An anonymous reader writes "The latest in bizarre copyright battles, involves a guy named Bobby Kent who is suing ASCAP and plans to sue every single professional sports team in the US (with the exception of the LA Lakers who already wrote him a check for $3,000), because he claims he came up with the famous 'da da da DA da DA... CHARGE!' jingle. Of course, the actual origins of the jingle are disputed, with evidence pointing back many years before Kent wrote his version, including suggestions of a USC drum major coming up with it, as well as evidence from an old German army music playbook."

In celebration of the upcoming royal wedding, a British brewer has crafted Royal Virility Performance beer. Just three of these stiff brews is equal to taking a Viagra pill. From the article: "Just 40 bottles of the £10 tipple will be produced initially, and will go on sale on April 29 at BrewDog.com. All the proceeds go to the charity Centrepoint, which Wills supports. But buyers will be limited to one bottle each due to the powerful effects."

After what must have been an epic marketing meeting, a Florida unemployment agency decided to give 6,000 red capes to the jobless as part of its "Cape-A-Bility Challenge" public relations campaign. The capes cost $14,000 (not a bad price for 6k capes actually) and featured a cartoon character named "Dr. Evil Unemployment." As one might imagine, officials are calling for an investigation to be launched. It's a good thing there are an abundance of caped do-gooders without jobs in the area who should be able to help.

polyp2000 writes with an Engadget excerpt to inspire instant toy envy: "A pair of Spanish engineers have recently unveiled the dAlH2Orean (see what they did there?), a R/C car that runs on aluminum. Dropping a few soda can tabs into a tank of sodium hydroxide produces enough hydrogen to power the little speedster for 40 minutes — at almost 20mph."

The good news is not all air traffic controllers are sleeping on the job. The bad news is that some of them are watching movies instead. From the article: "In the latest incident, the controller was watching a movie on a DVD player early Sunday morning while on duty at a regional radar center near Cleveland, Ohio that handles high-altitude air traffic, the FAA said in a statement Monday. The controller's microphone was inadvertently activated, transmitting the soundtrack of the movie — the 2007 crime thriller Cleaner, starring Samuel L. Jackson — for more than three minutes to all the planes in the airspace that the controller was supposed to be monitoring, the agency said."

Taking a cue from A Clockwork Orange, San Francisco neuromarketing firm EmSense has launched what it says is "the first ever scalable, non-invasive psychological and brainwave measurement technology — made specifically for market research." The EmBand measures your brain activity, your emotional responses, and your level of engagement in what you are watching on TV. The collected data is then sold to marketers who can come up with more interesting ads to be skipped over with your DVR.

Fluent in English, French, Spanish, Mandarin and working on German, 10-year-old Alexia Sloane has become the youngest interpreter to work at the European Parliament. An amazing feat not only for her age, but also because she is blind. From the article: "'There is usually a minimum age requirement of 14 just to enter the European Parliament so for Alexia to interpret there at the age of 10 was amazing,' said mum Isabelle. Alexia has been tri-lingual since birth as her mum is half French and half Spanish and her dad Richard is English." I Guess I should stop bragging to my nephew about having a paper route when I was his age.

WrongSizeGlass writes "PCWorld has an article on Kohler's new hi-tech toilet. The Numi comes complete with a detachable touch screen remote; motion-activated lid and seat; integrated air dryer; a heated seat; feet warmers; ambient lighting; built-in speakers with FM radio and an MP3 player input jack. If you have $6,300 to flush down the drain on a toilet this is for you."

erfnet writes "The Technical University of Munich, along with a German beer-maker, have kindly published a 'Comprehensive Sensomics Analysis of Hop-Derived Bitter Compounds During Storage of Beer' They determined 56 hop-derived sensometabolites which contribute to bitter taste during storage, increasing with time and temperature. If we had only had this information during our College days, we could have been even geekier! 'Duuuuude, it's not skunked, it's suffering from proton-catalyzed cyclization of trans-iso-a-acids.'"

nloop writes "A group of file-sharers in Sweden have requested that their religion, Kopimism, be officially recognized in Sweden. Although this status has been denied once in the past the struggle for religious freedom from persecution continues. Aside from deeming CTRL+C CTRL+V as sacred symbols other beliefs include the flow of information being ethically right and closed source software being 'akin to slavery.'"

