Since my son started to drink gas, his IQ has dropped sharply and now he can’t figure out simple addition and subtraction. Before that, he was a very smart boy, and he could even repair the television. But now he does not know the answer of 7 plus 17.

No kidding. The worrying thing is that it took a long time for the parents to realise that his son’s habits could be “bad” for him. How long?

He began to drink gasoline five years ago, when we found he liked smelling lighter fuel.

Five years? According to the doctors at the Shanghai hospital where he’s being treated “the gasoline contains a lot of lead, which can do harm to people’s brains. To make thing even worse, the boy is in the physical development stage, and the lead has caused serious damage to his body.” Apparently, the parents have been drinking kerosene for the longest time too.

Poor kid, seriously. I hope the parents get their arse in jail for incompetence. The only positive thing: At least he wasn’t tased. [Shangai Daily via slashfilm-Thanks Gitemsteve!]

The man pretty immediately went up in flames, and the officer, recognising that a man becomes significantly less dangerous once he’s on fire, went to the suspect’s aid, patting him all over (and getting burned himself) to quell the flames. While the officer tried to help the flammable man, he was hit by rocks thrown by a young woman also on the scene, also presumably high or stupid or both. Both the man and woman, as well as two others, were charged with sniffing a prohibited substance, and the young woman was charged with throwing rocks at a policeman. [Daily Telegraph]

In truth, the Californian Sierra Nevada Brewing Company has teamed up with those E-Fuel guys we told you about. E-Fuel has developed a system/machine to turn simple sugar and yeast into alcohol and then ethanol. (Really, it’s not so different from brewing beer.)

Sierra Nevada is installing an EFuel100 MicroFueler in-house to turn 1.6 million gallons of otherwise discarded yeast for brewing (yearly) into the source ingredients of what we’re sure is a very, very tasty high grade ethanol gasoline. We can drink to that. (beer, not ethanol)

You would think that making your own Bio Diesel at home would be a tough, multi-stepped procedure that has a few dangerous spots to misstep. Well before the BioBot, a system that makes Bio Diesel from old cooking oil, you would have been right. Unfortunately, after the BioBot, you would have been right, too. Here is their simple, 8+ step process to make gas at home. And don’t worry, that chemistry beaker is just for show!

Needless to say, we’re being more than a little hard on the BioBot. In reality, it’s a geek-worthy device that can produce almost 20 gallons of gas per cycle. But unless you work at a french fry factory and have a BS in biochemistry, it’s probably worth leaving this method to the pros.

If you’re still interested, the BioBot runs $US5000 and is said to pay for itself in two years. [BioBot via New Launches]