News

I know you're in there

"For anyone who's ever forgotten something or someone they wish they could remember, a bit of solace: Though the memory is hidden from your conscious mind, it might not be gone," Brandon Keim writes at Wired.com. "In a study of college students, brain imaging detected patterns of activation that corresponded to memories the students thought they'd lost. 'Even though your brain still holds this information, you might not always have access to it,' said neurobiologist Jeffrey Johnson of the University of California, Irvine. His remarks appeared in the study he co-authored, published [last] Wednesday in Neuron. ... 'It wasn't quite clear what happens to them,' said Johnson of lost details. 'But even when people claim that there are no details attached to their memories, we could still pick some of those details out.' "

Carrots work better

"Rewards go further than punishment in building human co-operation and benefiting the common good, according to research published [this month] in the journal Science by researchers at Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics," ScienceDaily reports. "While previous studies have focused almost exclusively on punishment for promoting public co-operation, here rewards are shown to be much more successful. ... [The research] was conducted using a computer-based public goods game, a classic experiment for measuring collective action in a laboratory setting. The study contradicts previous research, which has stated that peer punishment is the only effective mechanism for promoting public co-operation."

Weird bestsellers

The Weird Book Room is a hit with readers at the AbeBooks website (http://www.abebooks.com), with some titles quickly selling out, Alison Flood writes in The Guardian. For instance, it has sold out of A Handbook on Hanging, first published in 1928. Other notable titles:

The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories

How to Avoid Huge Ships

How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them

Do as I say, not as I do

"A labour organization's voice for a drug-free work force found himself behind bars [last] week, charged with cultivating a massive marijuana grow. Wendell Aaron Searls, 56, was accused ... of cultivating marijuana and possessing the drug with an intent to deliver, both felonies," The (Huntington, W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch reports. Police found the grow-op in his attic, which Huntington Police Sergeant Darrell Booth called a "marijuana factory," with more than 100 plants and tools to grow the crop indoors. Mr. Searls appears in TV commercials as a hard-hat-wearing worker for the Affiliated Construction Trades Foundation, saying, "Nobody wants to work next to anybody whose judgment is impaired by drugs or alcohol. We don't just talk a drug-free work force. We do something about it."

Harvest home

"It's harvest time again for the marijuana plant, and U.S. drug-eradication officers are busier than usual," Patrik Jonsson writes in The Christian Science Monitor. "An ever-tightening southern border, high unemployment and a steady, even growing, appetite for the illicit plant have all led to a surge in marijuana acreage in the country's chief pot-growing regions, law enforcement sources say. In the first eight months of the year, local, state and federal police chopped down eight million plants worth about $22-billion [U.S.] on the street - a 14-per-cent increase from last year. ... There has been no increase in overall enforcement efforts or funding."

Guess who's watching

"More than ever," The Economist reports, "companies want to know what their employees are up to. ... Even workers on the road are not safe from prying corporate eyes. Several startup companies, such as Purewire and Zscaler, have launched software to monitor employees outside the company network. Workers accessing the Internet from hotel rooms using a company laptop may be surprised to find their Web browsing is being monitored by the IT department back in the office. Their page requests flow through a Web-monitoring service, which can block or report access to certain sites."

Cat 1, owner 0

A man in Boynton Beach, Fla., was trying to teach his cat a lesson when he fired his gun, but it landed him in jail, Associated Press reports. Police said the 43-year-old man was upset that his cat used his bed instead of a litter box. So he allegedly took the cat to the garage and fired a handgun into a flotation device to "scare it." The cat was not injured, but the man was charged with shooting in an occupied dwelling and using a firearm while under the influence.

Thought du jour

"I must take issue with the term 'a mere child,' for it has been my invariable experience that the company of a mere child is infinitely preferable to that of a mere adult."

- Fran Lebowitz