Here’s a depressing statistic to chew on:

Out of 173 countries, only four have no paid leave for new mothers — Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Liberia and the U.S.A.

Capcom, producer of the popular Monster Hunter series of video games, is promoting  its on products in a somewhat roundabout way, sponsoring a real-life monster hunt in Guyana, where researchers from the Center for Fortean Zoology will search for giant anacondas and the “didi”, South America’s answer to bigfoot.

Yes, really. And yes, the Center for Fortean Zoology actually exists. In fact, they have a YouTube video…

What kind of nerd are you?

Hey, look! Giant, megalithic corporations well-loved and respected by consumers everywhere are teaming up – Voltron-style – to really stick it to Apple’s iTunes!

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Anybody want to start a death pool?

Take this BBC quiz and see how well attuned your senses are…

SENSES CHALLENGE

There’s a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. And in this nursing home, there is a cat. I guess to provide comfort and companionship to residents, or something like that.

But there’s nothing comforting about this cat. See…it predicts when residents are going to die.

What shocks me is that some residents’ families are actually grateful for this harbinger of death.

Personally, death cat creeps me out.

Tired of staring at the dry erase board on the fridge reminding you to take out the trash? Sure, you could sign up for a useful online service to help you and your roommates/family remember whose turn it is to pay the bills. Or you could try to make a game out of it.

Chore Wars takes the latter approach and almost kind of sort of succeeds. The web service is designed to resemble a multiplayer role-playing game. You can create characters, join guilds and go on adventures. But while the way to “level up” in most games is by performing repetitive tasks like slaying monsters, in Chore Wars you perform repetitive tasks like washing dishes.

Every time you complete a real world task, you can sign in to Chore Wars to check it off a list. You’ll be rewarded with gold and experience points. Of course, both of these are meaningless in the real world.

Read more at Download Squad or WebWare

While we’ve entered into a new era of low-intensity, guerilla-style warfare, it appears that no one’s told the Pentagon, which has tapped Boeing to begin development on a truck-mounted mobile laser system.

The objective of the HEL TD program is to demonstrate that a mobile, solid-state laser weapon system can effectively counter rocket, artillery and mortar projectiles. The program will support the transition to a full-fledged Army acquisition program.

No doubt this will be highly effective against the Soviets. Oh, wait, 2007? I thought you said 1987…

Taste: something apparently beyond the comprehension of Dodge marketing executives.