What started out as a joke has turned into an effective burglar deterrent for one Croatian bakery. The upscale bakery had been robbed almost every week until the owner put a life-sized photo of Chuck Norris in the window with a sign saying, "This shop is under the protection of Chuck Norris." The bakery has now been crime free for over a month. Sales assistant Mirna Kovac said, "To be honest we just started it as a joke but it really has worked. Thieves haven't been anywhere near us for ages. People seem to respect him. We have had a few customers come in and ask us whether they can get Chuck's autograph. They really believe he is sitting in our storeroom out the back ready to pounce on any burglars." Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Somalia's al Qaeda-backed Al-Shabaab wing is getting creative with its recruitment marketing. They have made a well produced eighteen-minute video complete with a hip-hop jihad feel. A voice raps, "Mortar by mortar, shell by shell, only going to stop when I send them to hell," during part of the recruitment tape. Intelligence experts say the video was recently made and comes on the heels of an audio message in March purportedly from Osama bin Laden. Industry insiders are intrigued by the tape, but point out that it fails to include any special appearances by other fledgling groups, which is a necessity in today's terrorist hip-hop market.

"...and now the studio has turned it into something people will actually like."

Dodging arrows teaches good foot work.

Kelson writes "Google's Mountain View headquarters has fields that need to be kept clear of fire hazards. This year instead of mowing them, they took a low-carbon approach: they hired a herd of goats to eat the grass for a week. 'It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers,' wrote Dan Hoffman."

An anonymous reader writes "A design student made a battered old Skoda 'disappear' by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park. Sara Watson, who is studying drawing at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan), took three weeks to transform the car's appearance.She created the illusion in the car park outside her studio at Uclan's Hanover Building in Preston. The car is now being used for advertising by the local recycling firm that donated the vehicle."

Marxist writes "The government of Mexico advises people to avoid shaking hands or kissing as a greeting, so what could the people do instead when meeting a friend? As social distancing becomes the norm due to swine flu, CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, advocates the el-bump, or bumping your elbows, as an alternative greeting that serves people's social needs while keeping them safer from swine flu compared to shaking hands. Probably we can expect more etiquette innovations as the swine flu virus spreads arround."

If you thought pulling a sword out of stone was hard, you should try to evict a druid. Mr. "King Arthur Pendragon" — formerly known as John Rothwell — has been camped out at the edge of Stonehenge since June 2008. Last week local official were granted an eviction notice for Mr. Pendragon. He had until 4pm on Sunday to leave, but failed to do so saying that he is fighting for the protected world heritage to be open to all, currently visitors are restricted to a visitor center and confined to marked-out trails. "We have opened a bottle of mead and we are drinking to Stonehenge. I have done a short ritual and spell of protection, calling on the kings of old. I am still here so I am in breach of the order as they see it but I have as much right as anyone else to be here," he said.

Chinese officials have figured out a way to fight the bad economy and keep the people in flavor country all at once; make them smoke. The Gong'an county government has ordered its staff to smoke 230,000 packs of locally made cigarettes annually or risk being fined. "The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax," said Chen Nianzu, a member of the Gong'an cigarette market supervision team.

The squirrels have already taken the motherboard for the winter.

For $25, anyone over the age of 18 can race a police officer at the monthly "Beat the Heat" night in Miami, Florida. The races are held at County Line Drag Way and are designed to redirect people from racing on the streets to the dragstrip. "You could bring your mother's minivan. You can bring a pure racing car. It doesn't matter," said Officer Jose Ayala with the Medley Police Department.

The first one was ok, but I think he hit his stride the second time around.

angry tapir writes "The CEO of a Seattle-area consulting company has been sentenced to three months of home confinement for destroying a client's Web site following a contract dispute. Minecode CEO Pradyumna Samal will also serve 288 hours of community service and three years of probation."

rodrigoandrade writes "The robo-assault reportedly took place in 2007, when a man attempted to repair a defective machine used to lift rocks without properly checking the power supply beforehand. And unfortunately, the human head isn't all that different than a big juicy rock to such a robot."

You might as well ask him to stop breathing, or to take off that old hat.

juuri sends in an NPR article about the consensus created among scientists that some birds actually dance to music. "The results of this study are reported in the journal Current Biology, along with another scientific paper inspired by YouTube videos of dancing animals. Adena Schachner is a graduate student in the psychology department of Harvard University. She says she was familiar with the idea that some people had made videos of birds supposedly dancing. ... She and her colleagues eventually analyzed more than 5,000 videos. 'Imagine watching YouTube eight hours a day for a month,' she says. 'That's pretty much what we did. It was amusing for perhaps the first couple of hours.'" juuri adds, "While this makes them somewhat unique in the animal world, as only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs, what struck me more was that this was the first time YouTube had helped forge a new scientific understanding. Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?"

Ryan writes "Unmanned, drug-sniffing drones have been introduced in the Netherlands. They fly over houses (video), sniff for weed, and scan for grow lights. Police say they are not breaking the law because the samples can be taken without entering the building."

An anonymous reader writes "A group at Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a fun little open source program to emulate the CRT effects to make old Atari games look like they originally did when played on modern LCD's and digital displays. Things like color bleed, ghosting, noise, etc. are reproduced to give a more realistic appearance."

FEMA has decided to pull a children's coloring book entitled, "A Scary Thing Happened" from their website. The coloring book contained three images of the twin towers on fire for children to color. Rose Olmsted, the coordinator behind the book said, "I stand firm that it was a very well thought-out and useful resource for kids, but it's obviously being misinterpreted by a lot of people." Since people are so upset about the coloring book, I can only assume FEMA's plan for a human remains concentration game will be put on hold.

Two-year-old Elise Tan-Roberts has become the youngest member of Mensa. With an estimated IQ of 156, Elise is in the top 0.2 per cent of children her age. At 5 months she could talk, she could recognize her written name before she was 1 and she will be ruling the world at 11. Her father says, "Our main aim is to make sure she keeps learning at an advanced pace. We don't want to make her have to dumb down and stop learning just to fit in. But she's still my baby. I just want her to be happy and enjoy herself."