The parents of a 2-year-old Chinese boy are seeking advice on how to help their child kick his smoking habit. The toddler has been smoking for over a year and was allowed to start to help deal with the pain of a hernia. His parents say that his smoking is getting out of control, but they are unsure on how to get him to quit. The terrible twos are bad, but imagine the horror of a 2-year-old in the middle of a nic-fit tantrum.

For centuries mankind has pondered such questions as: What is the sound of one hand clapping? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Now a Spanish man is accused of adding another philosophical riddle to the mix; if you have your boss killed can you avoid being laid off? Police say that the head of audiovisual services at the Barcelona International Convention Center hired a Colombian hitman who killed the director of the convention center. Investigators say the director planned to lay off the arrested man as part of a restructuring project.

Ninjas aren't born; they're stolen.

Designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau have created a clock that is powered by "eating" bugs. The clock traps insects on flypaper stretched across a roller system and then drops them into a vat of bacteria. The insects are then "digested" and the ensuing chemical reaction is transformed into power that keeps the rollers moving and the LCD clock working. The two offer another version that is powered by mice and an even cooler machine that picks insect fuel from spiderwebs with the help of a robotic arm and a video camera.

In an attempt to stop wide spread bribe-taking, staff at Nepal's main international airport are being issued pants without pockets. Nepal's Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) sent a team to the airport to "observe the growing complaints about the behaviour of airport authorities and workers towards travellers." "We discovered that the reports were true," said spokesman Ishwori Prasad. I have a feeling that staff will also find themselves wearing mittens soon.

Order something off the super green supreme menu.

It should be pretty easy for The Boulder Police Department to find the perpetrator of a liquor store robbery last Saturday. The male robber was wearing red and white face makeup, a red and purple wig, a fake nose and a denim dress. A clerk says the clown asked for help in a feminine voice, saying, "Will you help me? My husband is out of work." The employees ignored his pleas and the jilted suspect pulled a gun and robbed the store. After collecting an undisclosed amount of cash, the clown unexpectedly fled on foot and not on a unicycle or in a tiny car full of other transvestite clowns.

This is not the bride you are looking for.

Sue Williams has been awarded a £20,000 grant by the Arts Council of Wales, to "explore cultural attitudes towards female buttocks." Sue plans to examine racial attitudes towards bottoms in Europe and Africa and create plaster casts of women's behinds to try to understand their place in contemporary culture. And here I've been studying the issue all these years for free like a sucker!

BBC Magazine convinced 13-year-old Scott Campbell to trade in his iPod for a Walkman for a week and see what he thought. Scott thinks the iPod wins when it comes to sound quality, color, weight, and the shuffle feature. The Walkman, however, offers two headphone sockets, making it much easier to listen to music with a friend. My favorite part of the review is, "It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equalizer, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette."

Dr_Ken writes "According to this news story in Ananova, the Indian Defense Ministry is looking into a cheaper and simpler form of tear gas agent for riot dispersal and crowd control. From the article: 'Defense researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chili to immobilize people without killing them, reports the BBC. The chili, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chili. Probably much cheaper to fabricate than conventional CN or CS gases and way less toxic, too.'"

sayanchak writes "The Bangalore Mirror reports, 'People of a village near Bajpe were in a panic, after they found a chip resembling a pen drive in their toilet soaps. As rumors spread that the chip was a bomb or was inserted to make blue films, the villagers made a beeline to the police station. Police investigated and found that the chip was installed for collecting data. A team from Hindustan Lever Limited was conducting studies related to Lifebuoy soap and its usage in the village.'"

Spring Airlines has come up with a great idea to make a little extra money by making their flights standing-room-only. The Chinese airline is just waiting for a green light from the government to start selling tickets for the standing flights. The airline's president Wang Zhenghua said he was sure that the plan would get government approval because it was suggested by China's vice premier Zhang Dejiang. "He suggested that, for a lower price, passengers should be able to get on a plane like catching a bus, with no seat, no luggage consignment, no food, no water, but very convenient," said Wang.

A new study in Russia has shown that half of all deaths in the country between the ages of 15-54 are alcohol related. The study showed that the mortality rate of Russian people in that age group is five times higher for men and three times higher for women than in Western Europe. David Zaridze, head of the Russian Cancer Research Center said, "Each year 1.3 million people die from cardio-vascular diseases in Russia. Based on our investigation, it is possible to suggest that at least a third of these deaths is linked to alcohol consumption and not to any specific heart pathology".

Hose, the refreshedmaker!

Keldrin_1 writes "Almost everyone has, at one point or another, come up against a deadline that they just were not able to meet. A new website has arisen that promises to solve the problem by providing you with a 'completed project' that has mysteriously been corrupted over email and now can not be opened. Corrupted-files.com offers to cure all your homework and deadline woes for the low fee of $3.95 (soon to be $5.95). From the site: 'Who's to say your 5 sheet Excel file didn't get corrupted? Exactly! No one can! It's the perfect excuse to buy yourself extra time and not hand in a garbage project. Plagiarism is not the answer to procrastination. — Corrupted-Files.com is!'

NotNormallyNormal writes "It appears that quantum mechanics can't be solved with a skateboard. A court case in San Mateo County has a homeless man on trial for attacking another transient. Apparently a discussion between two homeless men about "quantum mechanics and the splitting of atoms" was rudely ended by a third homeless man who joined the conversation and then ended it by hitting one of the other men with a skateboard. It might be hard for the man to claim innocence with there being two external observers knowing that will collapse the wave function. Maybe he was trying to explain how the skateboard could tunnel through his head?"

It's the tripnaut! writes "The BBC reports that Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around 'as high as a kite', a government official has said. 'The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,' says Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania. 'Then they crash,' she added."

Iranian state television's Channel Two is playing a Lord of the Rings marathon in an attempt to keep people inside watching hobbits and not protesting in the streets. Normally, people in Tehran are treated to one or two Hollywood movies a week, but with recent events the government hopes that sitting through a nine-hour trilogy will take the fight out of most of the protesters. Perhaps this was not the best choice in films if you want your people not to believe that "even the smallest person can change the course of the future."

Motor-neural demyelination, or to the laymen, Duke Nukem's disease.