The Science of Sarcasm (Not That You Care)
By DAN HURLEY There was nothing very interesting in Katherine P. Rankin’s study of sarcasm — at least, nothing worth your important time. All she did was use an M.R.I. to find the place in the brain where the ability to detect sarcasm resides. But then, you probably already knew it was in the right parahippocampal gyrus.

What you may not have realized is that perceiving sarcasm, the smirking put-down that buries its barb by stating the opposite, requires a nifty mental trick that lies at the heart of social relations: figuring out what others are thinking. Those who lose the ability, whether through a head injury or the frontotemporal dementias afflicting the patients in Dr. Rankin’s study, just do not get it when someone says during a hurricane, “Nice weather we’re having.”

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A plague carried around the world by travelers, pets and curious teen-agers may show that experts have not taken everything into account when planning for an outbreak of disease, researchers said on Monday.

Luckily, the world involved is an Internet game.

The outbreak of "Corrupted Blood" indicates that specialists trying to predict what the next pandemic will look like might make use of a real-world laboratory -- the culture of online gamers.

"It really looked quite a bit like a real disease," Nina Fefferman of Princeton University, who worked on the report with her then-student Eric Lofgren, said in a telephone interview.

This includes stupid behavior, near-instant international travel and infection by pets.

The outbreak was an accidental consequence of a software challenge added to the "World of Warcraft" game in 2005, Fefferman and Lofgren report in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The virulent, contagious disease was introduced by maker Blizzard Entertainment Inc. of Irvine, California, as an extra challenge to high-level players. But, just as a real virus might spread, it was accidentally carried out of its virtual containment area.

"Soon, the disease had spread to the densely populated capital cities of the fantasy world, causing high rates of mortality and, much more importantly, the social chaos that comes from a large-scale outbreak of deadly disease," Fefferman and Lofgren wrote.

Two British Fathers 4 Justice activists were arrested at gunpoint by a Swat team at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, said the campaign founder.

A support crew of four were also held as the memorial was evacuated by US authorities.

British activists Jolly Stanesby and Mike Downes organised and performed the protest, with support by US colleagues on the ground, a Fathers 4 Justice spokesman said.

Stanesby and Downes scaled the Lincoln Memorial at about 1.30pm (6.30pm BST) dressed as tourists on Friday. The spokesman said the men were being held in US custody in Washington and could be deported or placed on trial.

Matt O'Connor, founder of Fathers 4 Justice, said: "Yet again Fathers 4 Justice in the UK has led the way with an audacious protest to raise the global profile of fatherlessness and the social catastrophe it is causing in first world countries.

"This is our response to the inaction of the US authorities. There will be many, many more to follow. None of this, however, would have been possible without the outstanding support of our colleagues in the US."

The protest marks the start of the Fathers 4 Justice campaign in the US, a group spokesman said. It plans to run its first national awareness campaign in the US during the presidential elections.

Stanesby and Downes unveiled Captain America and Batman costumes after scaling the memorial and unfurled a white banner.

Stanesby, was from Ivybridge, Devon, and Downes, was from the Manchester area, Mr O'Connor said. Both have been involved in previous protests in Britain.

In November 2004 both men, dressed as Father Christmas, caused the closure of the Severn Bridge as they spent more than five hours on the gantry over the bridge that links England to Wales.

WASHINGTON —
Washington, D.C., police are baffled by an attempted robbery in the Capitol Hill neighborhood that began with a handgun put to the head of a teenager and ended in a group hug.

It started about midnight on June 16 when a group of friends was finishing a dinner of marinated steaks and jumbo shrimp on the back patio of a District of Columbia home. That's when a hooded man slid through an open gate and pointed a handgun at the head of a 14-year-old girl.

"Give me your money, or I'll start shooting," he said, according to D.C. police and witnesses.

• Click here to read the story in The Washington Post.

Everyone froze, including the girl's parents. Then one guest spoke.

"We were just finishing dinner," Cristina "Cha Cha" Rowan, 43, told the man. "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?"

The intruder had a sip of their Chateau Malescot St-Exupery and said, "Damn, that's good wine."

The girl's father, Michael Rabdau, 51, told the intruder to take the whole glass, and Rowan offered him the whole bottle.

The robber, with his hood down, took another sip and a bite of Camembert cheese. He put the gun in his sweatpants.

The story then turns even more bizarre.

"I think I may have come to the wrong house," he said before apologizing. "Can I get a hug?"

Rowan, who works at her children's school and lives in Falls Church, Va., stood up and wrapped her arms around the armed man. The four other guests followed.

"Can we have a group hug?" the man asked. The five adults complied.

The man walked away a few moments later with the crystal wine glass in hand. Nothing was stolen, and no one was hurt.

Once he was gone, the group walked into the house, locked the door and stared at each other — speechless. Rabdau called 911, and police came to take a report and dust for fingerprints.

Police classified the case as strange but true. Investigators have not located a suspect. The witnesses thought he might have been high on drugs.

"We've had robbers that apologize and stuff but nothing where they sit down and drink wine. It definitely is strange," said Cmdr. Diane Groomes, adding that the hugs were especially unusual. "The only good thing is they would be able to identify him because they hugged them."