D'Oh!: 17 Sounds You Know

Uses sound to activate visual cortex

(NEWSER) - Remember the iconic Star Trek visor that allowed a blind engineer to see? A team of scientists in Israel has developed something like a real-life version of the gadget, the Daily Mail reports. The Sensory Substitution Device turns visual information into sound that blind people can interpret after a little training. The noises activate portions of the visual cortex, which are normally dormant in the blind; this allows them to detect shapes and people around them—and even read. More»

California mayor says it already has

(NEWSER) - Crime has dropped in a California town, and residents should be thanking their fine feathered friends, says the mayor. Last year, he began piping recorded birdsong to 70 speakers on a highway. Minor crime dropped 15% from 2010 while serious crimes dropped 6%, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's no coincidence, says Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris—it's subtle psychology. "Everybody is now in a better mood, a better place," he says. "We're not seeing that impulse-control crime." More»

New year, new trends

(NEWSER) - If your New Year's Resolution is to "be more adventurous," this is the list for you. Writing for Time , Josh Ozersky lays out the five foods that he predicts will be hot in 2012, while admitting that these forecasts are typically "about as reliable as the photos on a Latvian dating site." That's because food writers consistently overestimate how much Americans will glom on to ethnic foods—Peruvian food hasn't exactly taken the country by storm, he notes. But "that doesn’t mean that things aren’t changing," writes Ozersky, who presents a pretty exotic list:

1. Banh Mi: If you want to seem adventurous without actually having to be adventurous, these Vietnamese sandwiches (pronounced bon-mee) are for you. They're basically "crispy French bread filled with fresh, bright, firm vegetables, hot sauce, and what usually looks like six different kinds of pork."

End-of-year lists brings out the worst in Internet comments: Linda Holmes

(NEWSER) - As the end of the year approaches, bloggers, journalists, and other writers whip up plenty of end-of-year, top-whatever list. NPR's Linda Holmes creates a list of her own: a look at 20 of the less-than-merry folks who frequent the comment sections of those lists:

• The guy who is 100% right: He's the one who will snipe that your "list of things you thought were good is just your opinion."

...the killing of Osama bin Laden, says AP poll

(NEWSER) - Between the protests, the natural disasters, and the economy, it was quite the newsy year. So which story was the top dog? The killing of Osama bin Laden takes the No. 1 slot, according to the AP's yearly poll of US editors and news directors. Of the 247 ballots cast, the death of the al-Qaeda leader at the hands of Navy SEALs received 128 first-place votes. The remainder of the top 10:

2. Japan's "triple disaster": the 9.0-magnitude earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear crisis
3. Arab Spring uprisings: from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Syria