Anybody remember the benches in
Transmetropolitan
, that heated themselves overnight to stop people sleeping on them? Somewhere in China has gone one step further:
Park officials in China have found a way to stop people from hogging their benches for too long – by fitting steel spikes on a coin-operated timer.
If visitors at the Yantai Park in Shangdong province, eastern China, linger too long without feeding the meter, dozens of sharp spikes shoot through the seat.
[Caution about the limited reliability of ‘funny old world’ type stories about China, of course]