A Brazilian tour company is in hot water, after it was revealed that it was offering tours of Rio de Janeiro slums, including photos with the local drug gang members. For $55 you get a 4 hour tour of Rocinha, the city's largest slum, including a visit to the "bocas de fumo" where traffickers sell drugs to Rio residents. If you don't want to pay for the flight to Brazil, I will drive you into the slums of Detroit for the same price. Pictures with gang members are at their discretion.

Duct Tape, the gamers best friend.

This is how you leave no doubt that you were a nerd.

Sports helps teach kids pride, self-reliance and the shame of coming in fourth.

A Chinese restaurant in Changchun city has received some criticism for keeping ornamental carp in the four meter long urinal in the men's bathroom. A spokesman for the restaurant says the urinal contains a mixture of urine and water which was not harmful to the fish. The owner added that the fish were intended as an attraction for diners and were not used in dishes. I'm surprised this hasn't caught on in more businesses. I know I would enjoy golf a lot more if I could relieve myself into a box of kittens at every hole.

How do you make the next meal with your parents or in-laws a bit more palatable? Why not get the fine people at "Dinner In The Sky" to strap you in a chair, haul you up 50 meters with a crane and cater a gourmet meal for you? They even offer an insurance package in case your dinner party can't survive a 15-story fall. I can't wait until someone does Dinner In A Bathysphere or Dinner In A War Zone.

If you combine the movie "Platoon" with "Combat" for the Atari 2600, this is what you get. Sometimes I miss the days when all video game characters were squares of various colors.

Pagan prisoners in England have won the right to keep twigs in their cells to use as wands. The new policy regarding pagans was announced by Justice Reform Minister Maria Eagle who said, "Prison service policy is to enable prisoners of different faith traditions, including paganism, to practice their religion. Religious artifacts are allowed for relevant faiths within the constraints of good order and discipline. The religious artifacts for pagan prisoners include a flexible twig for a wand." Now that wands have been allowed, it can only be a matter of time before inmates have access to rods, staves and miscellaneous magic items.

David Waterman, a 41-year-old Ashtead fireman, is facing legal action for refusing to take down a pirate flag he raised to celebrate his daughter's pirate-themed eighth birthday party after a neighbor complained. Under current laws, any flag flying outside a residential property has to have planning permission unless it is a national flag. When asked to comment on the flag, the neighbor said "The history of the ninja, in fact, is marked by a strong code of moral and just behavior that applies not only to the fighting or military aspects, but also to the everyday life and birthday parties. Learning to attain sei shin (or right mind) is essential to becoming a ninja and virtually impossible with the flag of your enemy flying next door."

mernil links to an unsubtle piece in The Weekly Standard, excerpting: "You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the 'dignity' of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called 'plant rights' is being seriously debated."

Jim Piculas, a substitute teacher in Florida, recently lost his job. The reason he was fired is magically ridiculous. Among other issues he has been accused of Wizardry. That's right, Wizardry. Jim does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears. The trick is so good that it has propelled his community 200 years in the past.

As part of a team building exercise, Chad Hudgens agreed to be waterboarded. "He lay on his back with his head downhill, co-workers knelt on either side of him, pinning the young sales rep down while their supervisor poured water from a gallon jug over his nose and mouth." His boss told the employees present, "You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales." Chad thought about it for a few days and is now suing. General counsel for the company, George Brunt says, "We're not the mean waterboarding company that people think we are. I don't know if this would even be an issue if it weren't for Guantanamo Bay." He added that the company has seen great success with other torture themed training such as "The Iron Boot of Productivity" and "Drawn and Quarterly Reports."

Ant points out a story spotted on Boing Boing in which NASA "shares a story that turns back the clock 36 years to reveal the "key roll of duct tape in the Apollo program." The quality of the photographs from the moon always grabs me, and the duct-taped fender here is no exception.

If you think cinema reached it's pinnacle when "BloodRayne" was released or the actors in "Street Fighter" were robbed when the Oscar nominations were announced, then maybe, just maybe, Tetris the Movie is for you.

With so many reasons to hate this video it's hard to write them all, so I'll narrow it done to my top three: First, they used a white Clarence Clemons and their Courtney Cox looks more like my aunt Gloria than the second most desirable friend, (David Schwimmer ranks number one of course). Second, if you're going to make the mistake of trying to parody the Boss, the least you can do is equally half-ass a parody of one of his songs. If you fail, fail spectacularly. Third and most importantly, this is an internal video. Someone actually thought this would inspire employee greatness and lift morale. I wonder if the head of Microsoft's HR department has ever met real people.

Firmly cementing himself as the Don Juan of all nerdom, Bernie Peng reprogrammed his girlfriend's copy of Bejeweled so that a marriage proposal popped up when she reached a certain score. She giggle-snorted, pushed up her broken glasses and said yes.

Retired engineer, William Lyttle is like any other 77 year old except for one thing. He likes to dig tunnels. For the past 40 years he has dug a network of tunnels beneath his 20-room Victorian property in Hackney, East London. The city council made him stop after inspectors discovered that parts of the house were supported by nothing more than household appliances and that he had chipped away parts of the foundation of the neighboring property. The borough of Hackney had Mr Lyttle evicted in 2006 and has presented him with a bill for around $600,000 to repair the damage he caused, Sloth removal and other One Eyed Willy related charges.

Writing a book can be hard. You have to pick a title, cover art and compile a table of contents. If you want it in a Library it has to be assigned a numerical code (ISBN) not to mention the weeks, months or even years of actual writing. Philip M. Parker has found an easier way. He has generated over 200,000 books making him, "The most published author in the history of the planet." He has created computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject and works with a team of programmers and 60-70 computers to produce such page turners as "The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India." (144 pages at a very reasonable price of $495). Philip admits that many of his "books" are only printed when a customer buys one. I can't wait for "Samzenpus's Email correspondence with his mother from 2007-2008". I hear she figured out how to change her background image all by herself.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks many industries have been hit hard but none as hard as the dubious container industry. Many family owned providers of heavily taped and strangely leaning packages are facing a dire financial future.

Fat, slightly disturbed, fantasy role playing geeks have been without a rap role model for too long. Now they have a hulking bard named 'Baby Cakes'.