Link Collection

Schools to teach how to become a cybercriminal or how to defend against attacks have become a big business in China--the "hacker schools" generated $34.8 million last year. Some hacker schools only teach how to hack into unprotected computers and steal personal information to profit by selling users' information...not exactly the type of school I'd like to see expand!
http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/china-hacker-schools-become-big-business-006017


The pneumonic plague in china that has killed 3 people and quarantined a town of 10,000 (1,400 square miles are quarantined) is said to originated from a dog:
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/447183/1/.html


The military has hesitate to deploy its pain ray, but someone in the commercial sector bought the microwave weapon from Raytheon:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/pain-ray-first-commercial-sale-looms/


Japanese scientists have found a way to get new teeth to grow in mice, and they are looking to get humans to grow new teeth. The patient's own stem cells will be used to grow their teeth, and the teeth apparently function just like regular teeth:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/803/4


The British Government's guidelines for Twitter messages (limited to 140 characters or less) is 20 pages long! You need 20 pages to explain the rules for a 140-character message?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5guE0dFPcF_O7DdgfEfPyARUTeHHQD99ND36G0


No wonder we have a weight problem in America--each year the average American eats 16 pounds eats 16 pounds of french fries, 23 pounds of pizza and 26 pounds of candy. Americans eat about 20 billion hot dogs each year, 150 million of those hot dogs on the 4th of July:
http://blog.ltc.arizona.edu/arizona4h/2009/06/weight-of-the-nation.html


Dubai company is the first to make chocolate with camels' milk and they plan to expand around the world. Camel milk has 5x more vitamin C than cow milk, with less fat, less lactose and more insulin, so diabetics and the lactose intolerant might be a good target market for camel milk chocolate:
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE56K4YZ20090721


Farmers in an eastern Indian state have asked their unmarried daughters to plow the fields in the nude to try to embarrass the weather gods to make it rain:
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE56M3G020090723?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews


Despite how he says that he reads "fake news", Jon Stewart was the most trusted newscaster in American in this poll:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/columnists/chi-talk-john-stewart-trustedjul24,0,6512647.column


Rumor is that John Travolta is threatening to leave the Church of Scientology over grief over his son's death, but that he's being threatened by Scientology leaders if he leaves them:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1202077/Is-John-Travolta-cracking-Its-just-grief--guilt--dead-son-tearing-actors-apart.html