h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I first understood 'sneezing'

'Large amounts' of water on Moon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8359744.stm

I'm still not going until they discover tea bags there too.

Tea bags on the moon? You must be joking.

Tea leaves are the way!

Actually, tea bags aren't all that bad if you, immediately after breaking the plastic packaging, put the bags into a good old tin with a tight lid. If left exposed to air, the tea in the bags will dry up and loose flavour pretty soon.

Ah - but there's no air on the moon.

You can have your teabags vacuum unpacked

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ixp5pUOHs8ddQ3zD6fPbzec9U9BAD9BUQCI80

Clint Eastwood made Legion of Honor commander

'"We know the brain has been evolving in human populations quite recently," said paleoanthropologist John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Surprisingly, based on skull measurements, the human brain appears to have been shrinking over the last 5,000 or so years.

"When it comes to recent evolutionary changes, we currently maybe have the least specific details with regard the brain, but we do know from archaeological data that pretty much everywhere we can measure — Europe, China, South Africa, Australia — that brains have shrunk about 150 cubic centimeters, off a mean of about 1,350. That's roughly 10 percent," Hawks said.'

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575091,00.html?test=latestnews

This may help to explain the success of Fox News.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3560528.html?menu=news.quirkies

and they - criminals or police - didn't notice??

They aren't exactly small!

They should have kept it and adopted it, then go around town singing songs about robbery and their pet lion. Just like in Kardemommeby.

Having a taste of sleeping in "Hamster's Villa" (includes a 2-metre wheel to run in)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/10/content_12424043.htm

The Hamster Villa sounds the perfect thing to attarct the 'furry pound':

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8355287.stm

"Lenya looks adorable, with lots of glossy white fur, black paws, a shiny pink nose and cute little pointed ears.

But Lenya is also a 48-year-old computer network administrator called Marshall Woods, who likes motor racing, visiting museums and reading crime novels in his spare time.

Mr Woods is what is known as a furry and Lenya is a "fursona" he has created, which he described as a "sort of space weasel". As part of getting into character he wears a handmade, full-size fursuit.

Furry Fandom, furrydom, furdom - it's called many things - has momentarily found itself in the spotlight in the UK, due to a court case where the two defendants met on a furry website."

Ooh, furries: http://xkcd.com/629/

and, more topically, http://xkcd.com/471/

OMG! I'll just go and fetch my gun, to ensure I comply with UK law, "Tally Ho! Furries".

Belle de Jour is a research scientist living in Bristol:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6917495.ece

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/renouncing-islamism-to-the-brink-and-back-again-1821215.html

"Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again"

"In the mosques across the city, I hear a fringe of young men talk dreamily of flocking to Afghanistan to "resist". Yet this whisper never has an immigrant accent. It shares my pronunciations, my cultural references, and my national anthem. Beneath the beards and the burqas, there is an English voice.

[...]

"Yet they felt equally shut out of British or democratic identity. From the right, there was the brutal nativist cry of "Go back where you came from!" But from the left, there was its mirror-image: a gooey multicultural sense that immigrants didn't want liberal democratic values and should be exempted from them. Again and again, they described how at school they were treated as "the funny foreign child", and told to "explain their customs" to the class. It patronised them into alienation.

""Nobody ever said – you're equal to us, you're one of us, and we'll hold you to the same standards," says Husain. "

A group of party girls got more than they bargained for when they were recruited to attend a posh do in Rome on Sunday night. Instead of canapés and cocktails, the 200 young women found themselves being encouraged to become Muslims.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8362525.stm

They were probably expecting a Berlusconi bash and instead got Qaddaffi!!

This one seemed a bit odd. A man found a gun and went to the police station and handed it in. There he was arrested for possession of a firearm and may spend 5 years in prison.

http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/news/Ex-soldier-faces-jail-handing-gun/article-1509082-detail/article.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8362658.stm

This is rather intriguing, I used to read a lot of Moorcock in my younger days.