating a fresh meal, I would rather they did that than give them the usual processed stuff that's out there."

An Italian drug trafficker's plan to escape from jail with the help of a four-meter-long radio controlled zeppelin, crashed and burned thanks to some alert police. "The plan consisted of using a remotely controlled zeppelin to bring him night-vision goggles and climbing equipment with which to escape. They would then have gone abroad to lie low while waiting for forged papers and to continue arranging the shipment of narcotics into our country," a National Police statement said.

In addition to making the perfect bar joke, what happens when you take an Imam, a priest, a rabbi, a Buddhist monk, and 10 atheists — and put them in the same room? Hopefully for a new Turkish game show, the most entertaining conversion you've ever seen. The prize for converts is a pilgrimage to a holy site of their new religion: Mecca for Muslims, the Vatican for Christians, Jerusalem for Jews, and Tibet for Buddhists. As you might have guessed, Muslim authorities in Turkey don't see the entertainment value of the show. High Board of Religious Affairs Chairman Hamza Aktan said, "Doing something like this for the sake of ratings is disrespectful to all religions. Religion should not be a subject for entertainment programs."

There's nothing like a creationist science fair with a touch of racism.

Wired has an amusing writeup that accurately captures the most recent ridiculous addition to Bugatti's automobile catalog. The $2.1 million Veyron sports over 1,000 horsepower, a 16-cylinder engine, and a top speed of 245 mph. The guilty conscience comes for free. "That same cash-filled briefcase could buy seven Ferrari 599s or every single 2009 model Mercedes. You could snap up a top-shelf Maybach and employ a chauffeur until well past the apocalypse. Hell, in this economy, $2.1 million is probably enough to make you a one-man special-interest group with some serious Washington clout."

The Narrative Fallacy writes "Wired reports that with just a few weeks of training, you can learn to 'see' objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do. Acoustic expert Juan Antonio Martinez at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain has developed a system to teach people how to use echolocation, a skill that could be particularly useful for the blind and for people who work under dark or smoky conditions, like firefighters — or cat burglars. 'Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you,' says Martinez. 'Within another couple weeks you can tell the difference between trees and pavement.' To master the art of echolocation, you can begin by making the typical 'sh' sound used to make someone be quiet. Moving a pen in front of the mouth can be noticed right away similar to the phenomenon when traveling in a car with the windows down, which makes it possible to 'hear' gaps in the verge of the road. The next level is to learn how to master 'palate clicks,' special clicks with your tongue and palate that are better than other sounds because they can be made in a uniform way, work at a lower intensity, and don't get drowned out by ambient noise. With the palate click you can learn to recognize slight changes in the way the clicks sound depending on what objects are nearby. 'For all of us in general, this would be a new way of perceiving the world,' says Martinez."

Land Rover says their new S1 mobile is the world's strongest phone. Testing done by Land Rover and the staff at The Sun showed the S1 would still work after being stepped on by an elephant, run over by a Land Rover, dropped from a second-story window, buried in mud, soaked in a pint of beer, and roasted in an oven at 150 degrees centigrade. A forklift truck proved to be its match, and was able to crush the S1 under its three-tonne weight. The phone comes with 1,500 hours of battery life, a 2.0 megapixel camera, an extra loud ringtone and an unconditional three-year guarantee.

An elderly woman in Zurich mistook a fire on her television for the real thing and called the fire department to save her. The firemen found her TV tuned to a German station that airs the constant image of a fireplace in the early morning. "The fire was extinguished with the press of a button," police said in a statement. I wonder who she would have called if she had accidentally tuned into a Godzilla marathon.

President Viktor Yushchenko signed a law that makes possession of pornography a crime in the Ukraine unless it is "for medical purposes." Punishment for possession of pornography can include fines and imprisonment for up to three years. Remember, porn is not right for everyone. Only your doctor knows if porn is right for you.

A marketing company in Newcastle got rid of Hawaiian shirt Fridays and their pants while they were at it in an attempt to improve morale. Naked Friday was the brainchild of business psychologist, David Taylor. He convinced the folks at design and marketing onebestway that stripping off their pants would also strip away walls blocking good communication. Nearly everyone went the full monty at the office, with only one man and two women choosing to wear underwear. Sam Jackson, 23, the house manager, was the only woman to go fully naked. She said, "It was brilliant. Now that we've seen each other naked, there are no barriers."

At least it apologized.

jendudley writes "A new service is letting you buy swathes of friends on Twitter. $87 buys you 1000 followers, $147 will buy you 2500 followers, $229.60 will buy you 5000 followers, $372.75 will get you 10,000 followers and, should you wish to go for the motherlode, $1491 will buy you 100,000 Twitter followers. Usually, these followers arrive in just 2-4 days. So wrong."

tiffanydanica writes "For a lot of us our browser history is something we consider private, or at least not something we want to expose to every website we visit. Web2.0collage is showing just how easy it is (with code!) for sites to determine what sites you visit. When you visit the site it sniffs your browser history, and creates a collage of the (safe for work) sites that you visit. It is an interesting application of potentially scary technology (imagine a job application site using this to screen candidates). You can jump right into having your history sniffed if you so desire. While the collages are cool on their own merit, they also serve as an illustration of the privacy implications of browser history sniffing."