Just push play

IPod of the skies: Japan’s All Nippon Airways launched service with its first 787, flying passengers from Tokyo to Hong Kong. Aviation expert Richard Aboulafia said if the 787 delivers on its promises it will be “the iPod of the aircraft world. If it doesn’t it’s just another CD player.”

Or worse, Microsoft’s Zune.

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No McRib for you: McDonald’s has barred a mother of four from eight McDonald’s in the Phoenix, Ariz., area, claiming she has been disruptive with her campaign to force the chain to clean up the children’s play areas at its restaurants. The woman says she has found pathogens on play equipment.

In defense of McDonald’s, it’s not the play equipment that’s the problem; it’s those little germ factories clambering around the restaurant.

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Making spectacles of themselves: Scientists in California and Sweden have deciphered a 250-year-old coded manuscript, called the Copiale Cipher, written in code by a German secret society that was fascinated by ophthalmology. The book details intricate and oddball initiation ceremonies, one of which included plucking a hair from a candidate’s eyebrow.

In a cattier passage, the manuscript also makes fun of the Masons and their aprons and the Shriners and their fezzes.

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