“A Chinese couple in Sichuan province were rightly unnerved when the meat they’d just bought took on luminescent properties in the dark. That they realized this after eating slivers of the meat for dinner was particularly unwelcome. The noticed it glowing after they’d hung the meat on the wall to keep it away from their cat. The blog ChinaSmack translated a report on the radiant meat from Chinese media outlet Sohu. It seems the butcher and local health officials rebuffed the Sichuan man’s widely reported concerns. So what could explain the worrying glow emitted from this guy’s bizarro meat?” w/ photos

“A six-month-old baby who poses with props to recreate classic movie scenes has become an internet sensation. Arthur Hammond has evoked iconic scenes from hit films including Jaws, The Godfather, Rambo: First Blood, and American Beauty. The tot relies on a range of simple props such as stuffed animals, bath toys, food and his own crib – as well as a little help from mum Emily. The youngster’s blog ‘Arthur Recreates Scenes from Classic Movies’ is attracting 50,000 hits a month. And fans from all over the world are sending Arthur requests to act out their own favorite film moments… Film buff Emily Cleaver, 36, an author from Oxford, said: “Arthur enjoys all the attention when he is doing the scenes and likes it when I take his photo.” w/ photo

“A Canadian man who realized he forgot his passport as he approached the U.S. border found a new way to gain entry — his iPad. Martin Reisch said a slightly annoyed U.S. border officer let him cross into the United States from Quebec after he presented a scanned copy of his passport on his Apple iPad. Reisch was a half hour from the border when he decided to try to gain entry rather than turn back and make a two-hour trek back home to Montreal to fetch his passport. He told the officer he was heading to the U.S. to drop off Christmas gifts for his friend’s kids. He said that true story, the scanned passport and his driver’s license helped him get through last week. He said the officer seemed mildly annoyed when he handed him the iPad. “I thought I’d at least give it a try,” Reisch said. “He took the iPad into the little border hut. He was in there a good five, six minutes. It seemed like an eternity. When he came back he took a good long pause before wishing me a Merry Christmas.” Reisch said the officer made an exception.” w/ photo

“It’s one thing to make an object invisible, like Harry Potter’s mythical cloak. But scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker. Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don’t see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It’s not just that the thief is invisible — his whole activity is. What scientists at Cornell University did was on a much smaller scale, both in terms of events and time. It happened so quickly that it’s not even a blink of an eye. Their time cloak lasts an incredibly tiny fraction of a fraction of a second. They hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second, according to a study appearing in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.” w/ photo

“A nearly century-old hunting boot is catching on with a younger generation that sees the utilitarian footwear as hip. L.L Bean’s familiar duck boot with leather uppers and rubber soles — designed for slogging through mud and snow — has become something of a fashion statement owing to its newfound popularity on college campuses, the company says. Another reason is new styles, including something Leon Leonwood Bean surely never envisioned in 1912: bright blue and pink leather, new for spring. Part of the success of the boot is its versatility, in barnyards or in cities, in snow or rain. At Bowdoin College in Brunswick NY, wears her dark brown, shearling-lined boots nearly every day, with a skirt or jeans. She has only one pair, but some classmates have several. “They are very practical, but they’ve also become a fashion trend,” she said. “They’re simple and kind of have that rugged look that has been adopted as a fashionable thing.” w/ photo

“An article in this weekend’s Sunday New York Times explores the life of a 52-year-old prostitute who has worked the notorious Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx for nearly her entire adult life. Barbara Terry, who has four children and suffers from diabetes, which caused all of her teeth to fall out, depended on her mother to help her raise and watch over her four children while she hit the track every night trying to support them. ‘When they were old enough to understand, I would tell them the truth,’ Terry, whose daughter and three sons are now grown, told the New York Times. “I’d say, ‘This is how I’m supporting you.’ For me it’s a business, a regular job.’ That job, which many would look at as unacceptable, landed her in jail more than 100 times, but it also gave her the ability to buy a home in upstate New York, where she plans to retire in a year.” w/ photo

“The husband, identified by lawyers in the case as Antonio C, found out about the adultery when he was looking through an old chest of just before Christmas. He immediately asked his wife, who is identified as Rosa C, for a divorce as he was so upset over the betrayal. Court papers released in Rome this week revealed that she sent letters to her lover during a secret affair in the 1940s… Lawyer Anna Orecchioni said: ‘The husband decided to file for divorce after finding the love letters. He felt betrayed and unable to carry on with the marriage which has lasted 77 years.” w/ photo

“A man who was accidentally shot in the head 82 years ago has gone through life without suffering any ill effects, despite the bullet being lodged deep in his head. The Russian was shot by his brother when he was three, the bullet coming to rest in an opening at the base of the skull where the spinal cord passes. Doctors opted against operating at the time because they believed the risk of severe nerve damage was too high and, against the odds, he made a full recovery, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. When the 85-year-old, who went on to become an award-winning engineer, recently went for a cat scan following a heart problem doctors noticed the bullet but, to their astonishment, they could not find any evidence of neural damage.” w/ photo

“U.S. manufacturers of the drug to control hyperactive patients are struggling keep up with demand. The makers are also finding it increasingly difficult to get enough active ingredient to make Adderall. The stimulant, is tightly controlled by the Drug Enforcement Administration because it is addictive and has the potential to be abused. Distribution of the drug’s active pharmaceutical ingredient is rigidly allotted to manufacturers each year by the DEA. The system is designed to stop the creation of stockpiles that could be diverted for illegal use… Adderall manufacturers claim the DEA does not always approve enough material in time for them to supply customers.” w/ photo

“A couple in Cornwall are showcasing food left behind by stars. Why are some people drawn to such celebrity ephemera? It’s one of the great cultural phenomena of the 21st Century – the appetite for learning about famous people’s lives, no matter how banal the details. Gossip magazines and newspapers are stuffed with information about such minutiae. And for eight years, a seaside cafe in Cornwall has hosted an experiment exploring this obsession by displaying the food left behind by public figures. It may sound bizarre. But people can go to great lengths to get hold of something a celebrity has owned, or even just touched… The growth of online auctions, with their huge pool of buyers and sellers, has fuelled this sector – although the fact that the items are perishable of course creates problems for the amateur collector. This is the challenge that Michael and Francesca Bennett took up at their cafe in Cornwall, when they set out to chronicle the food that stars left behind in a makeshift museum.” w/ photos + video