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Got a beef about the bathroom in your local Arby's? Tell John Sperry. He's up to his ears in customer complaints.

Every year, an organization called Improbable Research offers up the Ig Nobel Prize , a Nobel spoof award that it is given for science innovations "that first make people laugh, then make them think." This year, our favorite entry came from researchers at the Shiga University of Medical Science, who developed something called the wasabi alarm, a fire (or general emergency alarm) that slashes noise pollution but might make anyone nearby feel sick.

The social network is watching your every move, and your friends. And while it isn't as nefarious as Big Brother, do we really want our profiles to become another marketing space?

Amazon To Buy HP Palm, WebOS?

China is no longer a developing nation, at least in terms of CO2 emissions. The country has graduated to "developed" status, according to a new report claiming that the country could meet or surpass U.S CO2 levels by 2017. The report , written by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, claims that the combination of China's carbon-heavy industries and rapidly increasing infrastructure are responsible for the growth.

An insider offers new details about the ironclad security around Apple prototypes: private jets, windowless rooms, amorphous storage cases padlocked to tables whose wood grain signatures are photographed--and much more. We're just days away from Apple's iPhone 5 event, and for the past few weeks (er, months rather), the rumor mill has kicked into high gear. But most stories on Apple's latest game changer derive from speculation or shoddy secondhand sources, or, most enticing, glamour shots of the press invite .

Want to make really smart decisions for your company? It's simple as looking into the future and assessing the data--a service that a few young companies dealing in "predictive analytics" are selling. Business swims in a sea of data.

Image courtesy of Flickr/Ted Abbott In 2009 California took in $839 million in taxes from the sale of cigarettes. And with its--and many other states’--budget in dire straights, it is hard to turn down any extra income. [More]

For artists, entrepreneurs, and any other driven creators, exercise is a powerful tool in the quest to help transform the persistent uncertainty, fear, and anxiety that accompanies the quest to create from a source of suffering into something less toxic, then potentially even into fuel. For more than thirty years, Haruki Murakami has dazzled the world with his beautifully crafted words, most often in the form of novels and short stories

Breaking news from your Fast Company editors, with updates all day. Amazon's Android Tablet Revealed . Moments before an official press event, Amazon executives revealed details about the company's long-expected tablet PC: It's called Kindle Fire, as rumored, and is a 7-inch color LCD machine that lacks 3G, a camera, and a microphone, but comes with Wi-Fi like its older Kindle e-reader cousins

These days it’s impossible to get anything significant--a phone, car, or house--without having your credit score checked first. And the penalty for having a low score--or worse still, no score--is higher than you might think. According to the non-profit Credit Builders Alliance , individuals with poor numbers can pay $250,000 in extra interest over their lifetime

Box CEO Aaron Levie understands that the less time you spend tied to your desk, the more connected you need to be.

As big businesses and consumers slowly realize that oil prices won't drop precipitously anytime soon, biofuels and biochemicals have begun to look ever more attractive. But up until now, there hasn't been a truly cost-effective way to to make fuel and chemicals out of biomass (i.e switchgrass, woodchips, and other nonedible crops). Enter Renmatix , a Kleiner Perkins-backed startup that emerged from stealth mode today.

There may be nothing new under the sun, but beneath the sea is a different story. Scientists studying 28 years of data from the Atlantic Ocean have found that climate change is causing drastic changes in fish populations off the European coast--and that's bad news for cold-loving species like cod, which have fed generations of Northern Europeans. The North Sea, a cold wind-swept patch of the Atlantic stretching from Scandinavia to the U.K., is warming four times faster than the global average.

Job boards and Craigslist don't work because everybody's already there.