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ITwhirled
  Take a break from workday drudgery with ITwhirled. Each weekly installment covers the best in weird news, humor, gadgets, and all manner of offbeat items from the world of IT and beyond.


Bookmark and Share May 12-16, 2008

Your keyboard probably 'dirtier than a toilet'
A British consumer group turned its probing eye to the computer keyboards in its own offices and found filth a-plenty. Four out of 33 keyboards swabbed were deemed "health hazards," with several harboring bacteria that could cause food poisoning; one had five times more bacteria than the office toilet seat. The group was confident that its repulsive keyboards were no more disgusting than most. ...read more
NEWS
'Pixie dust' helps regrow severed digits
Doctors are touting a collagen-based protein that helps regrow human skin, despite cheerfully admitting that they don't really know how it works. There are so many ways this could go wrong. Enjoy your new tentacles, freaks!

Canadian utility pays customers to use electricity
Canadian electric markets are governed strictly by supply and demand, and that can produce some odd results -- like a brief period between 5 and 7 one Sunday morning, when industrial customers were paid more than $9 for each megawatt hour used. Utility managers say that the anomaly results when nuclear power plants can't crank down the juice fast enough to follow a drop in demand.


TOP 10
8 ways freelancers disrespect their own time
If you're a freelancer, you probably have a hard time drawing the line between work hours and your own free time. These tips will help you control -- and profit from -- the hours you put into your business. (Freelance Switch)

The 10 most important technologies you never think about
Take a peek inside the magician's hat at ten technologies that are keys to our digital age. Without realizing it, you've probably used at least one of them already today--if not all. But whether you're aware of them or not, without these technologies our world would be a very different place. (ITworld)

See more "tens"



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BAD IDEA
Japanese official demoted after racking up 780,000 hits on porn sites
An employee of the government of the Japanese city of Kinokawa brought his computer to IT with virus problems, prompting a review of his Web browsing history. Their discovery: he had over 780,000 visits to pornographic Websites over the previous nine months, an average, assuming a 40-hour work week, of about 550 an hour. He was demoted and his monthly pay cut by $190.


OUT OF IT
Violent video games OK for kids, say Harvard researchers
A 2-year study of 1200 children found that children who played violent video games were just relieving stress. Sure, 51% of boys and 40% of girls who played violent games for 15 or more hours per week were involved in fights in the past year, but researchers say that is probably due to pre-existing underlying psychological problems. The real concern (at least for boys), say the researchers, is "not playing video games at all, because it looks like for this generation, video games are a measure of social competence."

Denver man wants citywide plan for alien invasion
Jeff Peckman will be heading to a Denver city council meeting with an agenda: he wants a citywide commission to deal with the issues of alien life. With the Feds silent in the War on Space Monsters, will local governments be forced to take the lead?

Coders leave celebrity references throughout open source code
George Bush? Britney Spears? Donald Knuth? Satan? All of these names and more are lurking in the great mass of open source Java code out there, according to the code search company Krugle.

 
GEEK COMIC OF THE WEEK
Da Beaver: Environmental Hero!
He's a beaver! He's a superhero who protects the environment, which is harder than you might think! Especially when oil-smeared ducks are enthusiastic about their slick new look.

The Web Comic of the Week is brought to you by Josh Fruhlinger, aka the Comics Curmudgeon, who spends more time thinking about the comics than any normal adult should. Check out his comics blog at http://joshreads.com.



YOUR 2 CENTS

Do you keep your computer keyboard clean?

I have one of those airspray cans and use it often
I try to shake out the crusty stuff every once in a while
You could tell at a glance what my current favorite Doritos flavor is by the color of the keys
Clean? You know you can get a new one for $20, right?

view results
Answer another poll.

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