• There are bad band names, and then there are really bad band names...The Onion's A/V Club compiles the scatological, the sacrilegious, and the just plain stupid. Oh, yes, they are bad; but don't take my word for it. [Actual band name examples: "Guns N' Rosa Parks," "U.S. Pipe & The Balls Johnson Dance Machine," and "The Poontang Wranglers."]
• Paranoids take heed - your money may be spying on you:

  [Washington (AP)] In a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside. The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.
  
  Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins. The U.S. report doesn't suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn't describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.
  ...
  The government's 29-page report was filled with other espionage warnings. It described unrelated hacker attacks, eavesdropping with miniature pen recorders and the case of a female foreign spy who seduced her American boyfriend to steal his computer passwords. [read full article]

  Seduction to obtain computer passwords? I can picture it now - someone blurting out "25stuDMuffN!" in the heat of passion: "Was that with two "f"s or one, dear?"
• Liquids that become more viscous when placed under pressure? Objects than become thicker, not thinner, when stretched? These are just some examples of Strange Substances that don't quite obey the laws of physics as we generally know them, and New Scientist has the scoop - including mindboggling action videos of ferrofluids, dilatants and auxetic substances.

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