Blogs are Stupid

Tragedies like last month's deadly shooting at a Red Lake, Minn., school have prompted more schools to offer cash and other prizes — including pizza and premium parking spots — to students who report classmates who carry guns, drugs or alcohol, commit vandalism or otherwise break school rules.

"For kids of that age, it's hard for them to tell on their peers. This gives them an opportunity to step up if they know something that will help us make an arrest," said James Kinchen, an assistant school superintendent in Houston County, Ga., which earlier this month started offering rewards of up to $100 for reporting relatively minor crimes like vandalism or theft and $500 for information about a crime, or plans for a crime, involving a gun.

FRESNO, Calif. - A man attempting to burglarize a car over the weekend locked himself in the trunk and was swiftly arrested, police said.

A security guard at an apartment complex in southeast Fresno followed a trail of blood to a banging noise coming from the trunk in the early morning hours Sunday.

Authorities responding to the scene expected to find a victim, but instead discovered the burglar.

"Genius, pure genius," said Fresno County Sheriff's Lt. Louis Hernandez.

Police said he cut himself on the door of another car he'd broken into, then trickled blood across the parking lot to the car he eventually locked himself inside.

The man initially told authorities he had been hit on the head and stuffed in the trunk, but police found items stolen from another vehicle inside the trunk with the suspect.

"He popped the trunk from the inside and crawled back there, ransacking every inch," Hernandez said. "But then he grabs the trunk to heave himself out and closes it on top of him. He's got to be the dumbest criminal of the day."

The man was taken to University Medical Center to be treated for cuts, then to the Fresno County Jail to be booked on two counts of theft.

Police did not identify the suspect.

Last week we told how University of California, Berkeley, professor, Jasper Rine tried to put the fear of god into the student who nicked his laptop by claiming it had all sorts of top secret government data on it. He warned that almost every James Bond in the world was hunting that laptop. He also said he knew who the thief was.

Since we ran that story, it has been picked up by ABC News in the States and debated on bog sites across the world.

Most techies consider that anyone could see that the Rine was telling porkies. One of the ways that Rine claimed he identified the tea leaf was by installing the same version of Windows on another computer. If the professor had attempted to use the same key to activate a copy of Windows, the activation servers would have denied him access.

Some of the technobabble that the professor spouted to out the thief was impressive, but has not been found to work well yet.

He claimed that there were passive trackers embedded in the bezel of laptop screens beside the wireless transmitters. Technology like this does sort of exist, but is rare and not used by anyone outside the Department of Energy.

He also claimed that the wireless card in the laptop triggered some location data. This is possible, but pretty unlikely.

In fact a University spokesman told ABC that Rine had indeed made the whole thing up to scare the student into handing over the laptop. The story has for some reason now been pulled from the ABC site, but can be found here. There might be a bit of a clue as to the way Rine operates in an article here, in which he says: "Although I have unlimited respect for facts, and delight in their discovery and appreciation, I have come to the obvious yet almost blasphemous view that, with respect to teaching, the facts just aren't that important."

The new season will be the first under host Dave Chappelle’s reported $50 million deal extension with the network last August, which includes two seasons of the sketch series and a development agreement.

Season three was supposed to roll out early this year, but several situations got in the way, including a period of “writers block,” according to the network last December; then a flu-bug hit Chappelle shortly afterward, which combined with an already-scheduled hiatus during the holiday season.

Song: Orioles. Maryland's state song is ``Maryland, My Maryland.'' The district has no official song, though ``I Fought the Law and the Law Won'' is under consideration.

This one is for the tuners, ratchet-heads, car-buffs, and anyone else who actually knows what a Hemi is. This high-octane ringtone is sure to set you apart while you're working on your car or cruisin' the local strip. Remember, drugs and alcohol can ruin this great pastime. In 2001, an estimated 38,000 high school seniors in the U.S. crashed after driving under the influence of marijuana and 46,000 crashed after driving under the influence of alcohol. Don't let this happen to you.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit.

Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to him by visitors and smoking them -- a habit he probably picked up by observing humans, zoo officials told the SAPA news agency on Thursday.

"Baby chimps pick up habits by mimicking adults and we think he started mimicking smokers at his enclosure which probably led to smokers throwing him cigarettes," spokesman Daryl Barnes told SAPA.

Barnes said Charlie was already showing the signs of a true nicotine addict.

"He even acts like a naughty schoolboy by hiding the cigarette when staff approach the area," Barnes said, adding that the zoo was determined to help him quit.

Barnes said the most important thing was that people stop providing Charlie with cigarettes or any other treats, noting the chimp already had three bad teeth because of all the cans of sweet soft drinks that people throw at him.

Charlie is not the only smoking chimpanzee. A zoo in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou reported last year that one of its chimps had taken up smoking and was desperately cadging cigarette butts off visitors.

LONDON (Reuters) - Groggy, sleep-deprived students at Brown University in Rhode Island have invented a new alarm clock that gently wakes snoozers during the lightest phase of their sleep cycle.

So instead of waking up grumpy and tired the clock goes off when people are more likely to get up feeling perky and alert.

"The clock, called SleepSmart, measures your sleep cycle and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of sleep before rousing you," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

"It's makers say that should ensure you wake up feeling refreshed every morning."

The clock is the brainchild of Eric Shashoua, a recent graduate of the university, and his friends who have created a company to develop the idea. They have nearly finished a prototype and hope to market the product by next year.

"As sleep-deprived people ourselves, we started thinking of what to do about it," he said.

The clock records different brain waves made during each phase of the sleep cycle using a microprocessor and a headband equipped with electrodes. The information is wirelessly communicated to the clock.

"You program the clock with the latest time at which you want to be awakened, and it duly wakes you during the last light sleep phase before that," according to the magazine.

America Online and XM Satellite Radio have forged a partnership to create a new Web-based radio service that will replace both companies' current online offerings. The co-branded service will be free to all Web users, with a premium counterpart that includes more stations for a small monthly fee.

Following its new open portal strategy of exposing its content and services to consumers outside its "walled garden" of subscribers, AOL will make 130 of its radio stations and 20 XM stations available for unlimited listening at no cost.

Singles Night at Walmart:

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Just when you thought you'd heard it all from the king of discount shopping, Wal-Mart is now pitching itself as the new dating hot spot -- with everyday low prices to boot.

In fact, the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer's been playing Cupid to hundreds of lonely single German shoppers for well over a year now.

According to Amy Wyatt, spokeswoman for the retailer's international operations, Wal-Mart's been running its "Singles Shopping" campaign in all of its 91 stores in Germany.

Here's how its works.

On Friday nights, singles looking for romance, mindless flirting or just a new friend head over to their neighborhood Wal-Mart where they're given a big bright red bow to attach to their shopping cart or shopping basket.

Then it's up to the willing participants to approach one another and take it from there.

But if that's too intimidating, Wal-Mart has set up "flirting points" around the stores stacked with "romantic" merchandise, such as chocolates, wine and cheese, to help with that first awkward step.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong hiker washed her face in a freshwater stream, not noticing that leech had wormed its way into one of her nostrils, according to the Hong Kong Medical Journal.

Unaware she was playing host to the creature, the 55-year-old woman only consulted a doctor when her nose started bleeding intermittently about two weeks later.

The unusual case occurred in 2003 but doctors highlighted it in this month's edition of the journal, where they discussed how to remove live leeches from human nasal passages using anesthesia.

The first doctor the woman saw could not find anything wrong and it was only when she visited a second doctor that he saw the five-centimeter (two-inch) leech peeking out of her left nostril.

According to the article, doctors only managed to remove the stubborn bloodsucker with forceps after applying anesthesia to the woman's nose.

