Spooky News Briefs

[Ben Lahnger]

NOT TO MENTION THEY'RE GOING BLIND

From the June 11 edition of www.thisistrue.com:

Keith Bakker, the director of the Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants clinic in Amsterdam, Holland, says he is expanding his practice to include a new addiction as difficult to break as drugs: video games. "We have kids who don't know how to communicate with people face-to-face because they've spent the last three years talking to somebody in Korea through a computer," Bakker said, adding he has seen signs of video game addiction in kids as young as 8. The in-house treatment, notes an Associated Press reporter, is "for people who can't leave their joysticks alone."

"...Oh, then it's really nothing new at all." - Randy Cassingham, THISISTRUE creator.

[Morrigan_Dubh]

Ah this is sensationalist Jack Thompsonite crap... Just another way to get money out of ignorant parents' pockets... >

[Geoluhread]

Pregnant for 60 years since 1948

STUNNED doctors discovered a woman complaining of stomach ache had been carrying her unborn child for 60 YEARS.

Huang Yijun, 92, of Huangjiaotan, southern China, was told by medics in 1948 that her child had died in the womb.

Doctors demanded £100 to remove it, so she walked away.

She said: "It was a huge sum at the time - more than the whole family earned in several years so I did nothing and ignored it."

But the secret emerged when Huang hurt her stomach and went to hospital for a scan.

Dr Liu Anbin at Qingshen hospital said: "I couldn't believe my eyes when I discovered she had a baby in her belly.

"I've been a doctor for more than 40 years and it's the first time I have seen something like this."

Now medics are carrying out further tests to see if Huang needs an operation to remove the baby.

Consultant Xu Xianming, director of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department at the hospital, said: "Normally a dead foetus would decay. It's very rare that Huang can be so healthy."

Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...cle2139390.ece

[SiouxsiePernova]

Japanese Man Marries Virtual Girlfriend

We may occasionally wish our spouses had an "off" switch but a Japanese man will have that luxury full-time after he married his virtual girlfriend in an official-looking ceremony over the weekend.

In a bizarre story reminiscent of the film Lars and the Real Girl, the man, known by his nickname SAL9000, fell in love with a fictional character from the Nintendo DS "love simulator" Love Plus.

Full story here:
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/g...1126-jt2j.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/25...wedding-a.html

[LakitaJackson]

This happened a while ago, but I did some searching and couldn't find anything here.



Siouxsie tells a bitch like it is!

[Raptor]

This is almost a month old now but the LHC successfully collided proton beams. It set the new world record at 1 point something TeV per beam and it's still got a fair way to go before it reaches the energies it was designed to get to. Now many researchers and doctorate students all over the world are working to understand the results from the LHC detectors so that everything is ready for the higher energy experiments.

Actually, I found a source:

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/Press.../PR20.09E.html

That's an article describing the LHC's achievements as of the end of 2009.