No, really.

"Rockstar Games is proud to be a major sponsor of Movember, the annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men's health issues, specifically prostate cancer. Grow a rugged moustache and send us a photo by the end of Movember for an opportunity to be immortalized as a character in Rockstar Games' next action-adventure, Red Dead Redemption."

Read the details here.

If you're unclear on how your 'stache ties into fighting prostate cancer, check the bullet points more closely. Right after Rockstar asks you to register with your email so that you can be kept abreast of developments relating to their upcoming Western action game, there's this:

"Tell your friends and family and get them to sponsor you and raise money for men's health charities."

Residents in Stockholm are divided over reports that rabbits are being used to make biofuel.

The bodies of thousands of rabbits are fuelling a heating plant in central Sweden, local newspapers say.

The city of Stockholm has an annual cull of thousands of rabbits to protect the capital's parks and green spaces.

The rabbits, not native to Sweden, are mainly the offspring of pets released by owners, and are said to be destroying parks in the capital.

Since they have no natural predators, the city administration of Stockholm employs hunters to kill the rabbits.

GEEKY computer game fans are set to become an army of ogling pervs thanks to a giveaway of night-vision goggles with an edition of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The high-spec, see-in-the-dark gear has led the game to be dubbed Modern Warfare 2: Peeping Tom Edition.

Hordes of joy-pad junkies are rubbing their hands in anticipation and some have already admitted they will use the
goggles for “stealth dogging” and to spy on gay cruising spots.

While many people scour Craigslist to see if Starbucks or Bed, Bath and Beyond might be seeking additions to their cheery teams, the poster of this ad is searching for an altogether more adventurous type, proudly announcing "Astronaut Needed (Northern Alberta)." Is that the cough of a million scoffs I hear? Perhaps. But this is truly an interesting opportunity, to say the least. Just look at the first, enticing sentence of the ad: "Astronaut needed for experimental flight to Titan."

Perhaps you might be concerned that this ad was not, in fact, placed by NASA. Please, let me put your mind into horizontal mode. The advertiser assures all applicants that he has been "working on this project for near 40 years." Indeed, the only reason he is seeking an Armstrong for his flight is that he himself seems to have weaker limbs now that the years have passed.

You might also be wondering what kind of craft will shuttle you into orbit. Well, again, I can be your Xanax. The advertiser declares that his secret craft is "the result of my professional experience and imagination while serving the U.S. military in advanced aeronautics as a scientist." You see, this man is a veritable expert in his field. This spaceship enjoys "a revolutionary propulsion system and its fuselage is fabricated with the most advanced material."

© 2009 Valve Corporation, all rights reserved. Valve, the Valve logo, Half-Life, the Half-Life logo, the Lambda logo, Steam, the Steam logo, Team Fortress, the Team Fortress logo, Opposing Force, Day of Defeat, the Day of Defeat logo, Counter-Strike, the Counter-Strike logo, Source, the Source logo, Valve Source and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.

Tyrannosaurus rex -- the most fearsome predator ever to have trod the Earth -- had a pint-sized precursor, remarkably similar in appearance but no heavier than a human being, according to a new report from a team of scientists. The creature was what Austin Powers might call T. rex's Mini-Me.

The new animal, based on a single fossil smuggled out of China and eventually sold to a private collector, has been named raptorex. It lived 125 million years ago in a lake-dotted region of northern China.

A new ghostshark species has been identified off the coast of Southern California, and it’s darker and weirder than any shark we know.

The purplish black ancient relative of the modern shark comes packed with a suite of odd features that give its taxonomical family the name chimaera, after the mythical beast made from the parts of many animals.

Boeing announced yesterday that it successfully defeated a ground target using its Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) aircraft, marking the ship's first air-to-ground, high-power laser engagement. If the news sounds like something out of science-fiction, think again: Boeing has actually mounted a fully-loaded laser cannon on an airplane. This means that the military could potentially have access to a weapon that can annihilate the enemy without the collateral damage caused by rockets and bombs.

"During the test, the C-130H aircraft took off from Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., and fired its high-power chemical laser through its beam control system while flying over White Sands Missile Range, N.M," Boeing announced in this press release. "The beam control system acquired the ground target -- an unoccupied stationary vehicle -- and guided the laser beam to the target, as directed by ATL's battle management system. The laser beam's energy defeated the vehicle."

Scanning the hardy Blues News, I initially mistook the headline ‘Peregrine Glove’ to be a most peculiarly-named videogame. Instead, it’s one of those totally, gloriously, ridiculous batshit controllers that occasionally make an inevitably doomed play to replace or augment the venerable keyboard. This experimental hand-wrapping has the autocue-based blessing of one of the world’s top DoTA players, so perhaps this time PC gaming controls really will be revolutionised…

Using a technique known as transformation optics, the researchers have revealed a way to alter the pathway of light waves that could eventually allow them to create portals that are invisible to the human eye.

