In this case, gray squirrels, which are dominating the Northumberland region, once populated with red ones. It’s a highly effective, if somewhat controversial method.

Breaking the monotony of daily prison life in a unique way that rewards the inmates. Televised tomorrow on the Beeb under the title, ‘Miss Gulag’.

Now you might think that this would be news only if the owner were French, for example. In which case, the owner would ignore the cat.

In this case, the cat belongs to a Chinese grandmother, who claims it can say ‘Laolao’, which means grandmother in the dialect of its owner.

It also can say ‘gan sha ne’, which translates to ‘What are you doing?’ Can a cat make the hard ‘g’ sound? Could we see a video, please?

How many cats in the world are asking their non-Chinese owners, ‘What are you doing?’ You have to admit that gan sha ne is probably a lot easier for a cat to say than ‘What are you doing?’ or ‘Where is my food?’

It fits in a mailing envelope, and weighs three pounds less than my current Powerbook G4. Mighty tempting. Mighty. Tempting.

One patient showed remarkable results within ten minutes after the drug was injected. Experts say that Etanercept, usually prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis, might not have this effect on all Alzheimer’s patients.

If the future isn’t here now, it’s coming very soon. The price? Why, compared to the Mercedes SLR McLaren (just under a cool half mil), it’s a steal. While some might argue that the Mercedes does indeed fly, we are talking flight in the aeronautical sense.

Buyers are apparently lining up. In case you’re reaching for your wallet, make sure you have a pilot’s license.

According to the Beeb, one trader bought 1,000 barrels to bring the price up, then sold it immediately for a loss. Just to be able to say he bought oil at $100/bbl.

I tell ya, it gets crazy out there.

There were 6,000 stuffed animals by a self-taught taxidermist, placed in domestic situations such as card playing and taking meals. The auction house sold it off in lots for 336,000 pounds, although an artist, Damien Hirst, offered a million pounds for it all. The owner of the collection is now suing the auction house.

You can see samples of the collection here.

Should any aspiring taxidermist, self-taught or professional, wish to recreate some of these scenes, he is welcome to begin trapping from nature’s bounty of small animals on my property. They are currently in their prime, fat and sleek of coat after a mast year in the oaks. Haste is urged, because they are reproducing at record rates.

Yesterday, a friend recounted the tale of her accident last week on a slick freeway ramp. During the morning commute, an airborne vehicle sailed over the car in the next lane, and collided with hers on the passenger side, sending her down a muddy embankment.

She landed four feet from a tree. The airbags did not inflate. Glass covered the baby seat in back, thankfully, her grandchild was not along. All four tires were flat. The back end was completely caved in. The driver of the other car came running over. The woman in the next lane offered her services as a witness. Another driver stopped and called 911.

The other driver said he swerved to miss the car that cut in front of him. The Highway Patrol thought otherwise, but let it go.

My friend escaped without so much as a scratch. I went over with a plate of homemade chocolates, which she began eating before I was completely inside the door. I told her not to stop till she had eaten it all.

Your hands, your feet too. Oh, and your eyebrow ridge will get all bulgy. Your hair might fall out though.

But don’t try this at home. Or anywhere else for that matter.

The Naz is up over 80 points. I must be having another stock dream, although this one is a bit more positive.

At over eight feet in length, this formidable creature could make quick work of its prey with its 18-inch claws and saw blades on its legs. Nothing about the tail, though.

In the Arctic, three British explorers were surrounded by 17 wolves with blood-stained fur.

This is not the time to think of that Grandpa Simpson quote.

Also known as the sequel to Super Mario Bros. that was not released in the U.S. Now you can play it on the Wii.

A family member has dined at some of the fanciest SF restaurants, and still keeps a Totino’s or two in his freezer. For you, Chris - be sure and read all the comments.

Well, almost.

There I was at Lowe’s, loading up the cart in the almost deserted nursery. There was only one other customer, but then most people don’t shop for flowers at night. Then the big, loud train came by. It shook things the way the trains in The Triplets of Belleville did. A few things slid off some high shelves, but the guy didn’t seem concerned, so I began looking for cyclamen. He meandered out.

A few minutes later, a family member found me. That’s when I learned the entire store had been evacuated. Well, except for us. And that several people were crying out in the parking lot.

