No. 453 - May 15, 2008
The War on Bugs, Teens, Drunks and Smokers

BUG WARFARE
Straight from the “Ideas Stolen from Sci-Fi Movies” wing of the American military comes news that a robot army of spiders, flies, snakes and other insects is in development and should be ready for the battlefield later this year. The collaborative project between defense contractor BAE Systems and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) will build an army of miniature robot insects which will be able to scout out enemy territory and spy on suspects without endangering human soldiers. The project also includes the development of a surveillance robot which looks exactly like a common housefly but will be able to send audio and visual information back to the army’s command center. (Daily Galaxy)

THREATENING THEM WITH A SHOTGUN SEEMS TO WORK TOO
A British inventor has created a device designed to keep annoying teens from loitering outside of stores by emitting an irritating squeal at them that most people over the age of 20 (and almost nobody over the age of 30) can hear. The Mosquito takes advantage of the fact that young people can hear much higher frequencies of sound than adults so it broadcasts an irritating high-pitched pulsing noise which drives teens away from the front of shops. “It’s loud and squeaky and it just goes through you,” explained a 15-year-old. The Mosquito has not yet been tested by hearing experts, but if the device is approved it should replace the only other options which shopkeepers have had so far -- playing classical music outside their stores or using a “zit lamp” -- a blue light which irritates teens by accentuating the zits on their faces. (CNN)

ALL YOU CAN PUKE
A Spanish resort has learned the hard way that you don’t offer unlimited booze to British students on vacation. The trouble began during a sports tournament in Calella, Spain, when four nightclubs offered an all-you-can-drink wristband between the hours of 9:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m.. You can probably guess how this ends. "These students do not behave like civilized human beings and we don't want them here,” said the mayor of the town after the invasion left massive piles of garbage on the beaches and thousands of dollars in vandalism repair bills to the resort hotels. (Daily Mail)

THE WORLD’S DUMBEST MULTI-BILLIONAIRE
A real brainiac in Fort Worth, Texas, was arrested last week after trying to cash a cheque worth $360 billion ($360,000,000,000) at a local bank. He told the police that his girlfriend’s mother had given him the money so that he could start his own record label. (Star-Telegram.com)

CHEERS TO MY DEATH
Some old drunk in Chicago has ordered up a custom-built coffin shaped as a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. "I'm going to use it as a cooler until I really need it," said Bill Bramanti, 67, who held a mock wake at his home where his family and friends drank cans of Pabst that had been chilled on ice in his casket.



I TOURED THE SLUMS OF RIO AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS CRUMMY COCAINE
A tour company in Rio de Janeiro may lose its license after an undercover journalist discovered that tourists were being taken into the city’s slums for photo-ops with gang leaders and drug traffickers. During the four-hour, $55 tour, gangsters regaled the tourists with stories of their time in prison, described their lives as warlords, and posed for pictures with their guns. (Reuters)

BAD FOR YOUR LUNGS, GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY
Who woulda guessed that banning smoking in bars might stop smokers from going to bars? Strange, but at least 100 pubs in Northern Ireland have been forced to close since the smoking ban came into effect last year and another 100 face bankruptcy in the near future. "The much-promoted view that non-smokers would be rushing to premises has not materialized,” explained the chief executive of a trade council which represents 1,100 of Ireland’s pubs, hotels and restaurants. (BBC)

SLEEPWALKING OUT OF YOUR LIFE
There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but a German woman found yet another when she pretended to be sleepwalking and left her husband in the middle of the night never to return. Her husband called the police after he woke up to an empty bed, and a full police search began in order to find the missing "sleepwalker." The case was solved later that afternoon when the woman was found at her friend's apartment, saying that she had simply decided to leave her husband.

MY JOB ISN’T STIMULATING ENOUGH
You probably shouldn’t spend quite so much time surfing for porn while you’re at work, but at least you’re not in the same league as the Japanese civil servant who was demoted and fined last week after his computer log showed that he had made 780,000 hits to porn sites over the past nine months. (Yahoo News)

I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE WEEK
The average person loses 51 minutes of sleep every night worrying about going back to work the next morning.

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