For Americans, a little after half past noon on July the 8th the date and time will be 12:34:56 7/8/9.

Most of us will have to wait until August 7, though.

Actually, this happens every thousand years. Last time the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed, the time before they nailed some guy to a cross, and the time before that there was some minor flooding.

No big deal, just watch out for locusts…

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Nepal’s anti-corruption authority has come up with a novel solution to rampant bribe-taking at the country’s only international airport — the pocketless trouser.

The authority said it was issuing the new, bribe-proof garment to all airport officials after uncovering widespread corruption at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport.

“We sent a team to observe the growing complaints about the behaviour of airport authorities and workers towards travellers and we discovered that the reports were true,” said Ishwori Prasad Paudyal, spokesman for the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA).

“So we decided that airport officials should be given trousers with no pockets. We have directed the ministry of civil aviation to implement our order as soon as possible,” he told AFP.

“We believe this will help curb the irregularities.”

They’ll also need to make sure they don’t hire any ex-strippers – who may have workaround for this problem…

“It is astonishing that there should still be found today people who do not believe that there are witches.”

— Henry Bouget, 1602

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A religious broadcaster is building a $4 million home in a gated, lakefront community in western South Carolina at the same time that the ministry has cut jobs and reset thermostats to save money in its new headquarters.

Demonstrating that great American Feeling: “fuck you, I’ve got mine!”

Cerullo has said 80 cents of each donated dollar is spent to spread the Gospel.

He spread one in his bedroom, he spread one in his kitchen, etc…

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This is video of a billboard in New Zealand that bleeds when it rains. It’s pretty terrifying, but according to the ad agency, there hasn’t been a fatality since.

Just wait until the tampon manufacturers hear of this…

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Evidently, houseflies, being highly edible and defenseless, are nervous types, and don’t like to sit still when they see something moving nearby, because it could be a predator. The water bag acts a bit like a lens—try it some time—in which the movements of people in the area are reflected. Even if the fly is too far from the action to see it directly, it can see a shifting of light and dark in the water bag, which it interprets as nearby movement, and it will fly away from the bag.

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The nation’s largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.

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The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million.

And if you think they’re doing that to give you the best possible health care, I’ve got a bridge for sale that I’d like to tell you about.

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“You’d have to make an air buoyancy correction that would amount to almost a tenth of a gram,” he explains. “That is huge.”

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It’s the Arizona electorate’s moment of shame. The earth has been here for 6000 years and we haven’t destroyed it yet, so we don’t need no stinkin’ laws to protect the environment!

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Then the company’s CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn’t need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

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Here’s how it works: Cherry – which is essentially an MVNO – pre-installs software (so yes, in the demo there was actually an application running in the background) on smartphones which it will sell as a packaged product, starting with a Symbian version for Nokia E-Series phones and expanding to other platforms later. Once activated, Cherry lets you call your contacts either over Wi-Fi or the GSM network when you insert a SIM card. Take out the card, and you can only call over a wireless Internet connection.

The funky part? Cherry automatically switches you from one to the other. This process, called a handover, can seriously cut into your current calling and roaming costs when you’re a frequent traveler or on the road often, and it doesn’t even require you to change numbers. You could easily dial your office number from your home over Wi-Fi, leave the house and have the software automatically have Cherry switch you over to a carrier’s cellular network once you’re out of range. There’s no interruption of service during the handover, which means you won’t even notice – until you receive your bill, since it’s obviously cheaper to call over Wi-Fi than the GSM network. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this automatic handover is a quite unique value proposition.