Big National News!
Yes, bigger than when catcher Paul Lo Duca of the MLB National League's New York Mets tagged out two L.A. Dodgers players back-to-back at the plate on the same play on Wednesday's Game 1 of this NL series.

This year's Nobel announcements began Monday, with the Nobel Prize in medicine going to Americans Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for discovering a powerful way to turn off the effect of specific genes, opening a potential new avenue for fighting diseases as diverse as cancer and AIDS. Their work dealt with how messenger RNA can be prevented from delivering its message to the protein-making machinery.

The next day, Americans John C. Mather and George F. Smoot won the physics prize for work that helped cement the big-bang theory of how the universe was and deepen understanding of the origin of galaxies and stars created (Apparently "42" didn't cut it.).

Then Roger Kornberg — son of 1959 Nobel Prize winner Arthur Kornberg — won the chemistry prize for his work that produced a detailed picture of what scientists call transcription in eukaryotes, the group of organisms that includes humans and other mammals, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its citation. The Kornbergs are the sixth father and son to both win Nobel Prizes.

So far this year, a total of five Americans won Nobels in medicine, physics and chemistry, the first all-American club of science laureates since 1983. Yup, Yanks swept the science Nobels…but the Mets still beat the Dodgers (last night, too).

Sad News
An 18-year-old engineering prodigy was killed last Saturday when he lost control of his motorcycle and crashed into a guardrail and a pole.

Derek Jacobs, who gained national attention in 2002 when he and his family received identification chip implants on live television, was set to receive his engineering degree this year after only two years at Florida International University. According to his mother, he wanted to be a neurosurgeon.

At age 12, Jacobs became certified by Microsoft as a systems engineer and was qualified to run corporate computer networks. Two years later, he and his family had identity chips implanted on live television.

Jacobs had pushed his parents to look into the chips as a way to help store medical information for his father, who suffered a host of health problems, including cancer.

BlackBerrys, CrackBerrys and Lawsuits
Yes, yes, we've all seen those twitchy workaholics checking their business e-mail on their BlackBerrys or other PDAs...in the movie theater or restaurant, on a Saturday, in the evening, while on vacation. Yes, we've all heard the "witty" play-on-words calling BlackBerrys "CrackBerrys." (And yes, it was kinda funny a few years ago.)

But now British employers are being warned they could face multimillion-pound legal actions from "BlackBerry-addicted staff" on a similar scale as class lawsuits taken against tobacco companies, reports The Independent.

Research by the University of Northampton has revealed that one-third of BlackBerry users showed signs of addictive behavior similar to an alcoholic being unable to pass a pub without a drink.

'Mankind's Greatest Inventions'
...in alphabetical order…

A - Atom bomb
B - Beer
C - Cigarettes, Chemotherapy (tie)
D - Dangling chads
E - Electricity
F - Fake vomit
G - Gas (natural, and other)
H - Hypertension, High cholesterol (tie)
I - Internet (The)
J - Jihads, Jellybeans (tie)
K - Ketchup (or catsup?)
L - Lacy lingere
M - Metamucil
N - NASA
O - Oxycontin
P - Pizza, Phen-Phen (tie)
Q - Quizno's subs
R - Rap music, Radioactive waste (tie)
S - Smog (both indoor and outdoor)
T - Toilet paper, Tampons, Telemarketing (3-way tie)
U - Underwear (all varieties and textures)
V - Viagra
W - Wine (cheap)
X - X-box
Y - Yahoo message boards
Z - Zamboni

(via Smooth Operator (satire))

Here's a photo of a four-legged chicken.

And another…

A farm owner recently discovered Henrietta among the 1,800 chickens for whom he cares. Henrietta has two normal front legs and two more feet behind those. They're of a similar size but don't function. She drags the extra legs behind her.

Jet Engine-Powered Personal Electronics
Alan Epstein, a professor in the aeronautics and astronautics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), wants to put a jet engine inside a laptop.

"I'd been thinking about how to build small jet engines, and it was the realization that there's a threshold, that if you could make them really small, then the price can come way down," Epstein told The Toronto Star.

How small? Well, thanks to silicon chips, the burgeoning field of MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and about $30 million in funding from the U.S. military, that would be about the size of a quarter. And in just a few years, according to the aeronautics and astronautics professor, this miniature turbine could be powering all types of electronic devices.

Reports the Canadian paper:

Imagine a sandwich of six silicon wafers bonded together and you've got the idea. Each wafer is etched, so when they're put together, the resulting spaces between them can perform all of the necessary functions. The resulting gas turbine engine would produce enough power to run your laptop, and for much longer than batteries can. Just how long depends on the size of the fuel tank.

Buy a Car, Fake a Shred
Some people sing while driving, others shred…

Volkswagen and guitar company First Act have teamed up to provide drivers with a guitar that plays through their cars' speakers. Drivers buying a new VW between October 3 and December 31 will get an added bonus with their purchase: an electric guitar that plays seamlessly through the car's audio system, care of First Act, the up-and-coming guitar maker that has provided axes to Aerosmith, Franz Ferdinand, Maroon 5 and other overrated bands.

According to the automaker, consumers buying or leasing a VW model from the 2007 line will receive a First Act GarageMaster guitar customized with the VW logo and the Vehicle Identification Number of the owner's Volkswagen. The guitar will also come with custom colored pick guards complementing the exterior of the car.

We still prefer the Peter Stormare TV ads over this "creative partnership." Jaaa...

Will You Have Lemon, Strawberry or…Freshly Fallen Snow?
A new dessert sold from a roadside stand in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district is drawing crowds with its unique taste — exactly like that of freshly fallen snow.

According to Wired, the appeal is in what food experts call the mouth-feel. "This dessert, called xue-hua-bin ('snowflake ice'), replicates it perfectly: the dry, powdery, airy crystals that crunch lightly in your mouth before quickly melting."

The unique dessert had its origins in Taiwan's nighttime street fairs, but is slowly making its way around the world. The Akihabara shop, called Snowflake Village, is the only place to get it in eastern Japan.

PSA: Beware the Tiny Six-Shooter
Police and other law enforcement agencies have been told to be on the lookout for a tiny gun that looks like a keychain trinket and easily could be smuggled onto a plane. The NYPD issued a memo at the end of September about the factory-produced gun — a 2½-inch-long replica of the Colt Python that, police sources note, can be tossed, along with keys and cell phone, for instance, into a plastic basket before passing through an airport metal detector, reports New York's Newsday.

The six-shot revolver is manufactured by SwissMiniGun, a Switzerland company that bills the tiny gun as the smallest revolver and ammunition in the world, complete with 2.34mm bullets.

Such a gun would be illegal in this country because its barrel is less than 3 inches long, said Joe Green, spokesman for the New York office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

We're guessing this thing is only any real danger to the eyes or ears, maybe a tooth. Well, to the temple, too, but is it even possible to kill with this? Or even to break flesh?

And finally...

...Because It's Been So Long Since We Provided Any Good Toilet Humor…
In June, when Cook County, Ill., elections supervisor David Orr questioned the ethics of the family of Cook County Board President John Stroger — whose illness forced him to resign but not until the family delayed long enough to discourage potential successors, so that Stroger's son would have a better chance of winning the vacated post — a Stroger ally called Orr a "little poop butt."

::sigh::

Politics.

(via Government PROcurement)

Silly Putty Physics Experiment
Ever wonder what would happen if you dropped 50 lbs. of Silly Putty from the 7th floor of an office building? Yeah, us either. But Sunbelt Scientists did, and they took on the challenge...

Cheers.