A good old-fashioned Iliad diorama just wasn't big enough for a group of Chicago area students. They decided to build a life-sized Trojan Horse for their class project instead. From the article: "As Newsradio 780s Mike Krauser reports, their teacher couldn’t believe it. 'It was a surprise and it was a big surprise,' said teacher Bob Pomykala. The students wouldn’t tell Pomykala what they were up to. 'They said they had a great idea, but they wouldn’t tell me what it was,' he said. What they did was build a giant Trojan Horse, which, according to Greek mythology was used to sneak soldiers into the city of Troy for a triumphant battle. They built it in senior Sergio Aguilar’s yard, and then moved it right in front of Marengo Community High School.

PolygamousRanchKid writes "Miss your tax deadline in the United States this weekend, and you might get a nasty letter at your door. In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, you might get Riffee and the gang. They are transgender tax collectors — whose weapons include flamboyancy, surprise — and a little lipstick."

kfogel writes "Karen Sandler (a lawyer at the Software Freedom Law Center) and Mike Tarantino (a professional musician) are getting married in May. They've sent out the coolest wedding invitation ever: a beautifully packaged flexidisc record where the invitation itself is the record player. The song was written by Mike, is performed by Karen and Mike together, and FTW is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The person who designed the invitations — a friend of the couple's — has blogged about it."

An anonymous reader writes "A fellow art student of mine (yes, there are artists on Slashdot as well) has been sued by Louis Vuitton for depicting one of their bags in her painting. Her painting is wholly original, however LV is demanding 5,000 euros a day because the 'pattern of this bag infringes its design rights,' and for her to cease displaying her original artwork on her website. It might be preaching to the choir here on Slashdot, but these cases need all the attention they can get."

Since he hadn't been born yet, 33-year-old Charlotte Childs was shocked to get a letter from the police threatening to give her son an ASBO and inviting her to discuss how unruly he was. From the article: "Charlotte, who is 36 weeks' pregnant, said: 'The letter said there had been an incident of anti-social behavior and our child was identified. I would love to know how a 36-week-old fetus has managed to go to the park and cause trouble without me noticing.'"

fangmcgee writes "Nerd love alert: German researchers have just created the world's smallest wedding rings, measuring less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair. Goethe University professor Alexander Heckel and his doctoral student Thorsten Schmidt made the artificial structures from two interlocking loops of DNA — known as catenane — in a single drop of water."

Orome1 writes "A French hacker has effectually tied a noose around his own neck when he bragged about hacking into the systems of a big government contractor on national TV. He participated in a television program called Further investigation, and he said — and demonstrated — that he has gained access to computers belonging to the French Army and Thales Group, a French company that provides information systems and services for the aerospace, defense, and security markets. He was arrested 6 days after the program was aired. The police discovered on his computer a great number of compromised credit card and bank account data."

H_Fisher writes "Disrespect the Chinese government at your peril ... and this includes anything you do with the past. Time magazine's Techland blog reports that China is banning references to time travel which are disrespectful to the nation's culture and history. No word on whether this includes a travel ban on time lords."

Unable to find a baby with a bag of candy to steal, 20-year-old Gage Turner and 21-year-old Warner Robins decided to rob a lemonade stand. 13-year-old Chelsea Edwards set up the stand with the help of some of her friends to raise money for her critically ill cousin Logan. From the article: "'I still can't get over it,' said Logan and Chelsea's grandmother Judy Bailey. She said one of the suspects scratched Chelsea's leg during the robbery, but that wasn't what hurt the most. 'My grandaughter was lying on the ground crying, devastated. She's been really having a hard time at night, the last two nights. I said, 'It's going to be okay. We're going to get there. One way or another we're going to get to Cincinnati, all of us. Don't you worry.'"

blair1q writes "From the article: 'Sure, when I make a paper airplane it’s goofing off, but when a robot does it, it’s a phenomenal PR campaign. Doctor James Porter, head of the surgical robotic team at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, recently released a video of himself folding a tiny paper plane the size of a penny. Rather than risk a paper cut, the surgeon used the tiny pincers of the da Vinci robot from Intuitive Surgical to perform the origami.'"