Reckless Reality |

Everyone farts… Whether it be in public, on a date, or during an interview, it happens and we know how embarrassing it can be.
Luckily, a man named “Big Chicken Mushroom” from WuHan, China, has invented the “Fart Silencer”, a small plastic tube that you… um… put in your anus.
The “Fart Silencer” is a small plastic tube with one end that is completely open and the other end having numerous smaller holes in it.
Users are instructed to insert the open end into their anus when they feel a fart is coming. This should eliminate any unwanted sound farts tend to produce.
Users are also instructed to spray a cotton ball with their favorite perfume and put it into the “Fart Silencer” to eliminate any unwanted odor that might occur.

A Missouri State student came back to his dorm to find his Xbox 360 stolen. Realizing the controller still connected when turned it on, he set out to find the console. And he did.

This is probably the only set of circumstances in which this would work — 360 stolen, thief lives 30 feet away, that’s only gonna happen in a college dorm. But credit to Ryan Ketsenberg for using some critical thinking and old fashioned sleuthing to get his stuff back and bust a thief.

Read the rest of this entry »

The seven astronauts of NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour will gather together with the station’s three-person crew for as traditional a Thanksgiving meal as possible in orbit before shutting the hatches between their two spacecraft. They’re nearing the end of almost two weeks of space renovations to ready the station for larger, six-person crews next year.

On the menu: Smoked turkey, candied yams, green beans and mushrooms, cornbread dressing and a cranapple dessert. Read the rest of this entry »

Helsinki, Finland – The renowned cellular phone company Nokia has introduced its answer to Apple Inc’s iPhone. The new touch-screen mobile phone is the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic.

Nokia said on Thursday the phone is, or soon will be, available in selected markets globally, including Russia, Spain, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Finland.

Nokia said last month the model will cost 279 euros ($360) before operator subsidies and taxes, substantially less than the iPhone. Read the rest of this entry »

At a time when only one in six people on the planet have access to water and bottled water is not always the most practical (or environmentally sound) option, inventors are busy trying to turn just about anything into water. If you thought astronauts drinking water from urine was a bit gross, then drinking water made from air might sound like a far more appealing option. And now, the Canadian company Element Four’s Water Mill has determined a way to take moisture from the air and turn it into drinkable water.

The machine is the size of a large golf ball cut in half , and it runs off the “electricity of about three light bulbs.” It works by pumping air through filters to get rid of dust and other particles, and then cools the purified air until water starts to condense. Then the condensed water goes through a UV light unit to clean it so bacteria won’t get in it and cause infections or disease. Read the rest of this entry »

Indonesia’s Papua province may be the first region in the world to force some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchip trackers.

A controversial bill requiring the extreme measures already has full backing from the provincial parliament and will become law with a majority vote from the provincial legislative body.

The microchips are meant to monitor “aggressive” sexual behavior in an effort to control the spread of the disease. Lawmaker John Manangsang said, “It’s a simple technology. A signal from the microchip will track their movements and this will be received by monitoring authorities.”

The bill does not specify who would qualify as “sexually aggressive” patients, but if the bill is passed, a committee will be formed to decide who will be implanted; the executive director of the committee will be a physician with a knowledge of epidemiology. Read the rest of this entry »

The economic crisis has not only clobbered the restaurant industry, but now it’s brought at least one business to hire monkeys. CNN reports that a sake house in Tokyo has “recruited” two Japanese Macaques as waitstaff. Yes, you heard right—they’re using trained monkeys as employees.

The monkeys’ job duties—which can last no more than two hours a day to avoid violating animal rights regulations—include offering hot towels to diners, delivering change, and serving beers. While health regulations in the area are as strict as anywhere else, the monkeys have been “deemed sanitary” by health inspectors so long as they wear their (adorable) checkered kimono uniforms. Read the rest of this entry »

The walls that line human coronary arteries have been imaged for the first time in 3-D, a team of researchers says. Such images will allow cardiologists to see inside patients’ arteries more clearly and check for areas of inflammation or plaque deposits that can cause a heart attack.

The Endeavor shuttle shot into space last week carrying loads of equipment for the International Space Station.

Among the new gadgets to be installed is a water recovery system that promises to recycle 93 percent of astronaut urine, sweat, exhaled water vapor, and other waste water back into drinkable water.

