A study published in the journal Pediatrics found that kids who watched Spongebob Squarepants did worse on tests that required them to remember a series of numbers, follow rules, and delay gratification by having to wait five minutes before eating some goldfish crackers. They say it’s because the show is so fast paced, with scenes changing every 11 seconds. One of the researchers  says, “An hour or two of SpongeBob is way worse than two hours of Caillou.” It’s also funnier, more interesting, cleverer, and more creative. A small price to pay to raise a generation of Patricks.

Officials in Bonn, Germany, where prostitution is legal, have installed meters on the street so prostitutes can pay $8 a night and receive a nightly permit to practice their profession. If the trial is successful, the United States Congress, where prostitution is also widely practiced, may follow suit and install the meters.

Just in time for the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, a Long Island winery has released two commemorative bottles of wine: 9/11 Memorial Merlot and 9/11 Memorial Chardonnay. Lieb Family Cellars says it will donate all monies not spent on making the wine, which they estimate will be about 10% of the appropriate $19.11 price tag, to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Critics abound. Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. of Queens asked, “What’s next? A 9/11 pastrami sandwich?” Hey, it’s not like the bottles are shaped like the Twin Towers, the wines have a smokey top note, or they made one called 9/11 Memorial Pinot Noir Day in History.

A study done at the  School of Population Health at the University of Queensland, Australia, found that if you’re over 25, the lack of activity involved in watching an hour of TV can shorten your life by 22 minutes, which incidentally is the same life-shortening effect of smoking two cigarettes. So if the average American watches five hours of TV per day, they’re shortening their life by 110 minutes–or nearly 2 hours–every day. This comes to 12.8 hours a week, 55 hours a month, or 27.9 days off your life every year just so you can watch The Real Jersey Shore Housewives of American Idol. Double that if you smoke two cigarettes per hour while watching TV. And no, watching P90X infomercials doesn’t cut the life loss by 3 minutes per hour as rumored.

Zabar’s, a well-known upscale deli in New York City, has been serving lobster salad for 20 years. When a New Orleans food writer read the ingredients, he discovered it was actually made with “wild fresh water crayfish.” Owner Saul Zabar told him crayfish are a distant cousin of lobster, the Maine Lobster Council disagreed, and now the deli sells “Seafare Salad” for $16.95 a pound. Just wait until Zabar finds out what “fresh water” means.

While at the Iowa State Fair today, Mitt Romney told a crowd that raising taxes on individuals was an option, but he opposed it. When some hecklers in the audience started shouting “Corporations! Corporations!” suggesting that corporations should be paying new taxes too, Romney replied, “Corporations are people, my friend.” It’s unclear whether the friend he was referring to was a corporation or a human, or whether Romney thinks partnerships are cyborgs, but he did say later that he’s pretty sure sole proprietorships are humanoid. Cue up Depeche Mode’s People are People now.

CNN reports that as of Wednesday, the U.S. government had an operating cash balance of $73.8 billion. Meanwhile, as of the end of June, Apple had $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand. Hey Messrs. Boehner and Reid, maybe Steve Jobs will loan you some money to tide us over until you iron out an agreement. Heck, maybe Apple should just buy the government. To paraphrase Herbert Hoover, maybe every American can have “a chicken in every pot and an iPad in every garage?”

Zakee Kaleem Abdullah of Texarkana, Texas, has been charged with pretending to be a lawyer. At a pretrial hearing on Monday, Abdullah represented himself. “Oh, the music goes ’round and ’round, whoa-whoa-whoa…”

McDonald’s, hoping to fend off those who say their unhealthy food is unhealthy, has announced that beginning next year Happy Meals will come with a half-order of apples and a half-order of fries. Unless you request all fries. Or all apples, which in some states is considered child abuse. Not to worry, just tell the kids those weird sliced things are raw Hot Apple Pie and they might eat it. Well, if there’s room after they finish that extra super-size order of fries you got them.

In a speech on Thursday, Moammar Gadhafi told the Libyan people exactly when he’d open talks with rebels who are trying to end his rule. “There will be no talks between me and them until Judgment Day,” he said. He had originally hoped to begin the talks on May 21st and is waiting for Harold Camping to give him a new date.

Heidi Lynn Knowles of Vancouver, Washington, was arrested after walking up to a woman in a Taco Bell, putting her 3-day old son in the woman’s hands, and offering to sell the tot for $500. The woman called 911, Knowles was arrested on outstanding warrants for jumping bail, possession of drug paraphernalia and theft, and she may face charges of attempting to sell an infant. Incredible. I mean, do you know how many Beefy Five-Layer Burritos you can get for that kind of money? (In case you don’t, the answer is 500.)

Reader’s Digest, which at one time printed 18 million copies of the magazines a month and was in every bathroom and doctor’s waiting room in the country, is up for sale. The publishers hope to get as much as $1 billion for the company. The full, non-condensed, version of the story is here.

A state minister in charge of consumer affairs and food-safety in Japan was unconcerned when he learned that meat from six cows which had been contaminated by radioactive cesium made it to market and was probably eaten. “If we were to eat the meat everyday, then it would probably be dangerous,” Goshi  Hosono said. “But if it is consumed only in small portions, I don’t think it would have any long-lasting effects on the human body.” He added that it was a good thing the meat hadn’t made its way to the United States where there’s no such thing as a small portion.

A few years ago a particle astrophysicist named Craig Hogan found that at very magnified levels the universe was kind of pixelated, leaving him to conjecture that the universe might be a hologram and, to paraphrase Shakespeare, all the world’s a huge cosmic Imax stage. Well, you can rest easy. Wired reports that scientists using a super powerful European Space Agency telescope haven’t been able to detect any quantum fuzziness, indicating that, “It’s very likely that we are not holograms.” This doesn’t, however, mean that scientists have ruled out the possibility though that we’re actually Photoshopped.

Scientists at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, report having discovered the loudest animal on earth relative to its body size. The male water boatman, or Micronecta scholtzi, is a 1/16th inch-long insect that makes a noise measuring 99.2 decibels, which is about as loud as a lawnmower. Even more surprising is that the boatman makes the sound by rubbing its penis against its abdomen while underwater in an attempt to attract mates. The second loudest animal on earth relative to its body size is the female water boatman, which hits 97.4 dBs while shouting, “Shut up already! I told you I have a headache!”

Maria Shriver has filed for divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger citing “irreconcilable differences” because California law doesn’t recognize “being a scumbag” as legal grounds.

The cover of the latest issue of Newsweek features a digitally altered photo of Princess Diana as she might look at 50 walking with her would-be daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton. The cover story conjectures that she would have moved to New York City, married two more times–neither time to Dodi Al-Fayed–and made peace with Prince Charles. Next week’s cover, shown at left, imagines what Queen Victoria would look like today walking with Diana and Kate.

When Jason Valdez holed up in a hotel room in Ogden, Utah, with a hostage for 16 hours, he kept in touch with friends and family by updating his Facebook page. He made at least six posts, added a dozen new friends, and received about 100 comments before finally shooting himself in the chest with his gun. No word on how much money he amassed or how many people he iced playing Mafia Wars.