I couldn’t help it. I completely cracked up. You see, usually we go to Home Depot (for those not familiar with American home improvement stores, these are the two biggest ones), which is located next to the railroad tracks. Not that I ever experienced such shaking there, but I mean, that’s sort of an excuse.

The ceiling fans and lamps on display were still kind of swaying as we checked out, and quite a few of the store staff were sitting in small groups in the parking lot.

So I missed all the brouhaha, but got to have the fun. I hope my luck holds out next time.

Back in 2004, the Sicilian village residents endured spontaneous fires rising from their cell phones, tvs, refrigerators and other household appliances. After multiple investigations following evacuation of the citizens, no real closure has been achieved.

Person(s) or speculative beings of interest include Satan and aliens. There is talk, serious talk of possible sacrifice to the gods.

Maybe it’s all just a prelude to the coming of the zombies.

All this time, as scientists tried to devise ways to kill the antibiotic-resistant superbug MRSA, the solution was simple and close at hand. Thousands have died when they encountered MRSA in hospitals, especially the elderly and others with suppressed immune systems.

Garlic is powerful medicine.

Among the words during the competition won by Paul Allan: fatwa, valerian, sporidia, genii.

Having succumbed to the Scrabulous mania, all I can say is kex, suqs, and jo.

When a patient tried to commit suicide via antifreeze (the ethylene glycol in it being the culprit), Australian doctors ran out of the antidote - medicinal alcohol. They improvised a drip of vodka to the comatose man, and he survived.

Human leg, that is. As I understand it, the owner became separated from it in after a plane crash. Then he put it in the freezer. Then he hung it on a fence. (I sense that he had a problem finding eligible women.) Then he kept it in his barbecue. Along came financial difficulties. The barbecue was auctioned off. The new owner was horrified at the bonus inside. However. He knew a money-making (Halloween) scheme when he saw it.

However. Word got to the previous owner, who demanded it back.

Nowhere in this story is there a hint of how the leg is being preserved.* I got the freezer part. But afterward, was he smoking it in the barbecue? Doesn’t a leg get an ick factor with time? Is that where the Halloween part occurs, and what is that awful stench?

* Ah yes, it’s currently in the local morgue.

The photographer was taking photos of soldiers and protesters when he was shot. Footage can be seen here.

I seldom do, but the Bumbershoot crowd (every one of them, it seemed stayed at our hotel) was up at all hours, the Seattle skies were gloomy and the music on the radio was less than lively. The rental car had seats softer and more cushy than those of the family station wagon.

Luckily, there were no collisions.

It can afflict a player or a spectator, and affects more men than women.

Perhaps you heard about the turmoil in the stock market over the past few days (weeks). If you own stock, maybe you got sick to your stomach. I spend huge amounts of time staring at numbers, and yesterday, for a long while, I took those numbers off my screen. Went outside. Looked at the tomato plants, deadheaded some flowers. Dropped my camera.

The Feds did their best to soothe matters. When they massage the market, they do it with lots of bucks, $78 billion, in fact. So what exactly does that mean, putting billions into the economy? This is the internet, we have the answer.

Pay close attention to your vegetables. You too might discover a stupendous something to sell on eBay.

Did you take awesome shots on your vacation, only to have some of the views marred with unnecessary clutter or obstructions? Maybe you got a breathtaking pic of a tropical sunset with your beloved in the foreground, and now he’s your ex. Whom you never, ever want to see again, especially blocking a nice sunset.

Help is at hand from a Carnegie Mellon research team using online photo library databases (like Flickr) and that algorithm.

As if things were not distracting enough, helicopters were flying low over the neighborhood this afternoon. At times, it seemed they were circling my roof. I decided the police must be in pursuit of a criminal, and battened down the hatches before leaving.

Obviously, I did not go down Homestead.

Why is this necessary, you might wonder. Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that many California drivers leave their brains (but never their phones) at home before getting in their cars.

Wait till the hoverers hear about it. Maybe in China, guilty parties will be executed.

Not only did San Jose’s Joey Chestnut win by eating 59-1/2 hot dogs in 12 minutes, but he beat out the formidable Takeru Kobayashi, who ate 53-3/4 last year.

We followed Reggie’s remarkable ability to elude would-be alligator catchers at Lake Machado for some time. Not the entire 18 months that he laid low, but a good while.

Now he’s been caught, and city officials are thrilled. But it sounds like Reggie put up a good fight.

His new photography book will feature obese women in poses the NY Times finds too graphic to print.

