Cat nanny Facial recognition software, increasingly important to global anti-terrorism operations, is being brought to…cats. Taiwanese developer Mu-Chi Sung announced in July plans for marketing the software as part of a cat health device so that owners, especially those with multiple cats, can better monitor their cats’ eating habits. Sung
Read More →The continuing crisis Clinton Tucker, who is black, sued Benjamin Moore paints in Essex County, New Jersey, in June for wrongful firing — after, he said, he had tolerated years of workplace racial insults. In fact, Tucker said the company had introduced two new paint shades shortly after he was
Read More →Rocking ‘Messiah’ Prominent theoretical chemist David Glowacki was ejected from a classical music concert at England’s Bristol Old Vic in June for disrupting a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” by attempting to crowd-surf in front of the stage. Dr. Glowacki, an expert in non-equilibrium molecular reaction dynamics and who is presently
Read More →The other gas Argentinian agricultural scientists in 2008 created the “methane backpack” to collect the emissions of grazing cows (with a tube from the cow’s rumen to the inflatable bag) in order to see how much of the world’s greenhouse-gas problem was created by livestock. Having discovered that figure (it’s
Read More →Felons for furnishing alcohol California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo has a huge, 350-student “viticulture and enology” program, preparing its majors for an industry critical to the state’s economy (and with a venerable international cachet) — but puritanical state law continues to hobble it. Many in Cal Poly’s
Read More →Eyes of the beholder Thirty thousand spiders, led by members of the British Tarantula Society, gathered in Coventry on May 18 for the annual BTS exhibition, with a Socotra Island blue baboon spider taking Best in Show for first-time entrant Mike Dawkins. According to news reports, judges ignore spiders’ personalities
Read More →Hamster buttocks
Marking Japan’s latest unfathomable social trend, two paperback photo books — both consisting only of portraits of the rear ends of hamsters — have experienced surprising and still-growing printing runs. Japanese society has long seemed easily captured by anything considered “kawaii” (or “cute”), according to a May Wall Street Journal
Read More →What’s in a name Vanellope, Rydder, Jceion and Burklee head the latest annual list of the most common baby names on the Social Security Administration register of first-time-appearing names. There were 63 Vanellopes (girls), but only 10 each for Rydder and Jceion, the most popular debut names for boys. Other
Read More →Gigadollars and cents In April, Anton Purisima filed a claim in Federal District Court in New York City that the Lowering The Bar blog calculated was for the largest monetary demand ever made in a lawsuit, “$2,000 decillion” (or 2 followed by 36 zeroes, which, of course, is many times
Read More →Prom draft adds to Californication A week before the National Football League held its 2014 Draft Day in May, a large contingent of junior and senior boys staged their own draft day at Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach, California, “dividing up” the available girls to ask to
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