Weird News

Bank napper

A German man who was too drunk to go home spent the night with his horse in a bank. The man went to sleep next to the cash machines at the local branch of the Mittelbrandenburgische Sparkasse in Wiesenburg, which is southwest of Berlin.

He unsaddled his horse Sammy and closed the bank’s door.

A bank spokesperson said that aside from the unpleasant deposit made by his horse inside the building, the 40-year-old account holder did not break any rules with his overnight stay.

A customer discovered the horse and sleeping man, and told police. Once on the scene, police asked the man to leave.

Robot double

A Japanese researcher has created a robot that looks and moves exactly the same way he does. Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University developed the “Geminoid.” He used a model of his body and hair off his head.

If you poke the robot’s face, it grimaces like a real human would because of more than 50 sensors and motors implanted underneath the bot’s lifelike skin.

Compressed air is pumped through its body to simulate breathing movement. The professor said at first it feels strange to be talking to an android, but once in conversation you become quite comfortable with it.

Several companies in Japan already sell robots that mimic human actions, such as playing the drums or dancing to music.

Toilet seat tussle

A two-and-a-half-year-old boy had to be rescued by firefighters Tuesday after getting a toilet seat stuck on his head. The boy and his mom went to a fire station in Essex, England, to request assistance in removing the seat from his head.

The boy stuck his head through a small toilet trainer seat and could not pull it back out. The firefighters managed to get it off in no time using dish detergent.

Text messaging harms skills

An education commission in Ireland found that the rising popularity of text messaging on cell phones poses a threat to the writing standards of Irish schoolchildren.

The frequency of errors in punctuation and grammar has raised concern among school officials.

The State Examination Commission reviewed last year’s exam performance of 15-year-olds.

“The emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted on standards of writing as evidenced in the responses of candidates,” the commission’s report said, according to Wednesday’s Irish Times.

The commission worries that the phonetic spelling and lack of punctuation that go along with text messaging poses a threat to traditional writing conventions.

The report said that in many cases students seemed “unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary.”