81-year-old Zacarias Pacheco should be able to live comfortably the rest of his life as the world's greatest denture cream spokesman after his false teeth stopped a bullet from reaching his brain. Pacheco was shot working at his bar late last week. Hospital official Jose Marcos da Silva was quoted by Globo TV's G1 website Saturday as saying that the bullet probably would have pierced Moraes' brain if it hadn't first hit his dentures before lodging in his throat. The official said the bullet will not be removed immediately because surgery right now would be too risky.

Some have compared them to kamikazes, but the more than 200 elderly volunteers who want clean up the Fukushima power station say they are just being practical. 72-year-old retired engineer Yasuteru Yamada says: "I am 72 and on average I probably have 13 to 15 years left to live. Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30 years or longer to develop. Therefore us older ones have less chance of getting cancer." So far the government is hesitant to let the volunteers into the power station but Yamada and the others have been lobbying for the right to aid in the clean up. He says: "At this moment I can say that I am talking with many key government and Tepco people. But I am sorry I can't say any more at this moment. It is on the way but it is a very, very sensitive issue politically."

theodp writes "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has begun personally slaying animals for food, part of a resolution to fully appreciate the meat he eats by limiting it to that which he personally kills. Zuckerberg has mostly been vegetarian since making the vow, but his hands-on kills thus far include a goat, pig, chicken and a lobster. 'He cut the throat of the goat with a knife,' Zuckerberg pal Jesse Cool told FORTUNE, 'which is the most kind way to do it.'"

coondoggie writes "Ok this is kind of creepy. The US Marshalls Office today said it will hold an online auction of the personal effects of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. The auction will run until June 2 and will include personal documents, such as driver's licenses, birth certificates, deeds, checks, academic transcripts, photos, and his handwritten codes; typewriters; tools; clothing; watches; several hundred books; and more than 20,000 pages of written documents, including the original handwritten and typewritten versions of the 'Unabom Manifesto.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Synaesthesia — a condition where the brain has extra connections, causing numbers or days to have colors associated with them, or sounds to have particular tastes etc. — has always fascinated me. This interview with a man with lexical-gustatory synaesthesia shows how all-encompassing the condition is. I asked him when he first became aware of it and he replied that it's like asking someone what was the first thing they saw or smelled. Also, my name tastes salty and metallic. Yum."

jalefkowit writes "A new book by Los Angeles Times Magazine investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen, titled Area 51, reports that that the famous 1947 UFO sightings in Roswell, New Mexico, were actually an attempt by the Soviet Union to demonstrate that they could panic the American population if they wished. According to the book, the UFOs were actually aircraft derived from flying-wing technology, piloted by 'child-size aviators' surgically altered by captured Nazi doctors to appear more frightening. Skeptics note that this account is based on testimony provided to Jacobsen by a single unnamed source, who she describes as one of only five engineers given full access to the crash debris at the top-secret facility in Nevada known as Area 51."

It appears the fact checker hired by The New York Times back in 1899 wasn't very good. Retired dentist Dr. Daniel A. F. Schwenk found a few errors in his great-uncle Lt. M. K. Schwenk's obituary including his name and hometown. The Times has since corrected the mistakes saying it's never too late to set the record straight.

Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel says the key to quicker business innovation is skipping college. His foundation is handing out $100,000 to 24 people under 20 to drop out of college for two years and start companies. From the press release: "As the first members of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, the Fellows will pursue innovative scientific and technical projects, learn entrepreneurship, and begin to build the technology companies of tomorrow. During their two-year tenure, each Fellow will receive $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation as well as mentorship from the Foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs and innovators. The project areas for this class of fellows include biotech, career development, economics and finance, education, energy, information technology, mobility, robotics, and space."

SoyQueSoy pointed out an article that reveals it's not all fun, but forced games for some Chinese prisoners. It is alleged that after a day of hard labor some inmates are forced to work through the night as gold farmers. "Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor," [prisoner] Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

An anonymous reader writes "Douglas Adams died about ten years ago and fans have not forgotten about the beloved author and the importance of having a towel. Today is Towel Day and people from all over the world are holding events to celebrate Adams. Some of the events include: a gladiator towel fight in France, concerts in Denmark & Russia, a march against Vogon Violence in Brazil, and a talk on science in the Hitchhiker's Guide in the UK. A Canadian group even ran a contest to select an Intergalactic Towel Day Ambassador for Earth."

theodp writes "When he walked into the dentist's office, Ars Technica's Timothy B. Lee was looking for cleaner teeth, but was shown the door after expressing outrage at being asked to first sign a 'mutual privacy agreement' calling for him to transfer ownership of any public commentary he might write in the future about his experience to the good doctor. Lee reports that similar censorious copyright agreements are popping up in doctors' offices across the country. 'Doctors and dentists are understandably worried about damage to their reputations from negative reviews,' writes Lee, but 'censoring patients is the wrong way for doctors to deal with online criticism.'"

