Having a smashing good time!

The economy may be in trouble, but one business in San Diego, California, is continuing to grow steadily. Customers wanting to vent their frustrations, about anything, are flocking to Sarah's Smash Shack - where for a modest fee, you can smash a pile of crockery to smithereens. US$45 will buy you a pile of 15 plates to destroy, but if you prefer, you can smash glasses, jugs or even a glass photo frame - especially satisfying if it has a picture of your nemesis within.

The Smash Shack, the brainchild of Sarah Lavely, was born during an emotional nadir in her life. Reeling from a painful divorce, the former vet was wishing that there was somewhere she could go to indulge in a lifelong habit of smashing things to relieve tension, when she suddenly realised that there was a gap in the market.

One year later, after a lot of research - to choose safety equipment, items to smash etc - Laverly and her partner signed a lease, soundproofed the 'smash rooms', covered the walls with stainless steel, and opened the Smash Shack.

Since then, customers from as far as LA have been visiting the Smash Shack to don the safety equipment, put on loud music, scrawl their frustrations on a pile of plates and hurl them at a wall.

All the broken crockery and glassware is donated to art schools in the area.

China in PR blooper

There were some red faces at Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, yesterday. Hours before China's eagerly anticipated 3rd manned space mission had left Earth, Xinhua had published on its website an account of the blast off. The agency also quoted a 'conversation' between crew members, reported to have taken place during the spacewalk - which is not expected to take place until Saturday or Sunday.

The web report was taken down after a number of hours. Xinhua has said that the posting had been the result of a 'technical error'.

In the event, the Shenzhou VII rocket carrying 3 astronauts (known as taikonauts) did achieve a successful take off, and will now spend 3 or 4 days orbiting Earth.

The space walk which will be performed by one taikonaut, wearing a space suit made in China, will probably be the most challenging part of the mission.

The launch was much celebrated in China - and crowds even gathered in Hong Kong to watch the launch 'live' on screen at the Space Museum.

Snoozing pilots back in 'driver's seat'

Having served out suspensions of 60 and 45 days respectively, a captain and co-pilot working for Go! airlines have reported back to work.

The pair earned their suspensions when they "unintentionally fell asleep" during a 45 minute flight from Oahu Island to Hawaii Island. Air traffic controllers monitoring the flight became concerned when the pair failed to respond to repeated calls for a period of 17 minutes.

Due to their snooze, the flight overshot its landing point and had to turn back, but eventually landed with all 40 passengers safe and sound.

Subsequently, the captain was diagnosed as suffering from severe obstructive sleep apnea, which can result in restless nights and sleep deprivation.

Why the co-pilot also fell asleep at the wheel, is not known.

The ten to (the power of) a hundred project

Google are on the lookout for ideas that will change the world. The internet giant has pledged to spend US$10 million on developing 5 ideas which will benefit mankind. The ideas, which will initially be narrowed down from a longlist of 100 by online voters, need not be hi-tech - the only requirement is that it has the potential to help a large number of people (such as some of the inventions at: http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/).

Anyone can submit an entry online - the deadline is 20th October 2008.

Watch out CSI here come the poop patrol

A city in Israel, which has been plagued with poopy pavements has started trialling a programme to build a doggy DNA database.

Under the scheme, owners will be encouraged to take their pets to the vet, to get their dog DNA profiled. Owners who regularly use the designated bins to dispose of their dog's droppings will be rewarded with coupons for dog food and toys.

In addition, the poop patrol will take samples of the droppings left on the street. The DNA of the samples will be analysed, and if they are found to match a dog in the database, the owner will be tracked down and fined.

Memo for thieves - don't sign your own name

A man from Iowa, USA accused of stealing a credit card, led police officers straight to his door when he signed his real name on the credit card slips.

Whilst on a shopping expedition - during which he bought coffee, cigarettes and groceries at three different shops - he even as far as to present his own ID, when the card was declined.

The man claims that he found the card in his apartment after a party.

Counting elephants

A researcher in Japan has discovered that elephants can count. Naoko Irie, who is working on her PhD thesis, worked with elephants in Japanese zoos to test their mathematical ability.

Irie dropped a differing number of apples into two buckets, placed side by side, then allowed the watching elephant to choose which bucket it wanted. Although it was not allowed to look into the bucket itself, or feel inside with its trunk, an elephant in Tokyo's Ueno Zoo correctly picked the bucket containing the largest number of apples, 87% of the time. Another elephant in the south of the country scored 68% - still an impressive 18% more than it could have achieved by chance alone.

The elephants also demonstrated that they could keep tally of the number of apples dropped in each bucket, even if they were not all put in at once, and could even differentiate when the difference was as small as one apple.

cows as compasses

Next time you're lost, and clouds are obscuring the position of the sun, perhaps you should look a little closer to ground to work out which way to go.

Scientists studying high resolution images on Google Earth of cattle and deer grazing believe that they have spotted an interesting phenomenon. It appears that a large number of grazing animals naturally align themselves, so that they are standing in a North-South direction. The scientists say that they have ruled out Sun position and wind direction as affecting factors.