Pushing the laws of refraction and reflection to the limit, the team from Hong Kong University and Fudan University in Shanghai, describe the concept of a “a gateway that can block electromagnetic waves but that allows the passage of other entities”.

The gateway uses transformation optics and a "superscatterer" made from photonic crystals to create an 'optical illusion', forcing light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation into complicated directions to hide the portal.

MSI launched the MSI X320 last night. It looks an awful lot like a MacBook Air. It has a 13.4 inch, 1366 x 768 display and it’s super thin and light, measuring less than an inch thick, and weighing about 2.9 pounds. But unlike the MacBook Air, the MSI X320 runs on an Intel Atom Z520 CPU which means two things: It won’t exactly be a speed demon, and it’ll be a lot cheaper than the Air.

How much cheaper? Laptop Magazine reports that the X320 will retail for between $700 and $900.

Now, normally I would say that this machine falls outside of Liliputing’s scope. I’ve always been interested in small, cheap laptops. And with a starting price of $700, the X320 isn’t exactly an impulse buy. But you can totally slide it between your cheeks. I can't stop!

Specifically, the price is a clear $299.99 — a price at which the current Pro 60 GB model occupies. Unless Microsoft suddenly decides to keep all three SKUs by cutting the price of the Pro to $250, it seems that the rumor will prove true.

The new study, led by Ruth Barr, a psychiatrist at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, looked at the effects of nicotine on patients' cognitive function, such as planning and memory in social and work settings. According to Dr. Barr, improvement cognitive function is the most critical need for those suffering from the disease. She states, "We know that patients that do better in the long term are those with good cognitive function rather than improvement in any other symptom."

Prior to the study only beneficial effects of nicotine being used to overcome smoking withdrawal symptoms were used. The new study, involved dosing the patients with nicotine. Describes Dr. Barr, "(W)e would ask participants to go without a cigarette for 12 hours and then provide a single dose of nicotine and measure cognitive function."

Intriguingly rather than just showing less symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, patients also showed improvement in brain function, including less impulsive behaviour and better levels of attention, both of which are unrelated to nicotine withdrawal. Dr. Barr says more research is needed, stating, "We don't yet know whether these effects persist or not and if those improvements have any impact on daily life, for example, remembering shopping lists or conversations."

Valve's Gabe Newell appears to have recently conducted a focus group with deaf individuals in order to learn more about sign language and how it can be applied to games, notably the upcoming Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Why? To help develop Alyx's character, and further the animation technology implemented in the Half-Life games.

Nearly everyone has heard the old saying that cameras–particularly TV cameras–"add ten pounds" to their subjects. Some people use it as a convenient excuse for those (real) ten extra pounds, but others believe that this claim has actual technical merit. There's a lot of confusion over how to explain this phenomenon, and whether it even exists in the first place, so I set out to investigate. Do modern cameras still make us look fatter?

I went into this story based on something I was taught as an undergraduate–that video is what adds 10 pounds, not still photos, because of the type of pixels involved. Photographs are shot in square pixels and usually displayed on square pixel screens (your computer monitor, or occasionally printed out in square pixels), so they're not susceptible to this mysterious fattening phenomenon.

Video meant for the TV screen, however, isn't shot in the same way. Both NTSC and PAL pixels are rectangular (or non-square), and I was told that this is the reason why people look wider on TV. After all, if their images are being stretched horizontally, why wouldn't they? After digging around a bit, I learned that I wasn't the only one taught this at some point in my life.

Everyone who signs this petition disagrees with your approach and your smug attitude. The undersigned agree not to purchase your game at full retail value. We instead will either choose to A.) not purchase MW2. B.)Purchase only in used form allowing no revenue for you. C.)Import from a cheaper country. This may not seem like much of a threat, but the internet is a large place and your wallets may seem a little lighter come Christmas time. Thank you.

When using the CPI/RPI, the (average) value in 2008 of £45 from 2002 is $96.91 [£58.73].

Malaria appears to have originated in chimpanzees and jumped over to humans at some point in the last two million years, bucking the leading theory that the disease had evolved along with humans.

After gathering blood samples from nearly 100 chimpanzees in central Africa, researchers uncovered eight new strains of the parasite that causes chimp malaria. By comparing genes from the new chimp strains to genes from human malaria, scientists discovered that like HIV, our malaria bug is a gift from chimpanzees.