Lanxon writes "Usually, the only constraint on building a Lego creation is your imagination. Unless, that is, you build a giant structure which demands its own 'Lego Room.' One Lego fan has done just that: say hello to the Garrison of Moriah, and the 50 metre square room it inhabits. Inspired by the fantastic buildings featured likes of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, Garrison-creator Gerry Burrows has built a detailed (and huge) sculpture to scale of the tiny Lego people who have the honor of inhabiting it ."

An anonymous reader writes "The 7th annual 'Best illusion of the year contest' was held by the Neural Correlate Society last week in Florida, and it featured 10 fantastic visual illusions selected from a pool of over 150 submissions. The site has demos of the illusions that made the finals, with brief explanations about what each illusion tells us about the visual system. Some might be important for the design of video displays and animations."

Kozar_The_Malignant writes "A newly-described species of bacterium, Pseudomonas putida has been found to live on pure caffeine. The little jaspers metabolize caffeine into carbon dioxide and ammonia. They were found living in a flower bed on the University of Iowa campus, not in the drain of an espresso machine as one might expect. The paper presenting the research will be presented at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in New Orleans this month where caffeine metabolism will have to contend with the traditional ethanol metabolism."

c0lo writes "The Canadian town of Mission, BC has a bylaw that allows the town's Public Safety Inspection Team to search people's homes for grow ops if they are using more than 93 kWh of electricity per day. There have allegedly been reports floating in IRC of two different cases of police showing up at a Bitcoin miner's residence with a search warrant. Ohio police and the DEA file at least 60 subpoenas each month for energy-use records of people suspected of running an indoor pot growing operation. DEA Agent Anthony Marotta said high electricity usage does not always mean the residence is an indoor pot farm and has surprised federal agents. 'We thought it was a major grow operation ... but this guy had some kind of business involving computers. I don't know how many computer servers we found in his home.'"

mysqlrocks writes "In Vermont, FairPoint Communications has enlisted draft horses to help lay fiber-optic cable in remote locations. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has pledged to bring broadband to every last mile by 2013, including many remote areas that have been neglected in the past. Private companies have been unwilling to invest in the expensive infrastructure needed to reach these areas. However, Vermont's congressional delegation helped to secure $410 million in federal money earmarked for broadband development and Vermont has partnered with private companies, like FairPoint, to bring high-speed Internet access to all Vermonters. From the article: 'The difficulty of getting cable to "every last mile," is where Fred, the cable-carrying draft horse, comes in. "Hopefully it pays off," says Hastings. "We could maybe get a four-wheeler in here," he continues, gesturing to the cleared swath of boggy, fern-studded terrain that he's working in today. But definitely not a truck, and Fred's impact is nearly invisible. Residents rarely complain about a draft horse tromping through their yards.'"

Employees at SkyCity Casino in Auckland have been forced to spray themselves with repellent and wear flea collars in an attempt to ward off an infestation. Unite Union national director Mike Treen said staff had been complaining about infestations on the casino floor "for years" and that although the business had been undertaking a cleaning process, "it doesn't seem to be working." I had no idea that those dogs playing poker paintings were based on actual events.

coondoggie writes "Researchers with the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity want to build a repository of metaphors. You read that right. Not just American/English metaphors mind you but those of Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish and Russian speakers. Why metaphors? 'Metaphors have been known since Aristotle as poetic or rhetorical devices that are unique, creative instances of language artistry (for example: The world is a stage; Time is money). Over the last 30 years, metaphors have been shown to be pervasive in everyday language and to reveal how people in a culture define and understand the world around them,' IARPA says."

Even though he created the definitive guide to enjoying yourself outside, Jonathan Coulton is best known for the programmer anthem Code Monkey, his Thing a Week project, and writing the theme song to Portal. In 2005 Coulton left his programming job to pursue his music career, and has since become a successful one man music label. Jonathan has agreed to answer your questions about robots, life, and internet stardom. Normal Slashdot interview rules apply.

Hugh Pickens writes "Emily Singer reports in MIT Technology Review that a nightshirt embedded with fabric electronics can monitor user's breathing patterns while a small chip worn in a pocket of the shirt processes that data to determine the phase of sleep, such as REM sleep (when we dream), light sleep, or deep sleep. 'It has no adhesive and doesn't need any special setup to wear,' says Matt Bianchi, a sleep neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-inventor of the shirt. 'It's very easy—you just slip it on at night.' Until now people with sleep disorders were hooked up to a complex array of sensors that monitor brain activity, muscle activity, eye movement, and heart and breathing rate but the 'smart pajamas' simplify this by focusing only on respiration. 'It turns out that you can tell if someone is awake or asleep and which stage of sleep they are in purely based on breathing pattern,' says Bianchi. 'That's a much easier signal to analyze than electrical activity from the brain.' Sleep specialists hope the pj's can help patients with insomnia or other sleep disorders since the shirt allows repeated measurements over time in the home so users can log their habits, such as coffee or alcohol intake, exercise, or stress, and look for patterns in how those variables affect their quality of sleep."