It has long been thought that many migratory animals such as birds and fish use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate, however, 'magnetic sense' has never previously been studied in cattle.

Not everyone was impressed by the research results - a Scottist farmer interviewed by the BBC scoffed at the idea. "I've never noticed that my cows all face the same way," he said.

A beauty content - for nuns!

"You really think all nuns are old, stunted and sad?" and, "Being ugly is not a requirement for becoming a nun," said the Rev. Antonio Rungi in recent interviews with the BBC and CNN.

Rungi was speaking about an internet beauty contest - 'Miss Sister 2008' - for nuns, which he hopes to run in September. He draws the line at naughty bikinis, but the contestants will be able to choose whether to send photos of themselves with their head modestly covered, or not.

Internet users will then be able to vote, and choose the eventual winners. The contest has drawn criticism from Catholic organisations, which say that it belittles the role of nuns, but Rungi has defended his idea, saying that the original idea came from the nuns he works with.

UPDATE: Rungi cancelled his beauty contest on the 26th Aug, after incurring the displeasure of church elders.

The tortoise and the dog - an unusual race?

Recently, a skateboarding dog in Guangzhou, China, became famous when a photograph of him taking a spin on his wheels hit the news.
His owner told reporters that the dog become hooked on the sport whilst watching his son (the owner's son!) skateboarding with his friends.

Now another animal on wheels has made the headlines. This time, it's a tortoise in a zoo in Jerusalem, Israel. The African Spurred Tortoise had become paralysed in her hind legs. After trying in vain to diagnose the cause of her paralysis, zookeepers came up with an innovative idea to keep her active.

They designed a platform with wheels, which they strap her on, for a few hours a day. The tortoise is able to drag herself around on the contraption using her forelegs.

Drive-in weddings

Next month, over 35 couples will tie the knot at a motor rally in Sweden. Ten priests will be present to officiate at the event - each wedding will take approximately seven minutes.

The Drive-In Weddings are the brainchild of a priest, who wants to make weddings, "simpler and more down to earth," as well as to show that the Church of Sweden, "can take part in celebration and happiness and not just in crisis and catastrophes."

The happy couples will exchange vows under a red neon sign reading 'Get Married', to the sounds of a gospel choir and a priest singing Elvis songs!

Always look down before sitting on the loo

The resident of a 10th floor apartment in Darwin, Australia, was shocked when he went to the toilet... and found a 1.8m python curled up in the toilet bowl.

It is thought that the snake, probably a runaway pet, had travelled up the sewage pipes, to emerge at its highrise resting place.

sixth foot a fake

Forensic scientists have revealed that the latest 'foot' found washed up in British Columbia earlier this week, was in fact made up of animal bones and flesh stuffed into a shoe. Police say that the shoe was filled in such a way to fool the finder into thinking that it was human.

Sixth foot washes up in Canada

The mystery of the floating feet deepened yesterday when a sixth foot was washed up on the shores of British Columbia, Canada. Like the other five feet that have been found in the area over the previous 11 months, the latest was clad in a running shoe, and appeared to have been in the water for some time.

Only one foot (the fifth) - which was found on Monday this week - was a left foot.

Investigations are still underway, but for now, where the feet came from, and who they belonged to, remains an enigma.

a piglet with a fear of mud...

Fans of Charlotte's Web will get a kick out of a video from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/north_yorkshire/7448006.stm

It features 'Cinders', a six-week old piglet that suffers from a rather unfortunate condition - she's afraid of mud!

Luckily, the farmer's daughter had the perfect solution to the problem - a pair of toy Wellington boots. Now Cinders can wander happily around in the mud without getting her trotters dirty!

The lovable hog has something else to celebrate too... whilst her siblings might end up as sausages, Cinders has been adopted as a mascot by the farmer, who has promised that she will be able to, "live a long and happy life."

A rare form of epilepsy, triggered by music

This month's Scientific America has an article about a woman called Stacey Gayle who had seizures when she listened to certain types of music.

Gayle was only 22, when she started to exhibit symptoms of this extremely rare (only 150 cases on record) form of epilepsy. Over the next three years, the seizures came and went. Tests proved inconclusive. No one had any idea what caused them. Then, one day, she noticed that every time a certain song came on the radio, she ended up having a 'fit' on the floor.

After subjecting her to a battery of tests in hospital, the doctors concluded that the sole cause of her seizures was music. Unfortunately for the music lover and chorister, the only 'safe' choices were jazz and classical - neither of which she was fond of.

Soon the situation had become so bad that even a snatch of a song from a telephone ring tone or an advertising jingle could cause her to collapse. Normal life became impossible. Medication had no effect. After months of soul searching, she agreed to try brain surgery to try to fix the problem.

Again, she went back to the testing unit in the hospital. This time they recorded exactly what areas of her brain were involved when she had a seizure, then, in separate tests put sections of her brain 'to sleep' to see what might happen, eg to her memory and speech etc, if they were removed.

Then, once the doctors were sure that the surgery would cause no devastating loss of function, they very precisely removed an egg sized portion of her brain. Luckily, the operation, which only 4 people with musicogenic epilepsy have ever had, was a complete success, and Gayle has begun to live a normal life once more.

