Random

All the children I know seem to enjoy a good horror movie.

Not all, though, may enjoy that horror being transmitted to their math classes. For a teacher who allegedly downloaded some colorfully horrific math problems with which to fascinate her third-graders, has been fired.

WUSA9 TV offered a very spooky tale of a teacher at Trinidad Center City School in Washington, D.C. who allegedly presented this problem to his kiddies: "I took a nap in a bog one day and woke up screaming. 3,796 leeches, 2,910 fleas and 1,044 vampire bats were stuck to … Read more

With Greece teetering on the brink of post-history and Italy constantly attempting to out-buffoon itself, the concept of "nation" is under a little pressure.

Then along comes Apple, hurtling toward style domination, and suddenly it seems to have a market valuation greater than some world economies.

One headline this week, though, crowed slightly beyond reason. "Apple is now worth more than Poland," it read.

It was the use of the word "worth" that caused my cabbage pierogi to resist their final resting place.

Is Apple really "worth" more than Poland? I know … Read more

As political parties, bank managers, and drug dealers have often found to their cost, infiltrators can be very hard to detect.

This is something that, perhaps, the members of Anonymous recently discovered for themselves, at least according to Symantec, the online security people.

For the company believes that members of the hacking collective were deceived into downloading a Zeus Trojan that gave up their banking details and other personal information.

On its blog, Symantec described how, on January 20--the day of the rather charming Kim Dotcom's sequestration by the FBI--members of Anonymous used their own personal computers to participate … Read more

Loud screams of excitement have been heard ever since the revelation that two Japanese researchers had developed a gun that could stop people talking. Without killing them.

I wrote about this fascinating firearm only the other day.

Now the Japanese researchers who developed it are so excited by the excitement that they have released a YouTube video of the device.

And what a frisky little Colt .45 silencer it is.

Wired reports that the two creators, Kazutaka Kurihara at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tskuba and Koji Tsukada at Ochanomizu University, are bemused at the … Read more

For some people, serial killers are simply more interesting than, say, painters, novelists, or mathematicians.

Perhaps they appeal to everyone's inner rogue--or even inner cannibal.

However, some feel that a recent roguish Groupon deal offering a mouthwatering discount on a tour of Milwaukee's watering holes and neighborhoods, might have gone a touch too far.

For this was a tour of the drinking establishments and streets in which Jeffrey Dahmer picked up his victims. Naturally, the Groupon deal was highly price-sensitive: $25 for a $60 value.

Some might wonder, though, whether it was people-sensitive.

As the Associated Press has it, … Read more

Some say our inner teen never leaves us, but merely takes on more sophisticated tastes.

One wonders, therefore, about the inner teen of a parent at a high school girls hockey game in Massachusetts, who allegedly brought along his laser pointer.

Did he wish to use it to feature some aspect of the home team's strategy? Not quite. He is accused of using it to distract the opposing team's goalie.

I know that hockey exists largely so that people can reconstruct each other's faces, but the idea that a parent could try to do this to a … Read more

It might be the 7:30 a.m. bus and you might be semi-comatose from a long night of self-anesthesia, but some people do insist on talking into their cell phones about last night's cabbage stew or a lover who smells of cadaver.

You can tell them to be quiet. But this, too might be ignored. So one rider in Philadelphia decided he'd use an alternative method: he says he simply jams all cell phones on his bus.

I know many will be grateful to NBC 10 in Philadelphia for discovering this remarkably simple method at achieving world peace.

"I guess I'm taking the law into my own hands. And, quite frankly, I'm proud of it," the man told NBC. … Read more

Sometimes, there seems no way to get others to stop talking.

One might want them to be quiet because they are spouting nonsense, or merely because they sound like Woody Woodpecker.

And yet some people do go on, often at the most inappropriate moments for our ears and our moods.

Some Japanese researchers--Kazutaka Kurihara at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tskuba and Koji Tsukada at Ochanomizu University--have created the perfect solution for this painful dilemma: a gun. No, they're not suggesting you go Dirty Harry on those who annoy you.

Instead, this appealing firearm jams the vocal output of the unwanted up to a distance of 100 feet.

The technology behind it is deafeningly simple. The gun listens in with a directional microphone and plays it back to them with a 0.2 second delay. This creates an environment in which one is simply unable to speak. The technical term for this is Delayed Auditory Feedback. … Read more

The thing about auto-correct is that it happens so quickly. Indeed, one sometimes wonders if it's a neat little ruse to get you to send another text correcting the automatic error.

Yet one student at Lanier Technical College might be staring at his or her cell phone a little more closely in future. You see, this student texted: "Gunna be at West Hall this afternoon."

Auto-correct mused a microsecond at this word "gunna" and changed it to "gunman." Before anyone knew it, authorities soon believed that the students could be gonnas.

The way the Gainesville Times portrays it, … Read more