“The conventional wisdom on malaria is that this is a disease that has been in humans since the dawn of humanity,” said infectious disease expert Nathan Wolfe of Stanford University, who co-authored the paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “In fact, what we found was really quite surprising to us: There is a tremendous diversity of these parasites in chimpanzees, and it’s a diversity that completely encompasses a much more limited diversity in human malaria.”

The same blue food dye found in M&Ms and Gatorade could be used to reduce damage caused by spine injuries, offering a better chance of recovery, according to new research.

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp.

The only side effect was that the treated mice temporarily turned blue.

Extensive research shows the dangers of distracted driving. Studies say that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers, and the likelihood that they will crash is equal to that of someone with a .08 percent blood alcohol level, the point at which drivers are generally considered intoxicated. Research also shows that hands-free devices do not eliminate the risks, and may worsen them by suggesting that the behavior is safe.

A 2003 Harvard study estimated that cellphone distractions caused 2,600 traffic deaths every year, and 330,000 accidents that result in moderate or severe injuries.

Yet Americans have largely ignored that research. Instead, they increasingly use phones, navigation devices and even laptops to turn their cars into mobile offices, chat rooms and entertainment centers, making roads more dangerous.

Adobe will make available via open source the company's OSMF (Open Source Media Framework) and Text Layout Framework. Formerly part of the "Strobe" project, OSMF allows for software-based media players to be built based on the Flash platform. Individuals could, for example, add new functionality around the Flash Player. Text Layout Framework allows users to "to do all the things you want to do with text to make it really cool" on the Flash platform, said McAllister. Sophisticated typography capabilities can be added to Web applications.

Danish vulnerability tracking vendor Secunia said that the version on the the Adobe site offers includes at least 14 security vulnerabilities that have been patched by the company in the last two months. It noticed Adobe was offering an outdated Reader when users of its Personal Software Inspector (PSI) utility started complaining when the tool said they were running a vulnerable version, even though they had just downloaded the PDF viewer.

In July 1969, the telescopes at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, in Cheshire, were tracking the Americans' Eagle Lander carrying astronauts towards the moon's surface.

Sir Bernard Lovell, the astronomer, was among the team listening to transmissions coming from the area of space and began tracking the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 15, which was trying to collect samples of lunar soil and rock and then return to Earth before the US mission.

The recordings from Jodrell's Lovell radio telescope, which were hidden in archives until researchers found them, show the Russian craft orbited the Moon and crash-landed onto its surface at 15:50 on July 21 — just a few hours before the Americans lifted off.

The deal is this: the video stream from the Moon was of a decent quality, but far too large too be able to be be sent to TVs around the country and the world. Using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, astronomers recorded the video beamed from the lunar surface in high quality, but what they transmitted to NASA was necessarily compressed. It’s the latter we’ve all seen. The thing is, the high quality tapes were then lost somehow. NASA admitted it a few years ago, and the search was on! According to the article the tapes were finally found recently in a storage facility on Perth.

Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

1. A system for engaging shoes with a hitch mans to permit a person standing on a stage surface to lean forwardly beyond his or her center of gravity, comprising:

at least one shoe having a heel with a first engagement means, said first engagement means comprising a recess formed in a heel of said shoe covered with a heel slot plane located at a bottom region of said heel, said heel slot plate having a slot formed therein with a relatively wide opening at a leading edge of said heel and a narrower terminal end rearward of said leading edge, said recess being larger in size above said terminal end of said slot than is said terminal end of said slot;

Researchers examined levels of lithium in drinking water and suicide rates in the prefecture of Oita, which has a population of more than one million.

The suicide rate was significantly lower in those areas with the highest levels of the element, they wrote in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

High doses of lithium are already used to treat serious mood disorders.

But the team from the universities of Oita and Hiroshima found that even relatively low levels appeared to have a positive impact of suicide rates.

Swine Flu Was Genetically Manipulated to Target Conspiracy Theorists
It's true: If you own a tin hat, you're ten times more likely to contract the virus. Seriously, though, could the Internets please stop forwarding those increasingly out-of-context videos of Dallas County medical director John Carlo? In some recent interviews, Carlo referred somewhat clunkily to culturing samples of H1N1 in the laboratory. This quote is now being used as "evidence" in a delightful meme claiming that H1N1 is a man-made virus, wholly created in the laboratory. As Carlo himself has pointed out, that is not remotely the case. In reality, those video quotes are actually Carlo referring to the common practice of taking samples of a virus and growing it in the lab until you get enough of the virus that you can analyze the thing. That's how researchers learn what makes a specific virus unique and how they figure out ways to combat it. Scientists studying cultured samples of a naturally-occurring virus =/= evil plot to create a man-made super-virus. Please, tell your friends.