Hard to Believe: Just Plain Weird

Researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute recently published findings of a cross-cultural study of people's spit. "(W)e can get more insights into human populations (from saliva) than we would get from just studying human DNA," the team's leader told Reuters in February. The study's main conclusion was that spit content does not vary much around the world, even given regional differences in diet.

Buddhist monks continue to add to their 20-structure compound near the Cambodian border using empty beer bottles, according to a February feature in London's Daily Telegraph. Their building program, begun in 1984, already uses 1.5 million bottles, mostly green Heinekens and brown, locally brewed Chang, both of which are praised for letting in light and permitting easy cleaning.

A 25-year-old man who was a passenger in a car driven by a drunk friend was killed in Houston in February when he was thrown from the car in a crash. That incident came seven months after the victim had, himself, been charged with DUI in a crash that killed two people.

A pedestrian bridge over Interstate 80 in Berkeley, Calif., opened late last year, decorated with $196,000 in public art by sculptor Scott Donahue. At each end of the bridge are 28-foot structures to honor the "history" and "daily life" of Berkeley, notably its tradition of citizen protests, but smaller sculpted medallions feature street scenes such as dogs romping playfully in city parks. However, as initially noted by a Fox News reporter in February, one of the medallions shows a dog defecating and another displays two dogs mating. Said a local art program official, "I think they're just, you know, natural science ... what dogs really do."

University of California researchers, on a Pentagon contract, announced in January success at rigging a live flower beetle with electrodes and a radio receiver to enable scientists to control the insect's flight remotely. Pulses sent to the bug's muscles or optic lobes can command it to take off, turn left or right, or hover, according to a report in MIT Technology Review, and the insect's "large" size (up to a whopping four inches in length) would enable it to also carry a camera, giving the beetle military uses such as surveillance or search and rescue. The researchers admired the native flight-control ability of the beetle so much that they abandoned developing robot beetles (which required trying to mimic nature).

University of California researchers, on a Pentagon contract, announced in January success at rigging a live flower beetle with electrodes and a radio receiver to enable scientists to control the insect's flight remotely. Pulses sent to the bug's muscles or optic lobes can command it to take off, turn left or right, or hover, according to a report in MIT Technology Review, and the insect's "large" size (up to a whopping four inches in length) would enable it to also carry a camera, giving the beetle military uses such as surveillance or search and rescue. The researchers admired the native flight-control ability of the beetle so much that they abandoned developing robot beetles (which required trying to mimic nature).

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