Folk cures abound for curing a hangover, yet only time — to let the body clear out the toxins — seems to really do the trick. But help may be on the way. Researchers from Tulane University and the University of California, San Francisco report that an extract from Opuntia ficus indica, a type of prickly pear extract, eases the symptoms of a hangover when taken before drinking begins — via Rogue Sun
The Iranian daily newspaper Etemaad has reported the controversial story of a woman who claims to have given birth to a frog. While it is unclear how this could have happened, the paper carries quotes from medical experts who say there are human characteristics to the animal. It has been speculated that the woman, who has not been named, unknowingly picked up the larva while she was swimming in a dirty pool — via Die Puny Humans
Paul Curtis, a Yorkshire graffiti writer, has come up with a really clever writing technique: he lays a template with his tag over a dirty wall, then sprays the template with solvent, leaving behind a clean patch bearing his message. It’s inverse graffiti — he’s selectively cleaning up dirty walls.
He decided to commercialise the process and tagged Smirnoff ads in Leeds, and that’s where he got into trouble: he’s been ordered to remove
the clean patch of wall and get rid of the ad — via boingboing
Ice cream tycoons Ben and Jerry gave Penn State US$600,000 to develop a refrigerator that uses sound waves instead of freon to keep food cool.
The mad-scientist design of the fridge is very impressive — via boingboing
It may soon be possible to carry around an AK-47 assault rifle and an iPod with you down the street — and be arrested for carrying the iPod. That’s according to critics of a Senate amendment to the copyright code proposed by Senator Orrin Hatch this week called the Induce Act
. He wants to make the intentional inducement of copyright infringement
an offence, and this will extend liability to any manufacturer of a device which plays infringed material, or a shop that sells such a device, they say — via BoingBoing
Sheddrick Deon Bentley, a less than intelligent member of society, walked into a Wal-Mart covered in blood and bought clothes, bandages and garbage bags with a bloodstained $100 note. The employees found this a bit suss and called the cops. The rocket scientist was charged with murder after authorities found a stabbed body in a bin — via Keith Lynch
Users are being told to avoid using Internet Explorer until Microsoft patches a serious security hole in it. The loophole is being exploited to open a backdoor on a PC that could let criminals take control of a machine. The threat of infection is so high because the code created to exploit the loophole has somehow been placed on many popular web sites. Experts say the list of compromised sites involves banks, auction and price comparison firms and is growing fast
An interesting article about the absentee rate of PCs in various UK workplaces. While the average employee was out sick seven days a year, the average PC was inoperable due to a virus nine days a year. There’s also mention of junk e-mail’s impact on productivity, with one business reporting that 99.84% of all incoming mail is spam
Hewlett-Packard has discovered a memory flaw that could be in as many as 900,000 of its notebook computers and is offering customers free memory modules as a remedy
An Oklahoma state judge, Donald Thompson, frequently masturbated and used a device for enhancing erections while his court was in session, charges a petition by the state’s Attorney General Drew Edmondson seeking his removal
Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet five, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat. DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth — via Die Puny Humans
Microsoft has announced a massive expansion in storage capacity of 250MB for users of its free Hotmail service, but just when the extra megabytes will become available to local users isn’t clear
The NSW Government has made official its push into open source, launching a $1.5 million deployment of what may be the state’s largest-ever rollout of open source software on the desktop
The freedom of individuals around the world to surf the net is under threat from the policies of democracies as well as authoritarian regimes and dictatorships, according to the Internet Under Surveillance report by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. The authors distinguished between dictatorships like China that gag the internet
, and democracies, which they said threatened freedom of expression in the name of fighting pornography, racism or global terrorism — via GeneWeb.info
Police are re-examining more than 100 murders in England and Wales they suspect could be so-called honour killings. Many of the female victims were from South Asian communities. Detectives are not reopening the cases but hope to learn more about the scale and nature of the phenomenon. As well as South Asian communities, some of the victims came from Arabic or eastern European backgrounds. Motives for the murders often included relationships which the families felt brought them dishonour. Police say some of the murders were carried out by contract killers hired by the families. They also believe that so-called bounty hunters
were involved — people, including women, who make a business out of tracking down victims — via Die Puny Humans
Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a top editor and founder of the Zeta weekly newspaper, was slain by unidentified gunmen as he drove through Tijuana’s Marron district with his children. The newspaper, in a statement posted on its Web site, said it would not speculate about motives for the attack but Zeta’s campaigns against corrupt politicians have in the past made its editors targets of gangland-style attacks
Telstra is finalising a plan for its IP network, and will take the first step in its biggest overhaul in five years this week when it issues a $300 million contract to upgrade its core system by replacing its ageing copper network with fibre-optic lines
MySQL AB, the company behind the popular open source database MySQL, is looking to ramp up its presence in the Australian market
Inghams has told McDonalds in New Zealand that the next shipments of soy to feed their chickens will not be GE, whereas Australian consumers still have no choice but to eat Inghams chickens fed GE soy
A US federal judge yesterday approved class-action status for a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart that has become the largest private civil rights case in US history. It could represent as many as 1.6 million current and former female employees of the retailer
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