A Wall Street Journal columnist recently got his hand on a power meter and decided to write about his findings. The author concluded that gadgets are getting a bad rap, and are relatively insignificant power consumers in the grand scheme of things.

Bloomberg is reporting on a recent addition of speakers to public security cameras in Middlesbrough, England. From the article: “`People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,’ said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.”

A COMMON parasite can cause: “Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women. “On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls. “In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens”.

The city council recently went to the effort of widening the E5 Motorway near Merter (A suburb of Istanbul). They then realised that they had worsened the situation for pedestrians so they comendably decided to put in a footbridge. It turns out however that there wasn’t really anywhere to put the support for the footbridge so the engineer got a little creative: For those of you who haven’t been to Turkey, yes… the left lane IS the “fast” lane!

The following article from today’s Hürriyet newspaper had me in stitches. For those of you who can’t read Turkish the story goes: “A husband and wife with 11 kids are given a condom by a family planing doctor and told to use it in future. However, some time later they come back to the clinic and the woman is once again pregnant. When the husband is asked if he used a condom or not, he said he did. When questioned further he admitted that in fact the condom had been a little bit big for him so he had cut a little bit from the tip to make it fit properly….”