The title says it all. Prisoners at any jail are not the brightest crayons in the crayola pack, but the prisoners in this jail really prove the point. Prison guards at Camp Jail were doing their daily clean up when they discovered that 37 prisoners had hidden mobile phones in their bodies. 30 of them were able to remove the phones without hospital treatment, but 7 members of this think-tank required surgery.

Although this is the largest single incident of this type prisoners often get caught with hidden phones - last year a UK prisoner required over 200 stitches and needed part of his bladder removed during surgery to remove a particularly large handset from his rectum.

According to the World Health Organization, glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide. Glaucoma is basically a build-up of pressure in the eye. It can not be permanently cured. Now researchers at UC Davis have designed a special kind of contact lens that can measure pressure build up in the eye and they’ll even give you a warning if anything is wrong.

These smart contact lenses use an organic polymer called PDMS that acts like a pressure sensor. UC Davis says that they will start clinical trials of these lenses in humans very soon. But this isn’t the end of the breakthrough, they’re also working up to one that will dispense medication automatically.

This isn’t a gadget of course, but it does involve one of our favorite retro arcade games, Space Invaders. We love Space Invaders here at the ‘Brick and we’re a little jealous of our friends in Japan, where these Kit Kat bars are being produced in limited editions by Nestle for Taito arcades to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders.

Putting Space Invaders on a Kit Kat should make it a bit easier to fend off the invading armada as you savor every delicious bite of their little bodies. I’d love to see more retro arcade candy bars hit the market, like a Pac-Man Reese’s cup and the like, but I wouldn’t be able to resist and I’d become a large geek instead of a trim geek.

I remember Mad magazine. The fold up joke page. The bad humor. Apparently it’s still around and going strong, has Circuit city pretty pissed off even. In this month’s issue of Mad Magazine, there’s an ad parody for Circuit City that reads Sucker City!. The parody takes aim at the electronics retailer and maybe says what many people were already thinking.

Like how they are always across the street from a Best Buy, Expensive TVs and how the price always goes up right after you bought them. Circuit city is not happy and ordered that all copies being sold at their stores be destroyed. I really doubt that anyone buys Mad Magazines from Best Buy anyway. In the ad you’ll also notice the Wii Epilepsy bundle with optical disc and bitestick controller.

Many of us go to extreme measures in order to keep pests out of our homes. Normally they’ll head straight for any crumbs that you’ve left on your floor or just blindly enter your dwelling as if for no apparent reason. They are easy enough to take care of. Start stomping or call in the verminators. But what do you do when insects start invading your tech?

One couple started noticing ants on their computer desk. They couldn’t quite figure out where they were coming from. There didn’t seem to be a problem anywhere else nearby. As you can see in the video, the work area is very clean. So the wife discovers that the printer isn’t working. The guy checks it out and finds that a small invading ant army had taken up residence in the scanner area. Pretty weird and makes you wonder where else they are that you don’t know about.

Remember the gadget vending machines we told you about in Macy’s? It seemed pretty obvious at the time that the trend would continue. Check out this Best Buy vending machine spotted in the Dallas/Forth Worth airport, keeping flyers in gadgets and sucking up money like a black hole in a square box.

Travelers are always forgetting their gadgets or breaking them, even losing them. Which is why these machines are a smart idea. The machines are in several terminals, insuring that an iPod leaves on every flight. Expensive spur of the moment purchase? Sure. Gadget addiction ain’t cheap.

We entered the Politically Correct or PC age sometime in the 90’s, and the effect that it has had on censorship, whether blatant or mild, continues in one form or another to this day. Take the above image for instance. Moronic as it may seem, the cigarette in the hand of the man in the Mad Men promotional image was digitally removed when it was placed on iTunes.

Apparently Apple thinks that anyone who sees (a rough poster outline) of a man smoking, will begin smoking a pack a day immediately. It proves one thing I’ve known for years: Consumers are not nearly as stupid as those in charge of making such idiotic decisions as whether to remove a cigarette from a TV character’s hand or not. Yeah, people have been having trouble getting their iPhone to work for like a week, but they have the cigarette until control, never you fear.

