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Ever want to pretend you’re stuck in traffic as an excuse for breaking a date? Now there’s software for your cell phone that can generate a fake background noise, so when you call to cancel, you’ll be believed.

Will Knight writes in New Scientist that SoundCover can also mimic a thunderstorm, a dentist’s drill or even a circus, so you don’t have to use the same excuse every time. You can even assign background noises to specific callers, so if the excuse works once, you can use it again (and again). An especially popular sound is another phone ringing, so you can pretend you have to answer your landline.
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In the February 1994 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, researcher Robert Kaplan wrote an article called “The Coming Anarchy,” stating that, “For a while the media will continue to ascribe riots and other violent upheavals…mainly to ethnic and religious conflict. But as these conflicts multiply, it will become apparent that something else is afoot. It is time to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the 21st century.” The new Pentagon study agrees with this.
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Scott Kilman reports in the Wall Street Journal that the USDA will not allow individual meat packers to test their own meat, because it may imply that the beef missed during random testing by the U.S. government is not safe. Consumer Susan Brownawell says, “This is ridiculous. If people want to have their beef tested, they should be able to. Isn’t this how the free market works?”
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Amateur astronomers can receive awards of $3,000 for discovering and tracking asteroids that may impact the Earth, according to new legislation approved by the House of Representatives. While this is great, with our recent near-misses, it would be more reassuring if the government would allocate enough money to hire professional astronomers to do the job.
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