Since we don’t always have the time to catch America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Teenage girls who watch a lot of TV shows with a high sexual content are twice as likely to become pregnant, according to a study.

Boys watching similar programmes, like Friends and Sex and the City, were also more likely to get a girl pregnant, the research in Pediatrics found.

Via BBC

“The English is clear enough to lorry drivers - but the Welsh reads ‘I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.’”

We’re guessing: this guy assumed the autoreply email he got was actually the translation he was asking for.

via BBC.

“Jack Daniel, founder of the Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning six years after receiving a toe injury when he kicked his safe in anger at being unable to remember its combination”.

Just one of the of the many random deaths that you will find listed here.

SEKIU, Wash. (AP) — A woman in Washington state says her cast-iron stove shot her in the leg. Cory Davis tells the Peninsula Daily News that she had just stoked the heating stove in her home Sunday when she heard a loud bang and was struck in her left calf.

She says she initially thought “that was one fast hot coal flying at me.”

In fact, she was hit by part of a 22-gauge shotgun shell that she had accidentally put into the stove with newspapers she used to light it. A box of shells had spilled nearby a few weeks before.

Davis says she removed the metal fragment herself Sunday and sought treatment for the shallow wound the next day.

VIA The AP

Upadate:

Early yesterday morning, a charter plane carrying Travis Barker (former drummer of Blink 182) and DJ AM skidded off the runway at a South Carolina airport and crashed, killing four of the six people on board. The deceased were identified as California residents Sarah Lemmon, 31, of Anaheim Hills; co-pilot James Bland, 52, of Carlsbad; Chris Baker, 29, of Studio City; and Charles Still, 25, of Los Angeles. Baker was an assistant and served as security for Travis Barker. Both Travis and Adam Goldstein (DJ AM) were treated for 2nd and 3rd degree burns. According to news reports, Travis was burned mostly below the waist, and Adam was burned on his hands and head. Thankfully, doctors expect the two to recover. Our thoughts go out to Travis and Adam, and to the families of the deceased. Read the full story here.

Pre-Y2K panic had its moments, but it never left us wondering, “How would it feel to be devoured by a black hole?” Here’s a snippet from an ABC News article published 2 years ago, before the Large Hadron Collider was a hot topic:

Although scientists haven’t directly observed a black hole (since a black hole swallows light), they have observed the effect of a black hole on surrounding material. Astronomers say the first sign of a black hole’s approach would be subtle changes in the night sky. The gravity from a black hole would distort Earth’s orbit and we’d begin to notice differences in the orbits of other planets and stars in the galaxy.

If a rogue black hole ever closed in on our solar system and crept up next to Earth, the resulting havoc would seem like the wildest science fiction. Either Earth would career out of its orbit, spinning out of the solar system, or in the opposite direction, toward the sun, and we’d suffer a deadly warming.

Enter the LHC (via BBC):

…There are a small but significant group of naysayers who worry that the LHC is not 100% safe. Opponents say it is possible the collider could produce micro black holes and dangerous “strangelets”, and that catastrophic effects from these cannot be ruled out.

Afraid? This blog post on backreaction.blogspot.com should calm you down:

In short: If tiny black holes were produced because large extra dimensions did exist in the necessary number with the necessary radius, and if they did not evaporate within 10^-26 seconds as expected (Hawking evaporation is considered a very robust prediction, so this scenario is not confirmed by well founded theories), most of them would have such a high velocity that they escaped the gravitational field of the Earth for good. Even if they travelled straight through the centre of the Earth, the few nucleons they can hit wouldn’t change their momentum in an appreciable way.

Phewf!

We’re glad that whichever presidential pairing wins this year, history will be made.  The McCain/Palin ticket just got hit with their first bag of lemons. Let’s see what they can squeeze this into.

Go Olympics 2008, WHOO-RAH!

A giant inflatable dog turd brought down a power line after being blown away from a Swiss museum.

Via BBC

This inflatable pile of shit was created by artist Paul McCarthy, friend of London fashion and art house Zoltar The Magnificent.

Stay tuned for Frank Chapter 34, when Zoltar takes the Book for a ride through London Town.