EZ-Cheez: Schol"o"rships?

The title of this article is so ironic that I had to point it out. Of all the topics to misspell, they had to choose this one... No doubt it inspires confidence in all the students who see their names in the paper.

Lemonade Stand Up for Yourself

Mim Murray, 10, and Marisa Miller-Stockie, 12, of St. Louis, had their lemonade stand shut down by a Health Department inspector after a neighbor complained that they were on her property. However, they didn't give up and the very next day the mayor and the city's health commissioner reopened their stand.

Besides earning $112 Wednesday, the girls said they have learned something from their lemonade experience: "You don't have to sit there and take it," Mim said.

Marisa added, "We learned to stand up for ourselves."

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Designer Cheese: Photo Stamps

Now you can design your own stamps thanks to this new offer from Stamps.com.

To place orders for customized postage stamps, customers can log on to the company's site, upload a photograph or image, select border colors and choose a value for the postage. Customers can buy a PhotoStamp with a value of 23 cents to $3.85, the online postage service provider said. The customized stamps, in sheets of 20, will be delivered via U.S. mail in a few business days.

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Jogging for Peace

Suresh Joachim set a world record for the "greatest distance covered on a treadmill in one week," which is neat, I guess. However, he stated his purpose was to "inspire world peace." Right, there is no better way to promote world peace than jogging on a treadmill...

Lottery Becomes a Sure Thing

We should all have friends like this guy.

Sound Waves Keep Cheese Cold

Well, not just cheese, of course. This thermoacoustic chiller created by the Penn State Applied Research Lab uses sound to cause helium to compress and expand. The cooling that results can be used to replace less environmentally-friendly refrigerators.

Worse Than Moldy Cheese

This sounds like a good idea, but I wouldn't want to be the guy spraying the chemical.

Skunk Shot, made in New Zealand, contains synthetic skunk oil in a gel-like substance and was originally intended as a cat and dog repellent.

It's a stinking solution for a disturbing problem in some neighborhoods. Vagrants' use of the buildings has taken a nose dive, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said.

"In the 11 places we've used it, it has been very successful," said Lott.

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Blame it on the Squirrels

At Riverside Golf Course in Edmonton, Alberta, golfers are increasingly seeing squirrels "sprint from the bush, scoop golf balls from the green, and run off with them." A convenient excuse for playing poorly, perhaps?

The Smelly Power of Vinegar

Who knew regular household vinegar can kill poison ivy?  Vinegar is also useful in neutralizing the odors in wood.  Here are some more ideas to help you get rid of your vinegar.

Good News for Idaho...

EMTs with the Clinton City Fire Department in Utah are using a new FDA approved powder made from potatoes that "instantly stops traumatic bleeding at the site of wounds." The potato powder can't react adversely with the body and "works as a sponge, removing the water properties of the blood, allowing the blood to become concentrated with the important ingredients that actually help blood to clot."

Clean Cheese: Bacteria-Killing Countertops

New countertops are being developed by researchers at Penn State University and PPG Industries that combine titanium dioxide with ultraviolet light to "rip apart the chemical bonds of bacteria." The substance "destroys any organic molecules it touches, including dirt." Here's a little known fact, humans are made of organic molecules. I'm assuming this is safe and won't "destroy" the organic molecules in, say, my fingers, if I touch the countertop.

Counters would be coated with a thin layer — about 80,000 times thinner than a human hair — of the new chemical compounds. When hit by ultraviolet rays from lights, the coating would produce electrically charged particles that rip apart the chemical bonds of bacteria. The slightly charged coating would also be chemically slippery, preventing bacteria from sticking to the surface.

U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Pa., is working to secure a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help PPG and Penn State accelerate the development of this technology and bring it to market as quickly as possible.

"It's something that is so new and so cutting edge that it deems us looking at it, especially in light of the recent" food outbreaks in western Pennsylvania," Hart said.

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When a House Just Won't Do...

Not satisfied with your tiny 3,000 square foot home? You could have this company build you an authentic-looking and realistically-built castle instead, complete with "great hall" and "village."

The Death Star? No, It's Saturn's Moon

NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this picture of Saturn's moon, Mimas, on July 3. Needless to say, it bears a striking resemblance to the Death Star of Star Wars fame.

Real Cheese? Optical Illusions

Like this picture shows, we don't always see what's really there (the image is made of straight lines and equal squares). Check out the other optical illusions on this page.

Say Cheese: The Smiling Car

Four Toyota developers in Japan have invented a car that can "help drivers communicate better by glaring angrily at another car cutting through traffic as well as appear to cry, laugh, wink, or just look around." They want to make driving more entertaining while also cutting down on incidents of road rage.

A Real-Life 'Home Alone'

Janice Gentry took action when she discovered that burglars had removed belongings from her home, stashed them in her SUV, and then left to get another vehicle. She tied a fishing line from her SUV to a bicycle in her garage, and she was alerted to the burglars return when the bike came crashing down. She called the police, blocked the burglars in her driveway with her car, and the burglars were all arrested.

Sharp Cheese: Supertasters

According to this article, each of us is either a non-taster, medium taster, or a supertaster. However, being a supertaster is not necessarily better than a non-taster: both fats and vegetables may taste bad to a supertaster.

Normally, people prize highly acute senses. We brag about twenty-twenty vision or the ability to eavesdrop on whispers from across the room. But taste is not so simple: supertaste may be too much of a good thing, causing those who have it to avoid bitter compounds and find some spicy foods too hot to handle. This unusual corner of perception science has been explored by Linda Bartoshuk of Yale University, who first stumbled upon supertasting about 15 years ago while studying saccharin. While most people found the sugar substitute sweet and palatable, others sensed a bitter aftertaste. She went on to test hundreds of volunteers with a host of chemicals found in food. About one in four, she discovered, qualified as supertasters, a name she coined.

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