"Direct removal of a live leech might be difficult because of its powerful attachment to the mucosa and its slimy and mobile body," the journal said.

Google instituted a new means of fact-finding on Thursday: Google Q&A.

The new service lets users ask questions using natural language. Results come from a sort of parallel universe within Google.

"We made a pass over the Web, pulled out a database for facts, and use that to provide a separate set of results," Peter Norvig, Google's director of search, said.

While some early natural language search tools employed human editors to determine possible questions and answers, Google took its standard approach. "It's more automated and algorithmic, rather than human-generated," Norvig said.

Google Q&A has strengths and weaknesses, Norvig admitted. "It works for things where there's some kind of a fact or attribute of an object," he said. "If you're looking for one fact this is place to go for it." Google suggested that celebrities, countries of the world, the planets, the elements, electronics and movies were well-suited for the Q&A feature.

For example, asking, "What is the population of India?" returns rock-solid results in the form of links to Web sites that answer the question.

On the other hand, the top result for the question, "What is the capital of France?" was "Investment Capital and Banking in France."

Norvig said using a simple question format can make it easier for searchers to identify what they're looking for, rather than having to figure out the proper key words. But the queries don't have to be full sentences. The system identifies both query words, such as "who" or "what," and fact-type terms such as capital, director, population. "To find out who directed "Finding Nemo," you don't have to put in the 'who is,'" he explained.

The producers and the fake boss told the final two contestants, Mike and Annette, that the final decision would be made by two members of the board. So the two finalists go to interview with them, but we find out that it's really a setup and a test of loyalty. Annette basically says she hates the Boss, N. Paul Todd, and Mike is fiercely loyal to him, so it seems like Mike will win. But N. Paul Todd reveals to the two contestants that it's all a ruse and he's not the one making the decisions, yadda yadda yadda. Mike actually gets really pissed and says: "You mean to tell me that we just wasted five or six weeks of our lives just to look like total jackasses?" But eventually he calms down. Annette just laughed and giggled. ... Who's the mysterious boss? A monkey. I'm serious, it was a chimpanzee. He chose who stayed and went by spinning a wheel. Seriously I felt like it was the biggest waste of time. The finale didn't keep with the spirit of the show at all. It wasn't funny and there weren't any embarrassing moments for the contestants. It was like they were filming a different show. Seriously, a monkey. I feel like I could write a Fox show now after watching that episode.

"Roses are red ... violets are blue ... if you look at another girl ... I will beat you."
-- Doug Christie's wife reciting a poem she had written during this month's episode of HBO's "Real Sports"

"Call me a whore, call me a slut -- don't call me a liar."
-- Tonya explaining why she slept with Robyn's boyfriend, then was upset that Robyn didn't believe her on "The Inferno" Monday night

"I'm tellin' ya man, to be able to stroke it like that must be some kind of feeling"
-- Dick Vitale on J.J. Redick's ability to hit 3s

"Doug is distraught. He's still not over the trade, and it's not even the basketball part of it. It's the feel of Sacramento, the fans, the community. Sometimes he gets so down. We have a farewell video that the Kings gave us before we left, and I'll find him sitting there watching it, and he gets all choked up. I'll tell him, 'Doug, you have to stop.' But everything was so special there."
-- Jackie Christie

"In the end, those of us who walk away not winning win more than just a loss."
-- Audrey after getting fired from "The Apprentice"

"When you're rich, you don't write checks. Straight cash, homey."
-- Randy Moss

"Our goal is to make sure storage is no longer an issue for Web mail users," said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products.

The announcement was made on the first anniversary of the Internet search engine's launch of Gmail, which surprised many users with its generous storage allotment and prompted rivals Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and Microsoft Corp. to boost the capacity of their own free Web mail services.

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from news.com:

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Web giant on Friday plans to double the free storage on Gmail from 1GB to 2GB, said Georges Harik, Gmail product management director. After that, Google will add a yet-to-be-determined amount of extra storage daily, with no plans to stop.