The whole apparatus cost about $250 million to develop, but that’s still cheaper than having to send periodic shuttles to the station to deliver fresh water.

Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is, what does it taste like? New York Times reporter John Schwartz took it upon himself to find out. Read the rest of this entry »

British artist Nasser Azam had a unique desire: to create a piece of art in zero G (the feeling of weightlessness).

Not only did his plan become a reality, but it was a profitable one: On Friday, the painting sold for $332,500 at Phillips de Pury’s Contemporary Art Part II auction in New York.

To create his zero-gravity masterpiece, Azam and two other artists flew 23,000 feet into the air aboard an ILYUSHIN 76 MDK parabolic aircraft.

Nicknamed the “vomit comet” ride, the parabolic flight made everyone lose their breakfast, except for Azam.

The so-called “Life in Space” project required training at the Russian cosmonaut facility Star City. Read the rest of this entry »

A new watch made from moon dust and original fragments of Apollo 11, is set to cost an astronomical £300,000 when goes on sale next summer.

The exclusive Moon Dust DNA timepiece has been built by Swiss watchmakers to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1969 moon landings.

The steel casing has been made from tiny components of Apollo 11 – the first manned space mission to land on the moon. And the face has been coated in dust from rocks taken from the surface of the moon.Little indentations have also been made on the dial to mimic moon craters.

A limited number of 1,969 of the concept watches have been made to commemorate the year Neil Armstrong first stepped on to the moon. Read the rest of this entry »

Pop megastar Michael Jackson recorded a song written by a Bahraini prince planned as a charity single, a court ruling on a lawsuit between the two men heard on Monday.

The unusual musical collaboration emerged as Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, second son of the King of Bahrain, went to the High Court in London to sue cash-strapped Jackson for $US7 million ($10.9 million).

The two men had a “close personal relationship,” and even discussed the possibility of Jackson moving to Bahrain after his 2005 child sexual molestation trial, the sheikh’s lawyer, Bankim Thanki, said.

“Sheikh Abdulla began to support Mr Jackson financially after 2005 when it became clear that Mr Jackson was in very serious financial difficulties, much to Sheikh Abdulla’s surprise,” Thanki told the court. Read the rest of this entry »

A South Florida teen died of a lethal drug overdose in front of a live online webcam audience 12 hours after he started blogging about his plan to commit suicide, an investigator said Friday.

Abraham Biggs, 19, died Wednesday from a toxic combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, a drug used to treat insomnia and depression, said Wendy Crane, an investigator with the Broward County medical examiner’s office. At least one of the drugs was prescribed to him and it’s unclear how he got the others, Crane said.

Some of those watching encouraged Biggs, others tried to talk him out of it, and a few were debating whether the dose he took was lethal, Crane said. It’s unclear how many people were watching. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, it was revealed that two teams of scientists at the University of California were working on projects which had succeeded, to some extent, in bending light around objects in order to render them invisible.

The idea of being able to prowl around, unseen, concealed by some kind of magic garment was, understandably, more enticing than in-depth analyses of transformation optics.

But the work being done in California is the latest of a number of investigations into the manipulation of light, and specifically the ability to render objects invisible.

Two years ago, mathematicians in the UK, including John Pendry at Imperial College, in London, outlined the calculations required for an optical cloaking device; in April 2007 engineers at Purdue University, in the US, then followed these guidelines to come up with a theoretical arrangement of “nano-needles” that would be able to bend light around an object, in a similar way to water flowing around a stone. Read the rest of this entry »

The first ankle replacements of the 1970s were abandoned when they couldn’t withstand the pounding of daily life. A second generation in the ’90s lasted longer but never became really popular.

Now the nation is embarking on a new generation of artificial ankles designed to work more like the joint you’re born with, a move specialists hope finally will offer less pain and more function to thousands who hobble — although it’s too soon to be sure.

“These third-generation prostheses really mimic a natural ankle, which is really what makes them different,” says ankle specialist Dr. Steven L. Haddad of the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute and an orthopedic surgery professor at Northwestern University. Read the rest of this entry »

A young Nepali climber is seeking to popularize a toilet fashioned from a plastic bucket with a lid to promote eco-friendly climbing on Mount Everest.

Hundreds of climbers flock to the world’s tallest peak at 8,850 meters (29,035 feet) every year, with many simply squatting in the open or hunching behind rocks as the Everest base camp has no proper toilet facilities.

