Talking about gadgets, our pal WebUrbanist has a really nifty post about the evolution of geeky gadgets we all love, from cell phones to video games ...

(Don't miss the Zihotch telephone dial watch!)

Link

Their fathers ruled nations with an iron fist - so what's an offspring to do? If you ever wonder what the descendants of dictators have been up to, check out this interesting post by our very own Stacy over at mental_floss:

1. Alessandra Mussolini, the daughter of Benito Mussolini’s son and his first wife, Anna Maria Scicolone (who also happened to be Sophia Loren’s sister). Alessandra has been all over the place – she’s been a Playboy model, an actress and a singer. The album was only released in Japan, though, and is apparently quite the collector’s item. She was also the leader of a right-wing political party and kicked the minister for equal opportunities on a talk show. It happens at about 43 seconds into the linked video, if you’re interested.

Link - via i met a possum

You see a woman being dragged down a deserted staircase in a subway station, fighting off a rapist and screaming for help - do you:

a) immediately run to help her, possibly at your peril
b) call the cops from the safety of your subway booth and consider it a job well done

Well, a New York judge has recently tossed out a lawsuit by the rape victim who claimed that two subway employees did nothing more to stop her rape than just calling the cops from the safety of their posts:

A conductor saw the rape from the window on his train, and a station agent in the booth witnessed a screaming woman being dragged down a staircase inside the desolate 21st Street station of the G line. But neither one left the safety of their assigned posts to help her. Instead, conductor Harmodio Cruz and agent John Koort called the command center to summon cops.

Justice Kevin Kerrigan ruled the two workers had taken "prompt and decisive action in obtaining police help," according to the decision handed down in Queens Supreme Court. The help came far too late for the victim, who was raped on the platform.

Her lawyer, Marc Albert, called Kerrigan's decision "offensive," saying it gives "blanket immunity" for transit workers to ignore straphangers in peril. "Simply pressing the button is enough," lamented Albert. "God forbid citizens are put in a position where municipal workers are not required to act and it leads to harm -- they are left out in the cold."

Link - via The Zeray Gazette

What do you think: was it cowardice or just being sensibe?

(Photo: Catherine Nance)

We've featured many unusual and geeky wedding cakes on Neatorama, but (excuse the pun) this one takes the cake! Behold the Stargate Wedding Cake:

Absolutely everything on the top display is hand made, including the wormhole connection which is hand painted icing. And apparently the gate is symbol correct as well.

You can't see them too well but the bottom tier has earth glyphs running all around the outside of the cake, and non gate related.. the roses on the bottom tier are also hand made and edible.

The Bruins game is over, but the entertainment doesn't stop! Check out the progress of this (blonde) lady going the wrong way on the escalator ...

Go, lady, go! Link [embedded YouTube clip]

Green is in, and big corporations left and right are jumping on the bandwagon ... but are they really trying to be environmentally-conscious or is it just a case of "greenwashing"?

WebEcoist takes a look at the world's worst offenders - take, for example, BP:

BP’s ad campaign with the theme ‘Beyond Petroleum’ led the public to believe the company was headed in the direction of cleaner, renewable fuels. But, it turned out the company was spending more money on advertising than on green efforts, leading Treehugger to ask, “What does BP stand for these days? Beyond Propaganda? Bye-Bye Planet? Bad Pollution?” After all those greenwashing ads, BP went and dropped $3 billion to buy into oil from the Alberta Tar Sands. Each barrel of oil out of the tar sands generates about two thirds of a ton of CO2, meaning BP’s 200,000 barrels a day will generate about 127,000 tons per day.

Link

Our collaboration with the What is it? Blog brings us this strange (and gruesome-looking) object. Do you know what it is for? Does it have anything to do with vampires?

Place your guess in the comment section. Please post no URL / web link - let others play. No prize this week - you're playing for bragging rights only.

For more clues, check out the What is it? blog. Good luck!

Sure cheating is bad, but when a single exam has the power of controlling your destiny (as China's "gaokao" or college entrance exam does), the pressure to do well can be too much.

To make sure that people don't cheat on their exams, the Chinese government has jailed 8 parents and teachers caught in a cheating scheme on charges of stealing state secrets!

The Legal Daily newspaper said the parents began plotting in 2007 because their children's achievements were "not ideal". One group bribed a teacher to fax them the test paper and paid university students to provide answers, which were transmitted to the children through earpieces. The ruse was discovered when police detected "abnormal radio signals" near the school.

