– From the “Let’s Hope It’s a Typo” Department: an Australian publisher is recalling and reprinting around 7,000 copies of The Pasta Bible… because one of the recipes calls for “salt and freshly ground black people”.
– Need gold? The Emirates Palace Hotel in the United Arab Emirates has installed a gold ATM machine. You simply insert some currency, and gold comes out. The machine uses a broadband connection to update gold prices every ten minutes, and has some incredible security measures, including anti-money laundering software. So the next time you’re in the Middle East and need gold at 4am, the hotel’s got you covered.
– A British woman is the first person to be diagnosed with phonagnosia – the inability to recognize voices. Unless the woman sees the face of the person speaking, she has no idea who it is. As a result, she avoids the telephone, as she can’t even recognize the voices of close family members without seeing their faces. Amusingly, there is one person she can recognize by voice alone: actor Sean Connery.
– George Washington is a deadbeat. It seems our first president borrowed two books from the New York Society Library – Law of Nations and Vol. 12 of Commons Debates – but never returned them by their November 2, 1789 due date. The president now owes over $300,000 in late fee dues to the library… although they’re not exactly expecting payment. They would, however, love to have the books back.
– Check out this nifty piece on spirolaterals at Futility Closet. Basically, if you gave two robots some pencils and the exact same set of instructions, one would draw a symbol of pure evil, while the other would draw the symbol of the people that evil persecuted, all based on differing angles. Chilling, but cool.
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