Geek Week: Geek-o-naut home, researchers go for foam

27.10.2008
Space is the place. Ultima game creator Richard Garriott has just returned from 12 days as a tourist in the International Space Station. There is no truth to the rumor that after Garriott completed his US$30 million vacation, he watched a 24-hour cable news station for a couple of hours and begged to be shot back into space as quickly as possible.

Hell hath no fury. In Japan, a 43-year-old woman has been arrested for murdering her virtual husband. The woman became incensed after her online husband divorced her inside the popular Maple Story role playing game, so she went mouse-evil on his a** by logging onto his computer remotely and deleting his lovingly crafted virtual persona. According to news reports, the estranged couple lived 1000 miles apart and have never met in the flesh. She's now looking at up to 5 years in real prison for breaking into his computer. I dunno, seems to me like a better way to go -- cheaper than an attorney, less messy than a blunt instrument.

Jean Paul meets Joe Six Pack. Finally, some scientific research I can get behind. Six Rice University researchers are hard at work developing a beer that helps fight cancer and heart disease. They're attempting to take resveratrol, the chemical inside red wine that helps keep the French so damned healthy despite a diet consisting largely of heavy cream and stinky cheese, and add it to what I like to think of as America's Beverage. I think they need field testers, don't you?

Got geeky news or cancer fighting beer? Send a six pack my way to cringe@infoworld.com.