The supply is expected to be plentiful, nevertheless a line has already begun outside of Apple’s Fifth Avenue retail store to buy iPhone 3G a week before its release. These people are serious and have their supplies for camping. Wouldn’t it be nicer to stay at home with your families?

Part of the line is occupied by some activists known as “Waiting for Apples” who are hoping to set a Guinness World Record and spread the word about sustainable agriculture. They brought their own solar-power generator, yoga mats, a compost bin full of worms, and probably other hippie essentials. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to spend a week then sitting on my ass next to these guys. Yeah, that would just be awesome…

Genetic testing isn’t something you can do in a few minutes. It’s an involved process, requiring special chemicals and instruments that aren’t commonplace everywhere. But now some scientists at Berkeley have created a technique that uses electrostatic tech instead, which simplifies everything.

The DNA is prepared in a lab first and put on a microarray. Negatively charged microspheres are spread across the surface, which push themselves into clumps as they move away from the like-charged DNA areas. It’s an easier and simpler way as well as less costly than current techniques we use now. Apparently the resulting clumps are large enough to be recorded by simple imaging devices like your cellphone camera. It means that in the near future DNA testing could be super quick and accessible.

Researchers at Tohoku University have reportedly figured out a way to “multiply the amount of data that can be stored on a DVD or CD by 9.” Apparently, it works by shaping the pits on a DVD’s surface like Vs, essentially allowing you to get more out of the disc. The problem is that existing DVD & CD players won’t recognize the media made in this way, and for some reason the process can’t be applied to Blu-ray Discs. Still pretty cool though.

The ICT Graphics Lab at USC has created a low-cost volumetric 3-D display that brings Princess Leia one step closer to begging Obi-Wan for help. The system projects high-speed video onto a rapidly spinning mirror. As the mirror turns, it reflects a different and accurate image to each potential viewer.

The rendering algorithm can recreate virtual and real scenes with correct occlusion, horizontal and vertical perspective, and shading. Close to 5,000 individual images are reflected every second within the surface area and create a real-space three-dimensional object. Video below.

The Japanese have done a ton of wacky things they should be ashamed of gadget-wise and otherwise. Now they’re getting into politics to sell phones and the result is bizarre. This commercial for Japan’s EMobile cellular company has a monkey dressed up in a suit, at a podium in front of a crowd.

The crowd is holding signs that read “Change.” At the end, the monkey cries a tear, clearly ashamed as he should be. Bad monkey. Their intentions may or may not have been entirely innocent, but we all know that if this aired in America there would be hell to pay.

Some German scientists with a love of bad horror movies and some time on their hands, have come up with the nerdiest brain-computer interface yet. It’s from the Technical University of Braunschweig.

No placing electrodes on your head with this one. This one is all about wearing a large metal helmet full of sensors, that can detect your brain activity through your hair. They claim that the system is good enough to control an RC car and they’re hoping to use it in wheelchairs and prosthetics. Check out a video below.

I wondered where all the geeks had gone. Now I know. The exhibit started on Saturday at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. Needless to say this event is a geek magnet as they will showcase all kinds of Trek ships, technology, aliens, sets, costumes and props. You’ll be able to sit in a recreation of the original Enterprise bridge, experience motion simulators, and quote lines from all your favorite moments. In other words, it’s kinda like a typical day in the life for some of you, just held somewhere other then your mom’s living room. Chances are some of you won’t even know the event is happening, as you’re too busy arguing about whether Comic con or Dragon con was more kick-ass, but I wanted to mention it.

If you happen to be in Las Vegas this weekend, you might want to check out the 2008 USA Rock Paper Scissors League Championship on June 20 in Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The Champion with the best hand skills will win a $50,000 prize and a ticket to compete in Beijing,China during the Summer Olympics, where they will represent the U.S. in the inaugural International Rock Paper Scissors Federation Championship.

I’ve never been entirely clear on the official rules. It always gets tricky with rock against paper. Paper can wrap around a rock and strangle it, but on the other hand, rock can beat paper to a pulp. Check out the video below. It’s strangely mesmerizing.