Another man had created an even more elaborate - and expensive - system. He bribed a student to send him the questions using a miniature scanner and hired nine teachers to answer them. He then sent their work back to his son and the other boy. A teacher was also jailed for charging parents to deliver answers to students. The equipment he used failed on the day.

Link

Neanderthals and their precursor, an early human species called Homo heidelbergensis, were often thought of as violent and uncaring, rejecting newborns with severe deformities.

A recent discovery, however, may change the picture: they might have cared for their disabled children.

... a new study shows that a 530,000-year-old fossil skull belonged to a child who lived to around the age of ten despite being born with a rare birth defect known as craniosynostosis, in which the skull segments close too early, interfering with brain development. [...]

Increased pressure on the brain due to the deformity might have led to learning difficulties and health problems such as mental retardation.

"All children need care," noted study team leader Ana Gracia of the Centro UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamientos Humanos in Madrid. But this child would likely have required "special need care" to have lived as long as it did, she said.

Take a close look at the two photos above. Notice anything different?

Well, the original photo (top) is of Israel's new cabinet. Problem is, it contains two female ministers. Since publishing pictures of women are considered a no-no for many ultra-orthodox Jews as a violation of female modesty, the Yated Neeman newspaper decided to do a little photoshoppin': Link

Our pal Mike Jacobsen and Phil Selby of The Rut have created a fantastic new wecomic called Urf. It's about life on Planet Urf, which is a lot like Earth but slightly different, and is filled with Urflings, who face problems similar to that of us humans, but with slightly different solutions!

Because it's tax season, let's take the issue of taxation. As you know, tax is universal - it also exists on Planet Urf albeit in a slightly different form:

... Urflings also care about the environment, and are facing some sort
of an oil crisis there as well:

... and let's not forget about science! Urflings are a curious bunch -
they've got their own Super Collider in action to solve the mysteries
of particle physics:

Definitely check out the rest of the trio's latest creations - and be
prepared to be utterly engrossed by the Urflings: Link

Photo: Rugani et al.

They may be just 3 or 4 days old, but chicks can already do simple arithmetic. Inspired by experiments with human babies, Rosa Rugani of the University of Trento Center for Mind/Brain Science in Italy and colleagues decided to test chick's mathematic abilities:

... Rugani and her colleagues worked out tests based on adding objects to and taking them away from little piles behind screens. With no special math coaching, the chicks did a decent job of keeping track of object shifts representing such problems as 4 – 2 = 2 and 1 + 2 = 3, she and her colleagues report online March 31 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“This is the first demonstration of adding and subtracting in young animals” other than humans, Rugani says. Other animals, including some primates and dogs, have demonstrated numerical powers as adults.

Link

Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends (2009) by Ron Arad

The meaning behind the name of Ron Arad's USA-shaped bookcase (Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends - whaaaa?), but it's easy to see how cool it would be hanging on the wall!

It's currently being exhibited at the Timothy Taylor Gallery: Link - via otto

And so it has begun: scientists have created a robotic system that has made novel scientific discovery without any human input:

Scientists designed "Adam" to carry out the entire scientific process on its own: formulating hypotheses, designing and running experiments, analyzing data, and deciding which experiments to run next.

"It's a major advance," says David Waltz of the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University. "Science is being done here in a way that incorporates artificial intelligence. It's automating a part of the scientific process that hasn't been automated in the past."

[...]

Adam's British designers, led by Ross King at Aberystwyth University in Wales, acknowledge that the robot's discoveries have been "of a modest kind" thus far. Its proving ground as a scientist has been the genome of baker's yeast, a popular laboratory species. Baker's yeast is one of the best understood organisms, but 10 to 15 percent of its roughly 6,000 genes have unknown functions. The scientists hoped Adam could shed light on some of these mystery genes.

I, for one, welcome our new robot scientist overlords: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/robotscientist.html

Bad at math? Try chocolate! At least that's what researchers Emma Wightman, David Kennedy and colleagues found in the latest (and yummiest) scientific study:

Mental arithmetic became easier after volunteers had been given large amounts of compounds found in chocolate, called flavanols, in a hot cocoa drink.

They were also less likely to feel tired or mentally drained, the findings, presented at the British Psychological Society annual conference in Brighton show.

Link