will.i.am's music video treatment of Barack Obama's "Yes, We Can" speech

Fine speechwriting.

Yes we can to justice and equality.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can...
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Texter -- abbreviate your oft repeated long keystrokes

Just a macro that inserts phrases.

Peer effects

Like worse performance among pro golfers when Tiger Woods is not competing.

Another way of handling flatulent cows

... a blend of nitrates and the amino acid cysteine... [act] as a powerful suppressant of methane production inside the cow’s stomach, Professor Takahashi says, but has no effect on milk quality.

Big pharma spends more on advertising than research

Not exactly a surprise.

Strange ways we deal with the dead

Couple of threads here like preservation, fancy cremations, and burying high up.

Helmet that could reverse Alzheimer's symptoms

Low level infra-red red is thought to stimulate the growth of cells of all types of tissue and encourage their repair. It is able to penetrate the skin and even get through the skull.

AA-12 automatic shotgun

Up to 32-round magazine. Mini-grenade launcher too.

Smuggling drugs with FedEx trucks

Makes perfect sense. Concerns with ambulances.

Micronations and their wacky histories

Sark is one of the last feudal countries in Europe, and some of its laws seem to come from the medieval guide to complete nuttery. For instance: only the Seigneur of Sark is allowed to keep pigeons or an unspayed bitch, newcomers to the island cannot live in houses built before 1976 and divorce is illegal.

Bananas by Dan Koeppel

Economics stuff. The Cavendish bananas that we eat seem to be endangered by disease.

Sensory deprivation

Mickey, a postman is seeing mosquitoes and fighter planes buzzing around his head and it's frightening him.

Claire a psychology student doesn't mind the little cars, snakes and zebras. But she gets scared when she suddenly feels somebody is in the room.

"In the dark room there is nothing to focus on," says Prof Robbins as he monitors their behaviour. "In the absence of information the human brain carries on working and processing information even if there is no information to process and after a while it starts to create that information itself."

More here.

The fun of suing big companies in small claims court

Banking on the settlement.

Wrong number generator

Some hardware for some fun. Only randomly generates numbers for 75% of calls out.