Technology Slice Blog

New Jersey Cook Jailed Putting Hair in Police Foods - A former cook at a New Jersey restaurant is getting 15 days in jail for adding an unwelcome ingredient to a policeman's bagel sandwich after the officer had booked him for a traffic offence. Ryan Burke, 27, admitted putting his own body hair in the sandwich and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and retaliation for a past official action. He was also ordered to serve two years of probation. New Jersey Cook Jailed Putting Hair in Police Foods

More Americans Upbeat About Economy 2011 - The downbeat sentiment underscores the challenges ahead for the increasingly shaky recovery and for retailers, which are grappling with a weak start to back-to-school shopping. Worries are even growing about the critical holiday shopping season. The Conference Board, a private research group, said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index rose to 53.5 from a revised 51.0 in July. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected 50.5. The increase comes after two straight months of declines. "The consumer is still struggling, and the prospects look like more of the same," said Ken Perkins, president of research firm RetailMetrics. More Americans Upbeat About Economy 2011

Boy George Returns Cyprus Church Icon - Cyprus' Orthodox Christian Church on Thursday thanked former Culture Club singer Boy George for returning an icon of Christ that it says was stolen from a church in the breakaway north of the divided island. Boy George agreed to return the 18th century icon he bought from a London art dealer in 1985 after being presented with proof of its true origin, the church said in a statement posted on its Web site. "Before this, I had no idea who Boy George was," Brussels-based Bishop Porfyrios who led efforts for the icon's recovery told The Associated Press. "He was positive about returning the icon." Boy George Returns Cyprus Church Icon The church said it was alerted about the icon's whereabouts by an informer who saw the singer with it on a Dutch TV show last November. Boy George, who said he was unaware of the icon's history when he bought it, personally handed the icon over to Bishop Porfyrios in London...

Kim Richards Checked into Rehab - Kim Richards is an alcoholic? Who knew!? The 46-year-old reality star of "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" was checked into rehab by her family at the end of the show's shocking season finale on Thursday night. The painful decision was made after Kim and her sister, Kyle, got into a booze-fueled war of words at fellow castmate Taylor Armstrong's birthday party. The shouting match initially started between Taylor and a clearly-drunk Kim over a previous fight the women had during a trip to New York. The women eventually retreat back to their limo, where Kim calls Kyle a "f--king phony" while Kyle accuses Kim of being "delusional" and "demented." Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2011/01/21/2011-01-21_kim_richards_checked_into_rehab_after_shocking_real_housewives_of_beverly_hills_.html#ixzz1BhCP22QI Kim Richards Checked into Rehab

Roger Ebert Facial Prosthesis - Legendary film critic Roger Ebert is ready to unveil his new face. Ebert will show off his prosthesis during a show on PBS this weekend. The 68-year-old lost a large part of his jaw to thyroid cancer. Since then he has been unable to eat or speak conventionally. While talking about his new silicone facial prosthesis on his blog, Ebert says his doctors did a quote 'wonderful job'. It took two years to make. According to "Entertainment Tonight," the Chicago Sun-Times critic will appear in segments in his new show "Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies' on P-B-S. Roger Ebert Facial Prosthesis

Cameron Diaz A-Rod Dine with Bill Clinton - Former President Bill Clinton is really making the rounds during his short trip to Miami, dining with A-Rod and Cameron Diaz and partying with Chad Ochocinco Thursday night. Clinton sipped on some red wine with Rodriguez and Diaz at Prime 112 with other guests including his ever-present Secret Service detail, according to the New York Post. The former Commander in Chief wasn't done after dinner, popping in unexpectedly at Ochocinco's birthday bash. "Does it mean I'm finally famous when Bill Clinton comes to my birthday party?" Ochocinco asked on Twitter Friday, still puzzled later as to how Bubba knew about the party. "Last night was awesome but who was responsible for Bill Clinton coming to two step with me? Secret service ain't had no damn rhythm." Hopefully Clinton didn't do too much partying; he's scheduled to meet with students and staff at Edison Middle School Friday afternoon to talk...

Mom Challenges Family to Unplug - Susan Maushart lived out every parent's fantasy: She unplugged her teenagers. For six months, she took away the Internet, TV, iPods, cell phones and video games. The eerie glow of screens stopped lighting up the family room. Electronic devices no longer chirped through the night like "evil crickets." And she stopped carrying her iPhone into the bathroom. The result of what she grandly calls "The Experiment" was more OMG than LOL — and nothing less than an immersion in RL (real life). Mom Challenges Family to Unplug As Maushart explains in a book released in the U.S. this week called "The Winter of Our Disconnect" (Penguin, $16.95), she and her kids rediscovered small pleasures — like board games, books, lazy Sundays, old photos, family meals and listening to music together instead of everyone plugging into their own iPods. Her son Bill, a videogame and TV addict, filled his newfound spare time playing saxoph...

