TORONTO (Reuters) – Dogs chomping on mail carrier-shaped treats is no laughing matter for Canada Post.
The unamused Canadian postal service — whose carriers endure more than their share of real dog bites — convinced Pet Valu stores to stop carrying Bark Bars, dog biscuits that come shaped like cats and letter carriers.
I don’t know about your mail carrier, but mine doesn’t resemble these treats at all. 
According to Reuters, ever since mid-January, various electronic devices have been spontaneously combusting in the now evacuated town of Canneto di Caronia, Sicily; at this point, the fires are almost daily. The town has been disconnected from the larger electrical grid and was hooked to a generator, but that, too, caught fire. Even unplugged items have succumbed. Nothing seems to have burst into flame except where there is someone present to witness it, but the police no longer suspect a prankster — after witnessing wires catch fire without cause. Scientists have yet to explain the phenomenon (although unproven theories abound), leading many people to look to supernatural causes. 
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This is Mohammed Bah Abba’s Pot-in-pot invention. In northern Nigeria, where Mohammed is from, over 90% of the villages have no electricity. His invention, which he won a Rolex Award for (and $100,000), is a refrigerator than runs without electricity.
Here’s how it works. You take a smaller pot and put it inside a larger unglazed pot. Fill the space in between them with wet sand, and cover the top with a wet cloth. When the water evaporates, it pulls the heat out with it, making the inside cold. It’s a natural, cheap, easy-to-make refrigerator.
So, instead of perishable foods rotting after only three days, they can last up to three weeks. Obviously, this has the potential to change their lives. And it already has — there are more girls attending school, for example, as their families no longer need them to sell food in the market.
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LONDON (Reuters) – The Three Wise Men who followed the star to Bethlehem bearing gifts for the baby Jesus may not have been all that wise — or even men.
The traditional infant Nativity play scene could be in for a drastic rewrite after the Church of England indulged in some academic gender-swapping over the three Magi at its General Synod in London this week.
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On Jan. 2, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft flew through a 14,000-mile-an-hour hail of debris from the Wild 2 comet. Under this withering barrage, the ship’s objective was not only to survive, but to use a collector made of a bizarre substance to gather an unaltered sample of five-billion-year-old dust and gas ejected by the comet. NASA is using a substance called ‘aerogel’ in the Stardust spacecraft to catch pieces of the Wild-2 comet.
The NYT is running an article about some other amazing aerogel properties. My favourite quote about aerogel: ‘It’s the lowest density of any solid, and it has the highest thermoinsulation properties. Though it would be very expensive, you could take a two or three bedroom house, insulate it with aerogel, and you could heat the house with a candle. But eventually the house would become too hot.’
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Chrysler ME Four-Twelve
The AMG-developed all-aluminum 6.0-liter V12 engine produces 850 horsepower and 850 lb-ft of torque, and the car has a curb weight of only 2,880 pounds. Power get transferred to the wheels via a 7-speed transmission using the latest double wet-clutch technology and electronic controls. The transmission delivers uninterrupted torque to the rear wheels, shifting between gears in 200 milliseconds.
The ME Four-Twelve is intended to set new performance standards for a mid-engine rear-wheel-drive sports car. Chrysler expects the ME Four-Twelve to set new performance standards for a rear-wheel-drive mid-engine sports car: a top speed of 248 mph (400 kph), accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds and from zero to 100 mph in 6.2 seconds. Believe me, that’s STINKIN’ FAST! It’ll pass everything but a gas pump. 
[EDITED 1/16/04] For a few other 2004 NAIAS pictures we took in Detroit on January 15th, see the autoshow photo album.
Tonight we are experiencing a spectacular lunar eclipse. It started around 6:15 and at 7:15 it is almost fully covered. We have a very clear night for viewing but it is too darn cold out to sit out on lawn chairs.
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NATIONAL POST “A pillar of the Kyoto Accord is based on flawed calculations, incorrect data and an overtly biased selection of climate records, an important new paper reveals.”
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Scrambled words are legible as long as first and last letters are in place. Word of mouth has spread to other blogs, and articles as well. From the languagehat site: ‘Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.’ Bad splelnig no logner nedes to hlod aynnoe bcak! 
In new observations of a distant region of primitive stars, astronomers have found the oldest known planet, a huge gaseous object almost three times as old as Earth and nearly as old as the universe itself.
The discovery, based on measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope, challenged scientists to rethink theories of how, when and where planets form. It is tantalizing evidence, astronomers said, that planets began appearing billions of years earlier than previously thought and so may be more abundant.
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