When it's safer to eat off a toilet, than at your desk

A 'Which?' consumer survey conducted in a typical London office last month, revealed that many computer keyboards are covered with germs.

Researchers even found one particular keyboard with a bacteria count five times higher than that of a toilet in the same office!

Dropping crumbs into the keyboard, and poor personal habits such as not washing hands after going to the toilet, are thought to be the main contributing factors to bacterial growth.

Experts urged all users to clean their computer mouse and keyboards more often, to reduce the chance of falling prey to bacterial illnesses such as stomach upsets and diarrhoea.

Courtroom sudoku surprise

An ongoing trial in Sydney, Australia, was dismissed without a verdict after the judge noticed that jury members were concentrating a bit too hard... on their sudoku puzzles.

The trial, which Reuters reports has cost taxpayers A$1 million to date, had to be disbanded when it was revealed that up to five of the jurors had been busy playing, rather listening to the evidence.

Reports in the Australian Press say one juror claimed that the numerical puzzles helped them to, 'pay more attention by keeping their mind busy'. They were rumbled when the judge noticed that several of the jurors appeared to be 'taking notes' vertically instead of horizontally.

A new trial will probably be called in the coming few weeks.

Saucy undies leave thieves exposed

In this age of stay up stockings, and fake tans, is pantyhose becoming more difficult to find in the shops...?

A pair of thieves became infamous in Colorado, USA, recently, when they robbed a shop wearing women's g-strings (or thongs) over their faces, rather than a mask - or the more common disguise - a pair of 'natural tan' coloured pantyhose.

Unfortunately, the racy undies, which were designed to be revealing, exposed rather too much of the men's faces, for them to remain anonymous. The 'thong bandits' as they were nicknamed, turned themselves in, when CCTV pictures of their exploits were broadcast across Colorado.

It turns out that not only were the men wearing blue and green g-strings respectively, they carried their booty away in a neon pink rucksack. Perhaps the local branch of Victoria's Secrets should do a stock check too.

Don't touch, or I'm gonna call my owner...

Did you know that you can now buy software from a company called Gadget Trak (http://www.gadgettrak.com/) which can help you track down lost or stolen electronic gizmos such as mobile phones, laptops, Blackberrys, USB memory sticks, iPods etc?

The software, once loaded, lies silent and hidden (no continuous monitoring leading to possible invasion of privacy), springing into action only when required. For example, as soon as an unauthorised SIM card is inserted into a mobile phone, the software silently begins to send SMS messages to pre-arranged phone numbers (eg that of your spouse or your company). The information sent will include the mobile phone number of the new user, as well as the location of the mobile phone.

On a Mac laptop, the software even activates the built in camera and sends you the photo of the unauthorised user along with the location information, as soon as it connects with a wireless network.

The best thing is, because the software works completely silently, the thief doesn't even realise the game is up... unless, or until, a policeman comes knocking at the door.

Gadget Trak isn't the only company that specialises in an electronic call back system - a recent report on Reuters tells the story of a woman who lost her digital camera in a restaurant. Luckily, she was using an SD memory card made by a company called Eye-Fi, which is designed to upload the photos to your home computer or an online service, every time it links onto a familiar wireless network.

Imagine her surprise when she got home, sans camera, and turned on her computer, only to discover that the Eye-Fi card had downloaded both her holiday pics and photos of the light-fingered duo. Apparently they had decided to celebrate their find prematurely, by snapping photos of themselves...

Miscreants watch out, Big Brother is watching!

Put your money where your melon is

CNN reports that a Japanese businessman who wants 'to support local agriculture', has set the record for the most expensive watermelon ever bought. He paid an eyepopping US$ 6,125 or HK$47,775 for the 8kg, black-skinned Densuke watermelon.

The Densuke, which is only grown on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, is prized because of its scarcity - only a few thousand are harvested every year.

When brushing your teeth isn't a good idea

Although it's been common knowledge for a while that fruit juices and smoothies are not all that good for your teeth (because they typically contain lots of sugar and acid), some dentists are now telling patients NOT to brush their teeth after indulging in a fruity treat.

The reason, they say, is because brushing hastens the erosion of the enamel that has has been weakened by the acidic juice. Instead, they are urging fruit fans to brush before they have their drink.

I guess that drinking a glass of water, and, in the process swilling out the sugary residue, may be the best way to go.

Fake bus stops help nursing homes

The UK's Telegraph reports that a nursing home in Dusseldorf, Germany, has come up with an innovative idea to keep wandering Alzheimer patients from getting lost. They have put a fake bus stop outside their front door.

Although Alzheimer sufferers have very poor short term memories, many can still retain some long term memories - such as what a bus stop looks like, and what its function (ie to attract a bus to take them home) is. Apparently, many of the patients who wander out of the nursing home spot the bus stop and wait for the non-existent bus to arrive, rather than walking away and getting lost.

Now, when one of their patients go missing, instead of calling the police, staff check the bus stop. The director of the home poignantly reveals that more often then not, their escapee charges find it hard to recall why they were waiting for the bus in the first place, and can be tempted back inside by the promise of a coffee.