One more thing: today's other news

Today's alternative tech news has taken a turn for the surreal – tablets are going to kill you, Apple's got too much money, the Pope has said some stuff, Angry Birds are going to ruin Valentine's Day and soon there'll be an iPad case you can shag.

I know, right? Digest this one with a stiff drink and you'll be fine.

iPads are nice, but… - Fleshlight, they of the anatomically detailed sex mannequins, are making an iPad case you can get down and do the bad thing with. Pretty sure this is not what Steve Jobs had in mind you guys. [Gizmodo]

Tablets: bad for your health – A crack team of scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health have looked at tablets and deemed them a danger to your health – nope, not down to the soon-to-be-real risk of STDs, but on account of them not having been ergonomically designed. Can't see that stopping anyone though, really. [Fudzilla]

Death to SMS – A crack team of investigative journalists reckoned that iMessage might be reducing the number of text messages that iPhone users send. And then they made some charts and found that, yeah, probably that's true. File this under No Shit Sherlock. [The Next Web]

Apple's golden boots are too heavy – Poor old Apple. That mountain of cash it's been building up over the past few years is now too darn big ($98 billion big) and it's shareholders are all, yo what up? Nightmare. Sure, there's something about taxes in there, and some talk of dividends and stock values and stuff, but all we can hear is the $98 billion dollar cash pile. At least Apple's sharing the love with its store staff, who can now get $500 off a Mac and $250 off an iPad. Jammy gits. [Economic Times, Slashgear]

Google's global – Google is now the world's most global website. Well thank you, Captain Obvious. [The Next Web]

Angry Facebook - One for the romantics among you – Angry Birds is coming to Facebook on Valentine's Day. Spend all 14 February on it and you could have an angry bird of your own on your hands. GROAN. [Penn-Olson]

PopeBook - Not for the first time, Pope Benedict XVI has blessed social networking, as long as we aren't all so busy tweeting and liking that we neglect to cultivate our inner lives. He is just so down with the kids. [Guardian]

See-through phone – not sure why exactly you'd want a see-through phone but this guy Jsus has designed one for Sony. Now all they have to do now is work out how to make all the components invisible and Bob's your uncle. [Android Advices]

So modest – "If you look between Gingerbread and Honeycomb and some of the stuff that we did on there with TouchWiz, a lot of those features are now part of Ice Cream Sandwich, so I think we're definitely leading the way," boasts Samsung's Ryan Bidan. Reminds us of that time Microsoft tried to make out it was the inspiration behind iOS 5. [Laptop Mag, Android Authority]

Theme park of the day – Over in South Korea, they don't do things by halves. Today we're hearing that there's a new theme park on the block that uses Kinect tech and RFID tags to create visitor avatars that can then partake in the the world's most advanced avatar game in the world's largest interactive projection square. Gosh. Sounds like a lot of effort. We'll stick to the teacups for now. [Kotaku]