“F*ck-Off Day” to promote political reform. Maybe the Italians are on to something…

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.

TRIPLE PLAY

1. In baseball, the act of getting three players out on one play
2. In telecommunications,  a package combining the three services of telephone, television, and internet access

In the baseball sense, triple plays are awesome, stand-up-and-cheer events. In the telecommunications sense, well, yeah.

But cable provider Comcast has found a rather interesting approach to talking about its triple play offerings. Rather than the usual pitch, it’s launched a website, Tripleslanguage, chock full of slang terms for all the new activities that suddenly become possible when you sign up for a triple play. Such as “snurfing” - surfing the internet while you’re talking on the phone.

Nissan used NBC’s Heroes to showcase its Versa subcompact, with prominent placement and a role in the story.

This year, it looks like Apple will be doing the same with the iPhone. Look for it to be featured prominently in NBC’s Journeyman, premiering September 24th.

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…

Video games must be here to stay. All the cartoons, (terrible) movies, action figures and whatnot, those were just flashes in the pan. But now that Madam Tussauds has immortalized Halo’s Master Chief in wax (clay, actually), there’s pretty much no doubt that this video game fad is sticking around.

What kind of nerd are you?

Auto show season is nearly upon us, and that means one thing. Lots of new cars and shiny new sheetmetal to drool over. Or, in the case of my wife, to roll your eyes at.

Despite the constant, unceasing advances in the cars themselves, the “tease and release” schedule leading up to the major shows has been pretty formulaic for a number of years. Follow any auto blog or news site and you can spot the progression. It begins when the spy photographers catch a test mule out and about, followed by snaps of heavily disguised prototypes. A few months pass, and gradually the camo strips away, giving glimpses of a headlight here, a c-pillar there. Then, if the automaker is feeling cheeky, they may toss out a design sketch or an unrevealing teaser shot of the car a few weeks before the show. this is followed by the full-blown media kit, containing the ever-loved press release and more hi-res images than you can shake a stick at.

Nobody has really messed with this formula. Until now. Rather than going with a teaser shot, BMW has gone and put together an entire teaser VIDEO for the X6 concept.

Have a look.

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