As if I needed further evidence that the country I live in is collectively losing any semblence of sanity it one possessed, along comes the news that robotic falcons are to be deployed in Liverpool to scare away the flocks of obese junk-food-bloated pigeons that swarm in the city. Talk about curing the symptoms and not the disease – and besides, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to simply issue the adolescent males of the city with air-pistols for a day or two? [Chris Roberson]

Always on top of all security-related shenanigans, Bruce Schneier takes a look at the type of hacking that is most effective, not to mention cheap – social engineering. As our lives become increasingly interwoven with our technologies, our tendancy to trust the systems that surround us seems to inflate in sympathy, and that suggests that social engineering – or confidence tricks – aren’t going to go away any time soon.

This has to be the ultimate in lifestyle products, and I demand to be given a lifetime supply immediately – Shower Shock soap releases caffeine to be absorbed through the skin as you wash, delivering the equivalent of two strong cups of joe with one all-body scrub-down. How can we call ourselves a civilisation when we’ve only just invented this?

The headline says everything that needs to be said, really. If they’re not as big as you had hoped, just head back to the surgeon for an extra supplementary boost. It’s a weird world we live in.

If you’ve been following Futurismic for a while, you’ll probably have seen mention of Organic Light Emitting Diodes before. Chances are you may see them everywhere you look within a few years, as an international research project has been launched to improve the production of OLEDs for use in applications as diverse as household lighting and road-safety clothing. Their main advantages are that they’re energy efficient, and flexible enough to be incorporated in almost any material. Now, if they can just make them cheaper and more reliable …