Spanish Teens + $82 Balloon = Stunning Space Pics

Balloon/camera contraption cost Robert Harrison just $750

(NEWSER) - Armed with a few hundred dollars and a dream, a British man has come up with a way to take photos of the earth from space that would make NASA proud—and have. “A guy phoned up who worked for NASA. He wanted to know how the hell we did it,” Robert Harrison tells the Times . “They said it would have cost them millions of dollars.” But a slim $750 got Harrison the meteorological balloon, digital camera, GPS device, duct tape, and home insulation he needed to take the shots. More»

Video captures weather balloon flight above Earth

(NEWSER) - Two Toronto teens have launched a Lego Man to startling new heights: 14 miles above sea level, to be exact. Matthew Ho and Asad Muhammad attached him to a weather balloon that soared about three times higher than your typical airliner. The 97-minute flight came down softly by parachute some 62 miles away, where Ho and Muhammad tracked it down by GPS. The best part: their video of Lego man glued to a gangplank above planet Earth, the New York Daily News reports. More»

He could get eight years in prison

(NEWSER) - An Indiana high school senior is facing up to eight years in prison for the egregious felony of… bringing a blowup doll to school. Tyell Morton planted the doll in the girl’s bathroom as a senior prank, but administrators didn’t think it was funny. All they saw on the security camera was a hooded figure take a package into the bathroom and leave without it. Soon, the Indiana State Police bomb squad had been called in to deal with the raunchy inflatable. More»

Kids warned to dance like grandma's watchin'

(NEWSER) - With some schools having kids sign no-grinding dance contracts and others threatening to turn up the lights and play Burt Bacharach, the crackdown on grinding at school dances is getting more creative. Schools and parents fed up with teens' overtly sexual dance moves are turning to unconventional methods to stop kids from grinding, wearing teeny-tiny skirts, and removing their shirts, MSNBC reports. More»

Say weird stuff, have seizures when you kiss, appear dead, etc.

(NEWSER) - When it came to being cool and hitting it off with girls, Mick LaSalle had it hard as a teen—he had to figure out what width belt to wear and such without the benefit of Twilight as a primer. Herewith, some "empirical data" helpful to 15-year-old boys he gleaned from New Moon and offers in the San Francisco Chronicle :

• "Keep your compliments outlandish:" "You give me everything by breathing" might seem like an odd, even quizzical thing to say, but it's also tres sexy.