Boy Sells Toys to Raise $2.85 for Giffords - A nine-year-old boy was so shocked by the Tucson shootings that he sold off some of his toys at school to raise $2.85 for injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Isaac Saldana put the money in an envelope with a ‘get well soon’ card and posted it to the recovering politician. His mother, Aracely Saldana, had no idea that her son had done it until his teachers said he had been selling his possessions. The boy, who lives in Tucson, Arizona, where six people were killed in the shootings, sold the toys along with a bracelet his father had given him when he was deployed with the U.S. marines. Nine-year-old Isaac told the Huffingdon Post: ‘Me and my brother were about to go walk the dog when we saw them saying on TV that a little girl and Gabrielle Giffords got shot. ‘I just thought, whoa! I didn't know that people carry around guns here in Tucson. It scared me a little. Boy Sells Toys to Raise $2.85 for Giffords

Apple Poor Environmental Work Safety - A coalition of Chinese green groups accused Apple for negligible corporate oversight of its suppliers causing over pollution and work safety issues that affect dozens of its factory workers in China. Releasing its report, Chinese Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) accused Apple of serious malpractices in its supply chain. Apple was placed last in the list of 29 multinational technology companies based on their responsiveness and transparency to health and environmental concerns in China. The Beijing-based nonprofit group released a 26-page report called "The Other Side of Apple" which shows HP, BT, Alcatel-Lucent, Vodafone, Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp and Hitachi as highly ranked ones. Although many other technology companies such as Sony, LG, Nokia, SingTel, and Ericsson were accused of not taking enough steps to correct the problems, none was criticized as badly as Apple. Apple Poor Environmental Work Safety

New Giant Species of Crayfish - A new species of giant crayfish literally crawled out from under a rock in Tennessee, proving that large new species of animals can be found in highly populated and well-explored places, researchers said on Wednesday. The new crayfish should not have been easily overlooked, as it is huge -- twice the size of other species, the team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Eastern Kentucky University said. But the crustacean is also quite rare, they report in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. "This isn't a crayfish that someone would have picked up and just said, 'Oh, it's another crayfish,' and put it back," said University of Illinois aquatic biologist Chris Taylor, one of the researchers. "You would have recognized it as something really, really different and you would have saved it," Taylor added in a statement. Taylor and Guenter Schuster of Eastern Kentucky University...

Unlikely Celebrity Friendships - There are celebrities that look like natural friends, meaning they have similar tastes/interests. Then there are those that make very unlikely friendships. Here a a few you may be surprised at. David Beckham and Snoop Dogg Will Smith and Tom Cruise Jon Bon Jovi & Bill Belichick Unlikely Celebrity Friendships

Student Wears Jeans Without Washing - Canadian college student Josh Le has redefined distressed denim by turning his own pair of jeans into a science experiment, wearing them for 15 months without washing them. "You break it in and it becomes a second skin," Le said. "There's no other pair like it in the world. You wear it like a canvas and paint it with your life." As Le headed back for his second year of study at the University of Alberta in September 2009, he bought a new pair of jeans for the new school year. Le paid $165 for a pair of Nudie Jeans. He chose a completely untreated pair of denim called raw denim. Le certainly got his money worth. He wore the jeans 330 times without washing them between September of 2009 and December of 2010, he said. Student Wears Jeans Without Washing

Patricia Krenwinkel Denied Parole - Parole board officials turned aside Patricia Krenwinkel's claims of being a changed woman and ordered the Charles Manson follower to remain in prison, saying the deaths of seven people in the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders still "remain relevant." The two member panel said Thursday that the viciousness and notoriety of her crimes outweighs her efforts at rehabilitation behind bars. "This is a crime children grow up hearing about," said parole commissioner Susan Melanson. She said they had received 80 letters from around the world advocating Krenwinkel's continued incarceration. "These crimes remain relevant." Melanson and deputy parole commissioner Steven Hernandez not only refused Krenwinkel's parole bid but made her ineligible for reconsideration for another seven years., the longest denial handed down so far to any Manson family convict. Her four decades behind bars has made her the longest incarcerated...

Sasha Obama Practices Chinese with Hu - President Barack Obama's nine-year-old daughter, Sasha, wanted to test her developing Chinese skills this week while Hu Jintao was in town. Just whom did she want to practice them with? The Chinese president himself, according to a White House official who recounted the story on Thursday after a formal state dinner the previous night. "The president pointed out last night at the state dinner that his daughter, Sasha, is a very young girl but her class is studying Chinese," Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser, told a video conference with Chinese bloggers. "She's under 10 years old and they're studying Chinese, and she wanted to have the chance to practice her Chinese with President Hu." Sasha Obama Practices Chinese with Hu