Dawa Steven Sherpa, who led an eco-Everest expedition in May to collect trash dumped by previous climbers, said his team used a plastic bucket as well as a gas-impervious bag designed to safely contain and neutralize human waste and keep in odor.

“It is portable and very secure,” Sherpa, 25. Read the rest of this entry »

A sealed space in Egypt’s Great Pyramid may help solve a centuries-old mystery: How did the ancient Egyptians move two million 2.5-ton blocks to build the ancient wonder?

The little-known cavity may support the theory that the 4,500-year-old monument to Pharaoh Khufu was constructed inside out, via a spiraling, inclined interior tunnel—an idea that contradicts the prevailing wisdom that the monuments were built using an external ramp.

The inside-out theory’s key proponent, French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin, says for centuries Egyptologists have ignored evidence staring them in the face.

New evidence uncovered about two-thirds of the way up the Great Pyramid supports the inside-out theory, said Houdin, the architect.

At about the 300-foot (90-meter) mark on the northeastern edge lies an open notch. Ducking inside the notch, Houdin entered a small L-shaped room. Read the rest of this entry »

Astronauts aboard the international space station and the newly arrived shuttle Endeavour planned Monday to start unpacking a new toilet and a contraption that purifies urine and sweat into drinkable water at the orbiting outpost.

The main business of the day is unloading a cargo container nicknamed “Leonardo” from space shuttle Endeavour’s belly and attaching it to the international space station. Inside the 21-foot-long container is almost 15,000 pounds of equipment that will allow the space station to expand from three to six crew members next year.

“Things are going exceedingly well,” said LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team. Read the rest of this entry »

GENEVA – Fixing the world’s largest atom smasher will cost at least $25 million Cdn and may take until early summer.

An electrical failure shut down the Large Hadron Collider on Sept. 19, nine days after the $12 billion machine started up with great fanfare.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research recently said Monday that the repairs would be completed by May or early June. Read the rest of this entry »

The top freestyle soccer players from 44 countries gather for a final training session on the roof of the 23-storey “Bacon” building in Sao Paulo November 16, 2008. The Red Bull Street Style one-on-one freestyle soccer world finals will take place from November 17 to November 18.

Unhappy people glue themselves to the television 30 percent more than happy people.

The finding, announced on Thursday, comes from a survey of nearly 30,000 American adults conducted between 1975 and 2006 as part of the General Social Survey.

While happy people reported watching an average of 19 hours of television per week, unhappy people reported 25 hours a week. The results held even after taking into account education, income, age and marital status.

In addition, happy individuals were more socially active, attended more religious services, voted more and read a newspaper more often than their less-chipper counterparts. Read the rest of this entry »

A 4th century AD joke book has been found in Greece. “Philogelos: The Laugh Addict” is a 1,600 year old work features 265 gags. Many of them have the same subject line that have raised laughs for centuries: suggestions on sex, dinwits, nagging wives and flatulence.

In many of the jokes, a slow-witted figure known as the “student dunce” is the butt of the jokes. In one, the student dunce goes to the city and a friend asks him to buy two 15-year-old slaves: No problem,’ responds the dunce. If I don’t find two 15-year-olds, I’ll get one 30-year-old.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Batman has battled quite a few foes over the years, including The Joker, The Riddler, Two Face and The Penguin.

But now, the Caped Crusader could have a new enemy, the city of Batman.

The mayor of the real city of Batman — an oil-producing city in southeast Turkey — is reportedly suing “Dark Knight” director Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros., seeking royalties from this summer’s box-office blockbuster, according to Variety.
In his lawsuit, Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, is accusing Nolan and the studio of using the city’s name without permission.

“There is only one Batman in the world,” Kalkan said. “The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”
Read the rest of this entry »

A British pilot, Jim O’Neill, went blind 40 minutes into a solo flight from Scotland to southeastern England last week. He was 5,000 feet in the air. The cause of his sudden blindness was a stroke, for which he felt no other effects except the loss of his sight.

Jim O’Neill thought he was dazzled by sunlight and made an emergency call for help, but later after not being able to regain his sight he realizxed something of a more serious nature was happening.

“It was terrifying,” O’Neill said. “Suddenly, I couldn’t see the dials in front of me.”

Royal Air Force Wing Commander Paul Gerrard located the plane and began flying close to the plane and gave directions to O’Neill. Read the rest of this entry »