People who could get upset about this sort of thing really could get upset about anything couldn't they?

Get a sense of perspective people.

Nobody but the politicians wanted the olympics in the first place. It's bad enough that they whole country is paying for the games when they are being kept ring fenced to the London area. What makes it worse is the amount of money being spent on upgrading all sorts of things in London, road networks, public transport, comms, etc. But this is really taking the piss. Spending thousands of pounds on a stupid, pointless gimick that will be vandalized before the games even start? And not even in the games area. Well done London.

At least they don't 'ave to lick t'road clean wi't'tongue.

"He said that if the case were successful, it could have implications not just on how other marine parks or zoos operate, but even on the police use of sniffer dogs to detect bombs and drugs."

And indeed any other working animal. Or pet. Or domesticated animal of any sort.

Better set the goldfish free in the local river before PETA sue.

Let's be serious, any credibility PETA may have had just left the building.

The first person of the year? That really is pretty meaningless, escpecially since the Inca people had a different calendar to our own.

HP Lovecraft anybody?

@Jill Harness are you saying then that the oil pump and the fuel pump in your car are not pumps? A pump is simply a device used to move a fluid.

A lot of Leonardo Da Vinci's "inventions" have been built and claimed to work, but only with some pretty serious re-engineering.

I think it better to term Leonardo's works "concepts" rather than "inventions".

Just heard that a US TV company are making a pilot of Only Fools and Horses. Not only do I not see how most of the humour will translate to US culture I also don't see how you could make it even in the UK today. The world has changed a lot since that show was at its peak.

I'll bet Oppenheimer had a pair.

@Craig I'd guess the doll really was invented by Edison. Many years ago it was suggested to me that the way to judge whether or not one of Edison's patents was his own invention is simply to judge whether it is any use or not. If it's useful then it probably wasn't his invention.

@JDC do you not realise there are loads of images of the far side of the moon already out there. Some of them much higher res than this video. No anomalies so far.

"“by all criteria that we conventionally use to analyze patients”, Doctor Cohn said, he is dead."

*All* the criteria? Not much of a doctor then if the only criterion he uses for checking for life is the hearbeat. There are other life signs you know, doc.

"quebec is the only place in the world where stop sighns don’t say stop"

Where did you get this from? Many countries around the world do not use STOP on their stop signs. Counties that don't use the same alphabet as us obviously use their own words or symbols. Much of south and central America use PARE or ALTO. And there are other countries that share our alphabet but their stop signs were in their own language. Israel has a neat solution, they have a raised hand thus avoiding any linguistic issues.

And of course in the UK stop signs are relatively rare, with the Give Way sign being much more common.

I would say that the wind blew from the face side of the sign, causing the ice to form on that side. The sun then shone from the opposite side, warming the sign and causing the ice to detach without melting to any depth.

Had the sun shone on the face of the sign the ice would probably have melted through from the front.