Maggots win. Where antibiotics have been largely ineffective, maggots step in (squirm in, perhaps) and cure a group of diabetics with MRSA-infected foot ulcers.

Some call it browsing. Others might say drifting or wandering. But getting lost on the internet is now known as ‘What was I Looking For’ or ‘wilfing’, and we all know what that’s like.

Why, just now I was shopping for camera memory, and here I am at the Telegraph in the UK reading about Prince William and his ex-girlfriend. Isn’t that what makes the web fun?

So say researchers in a new study, which finds that Fido’s tail will wag to the right if it likes what it sees. If he spots something scary, the tail wags in the opposite direction.

If it fluffs up something fierce and doesn’t wag at all, maybe you’d best make yourself scarce.

But only under duress. (Isn’t that just like a cat.)

Agui has been filmed saying his name while his owner pretends it’s bathtime. Not sure if it’s up at Youtube yet.

Clearly this wouldn’t work if your cat is named General Custer or even Fluffy.

The former is said to have influenced the latter, whose current exhibition of art and photographs contains disturbing images.

Which probably comes as no suprise to anyone familiar with Lynch’s films.

An African grey parrot’s 950-word vocabulary stuns researchers. Hmmm. Almost a thousand words. Isn’t that more than some politicians can manage?

The boys are aged 4, 7 and 10. After using soaps and shampoos containing lavender and tea tree oils, they smelled great, but they also grew breasts.

There is a segment of the population that will be watching carefully to see if the right researchers show interest in this story. Natural oils that stimulate breast growth? Not every woman who wants enhancement is keen on the idea of implants.

A painting in her husband’s collection from Bacon’s Pope series will be up for auction this week. Christie’s expects a tidy sum to be raised.

Kind of like being trapped in a snowglobe that some nasty kid opened up and peed in.

Oh, and it’s oily and stinks too.

That’s one new term for today, the other being ’spent hen’.

A Saudi Arabian Airlines flight was disrupted when dozens of rodents escaped from a passenger’s bag, and began dropping on the heads of other passengers. Did he get through security by disguising them as lumps of coal? See previous post. Or by cooling them into a state of torpor? See post before previous. Has he been reading my blog?

Bye, Rummy, Bye!

They seem to go for the chest, or maybe that’s the largest part presented to them at the time of the encounter.

Cornell researchers say there seems to be a distinct connection between autism and TV watching by very young children. States where the study took place include California, Washington state, Oregon and Pennsylvania. The proliferation of VCRs and cable TV coincides with the alarming rise of autism starting in 1980.

The researchers are careful to state that they have not found the specific cause of autism. But what they do say should give anyone with kids under 3 serious food for thought.

We live in an age when infants watch videos, and youngsters are kept occupied with DVDs in the back seat during long trips.

Those who follow autism news might be wondering about the Amish, who have extremely low rates of the disorder. The Amish do not watch TV.

In Britain, the hospital superbug Clostridium difficile has claimed at least 49 lives in recent months. It is now considered to be more dangerous than MRSA.

So far, the only defense seems to be steam-cleaning wards, and asking visitors, patients and staff to wash their hands before touching anyone.

For models Qosmio, Tecra, Dynabook, Satellite and Portege.

Possibly swayed by the compelling nature of this recent incident at LAX , IBM and Lenova this morning announce the voluntary recall of 526,000 laptop batteries.

I know my share of people who think the local squirrels are ‘the cutest things’, but now it’s time to rejoice if cities are taking notice of a problem. In Mountain View, they’re becoming agressive, biting small children and leaping into strollers. There is talk of euthanization.

Was it so long ago that we laughed at the idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger in politics?

It’s not so much their dropping out of the sky and scaring festival goers, but the real story is not revealed until a few paragraphs in.

So now pigeons are entering banks to deposit fecal matter on customers.

At Banksy’s LA exhibition, an elephant painted like wallpaper is angering animal rights activists, who have demanded that Tai (the elephant) be repainted with child-safe paint.

Elephants, some of them anyway, know a thing or two about art. So far, no report on what their thoughts on the Banksy business might be.

I’m well aware that many people have difficulty getting to sleep. But perhaps an actual class on sleep techniques is not the best solution.

Back in college, I had more than a few professors whose classes would have been excellent for an insomniac. Especially the American history prof who repeated every important fact twice for the benefit of those who were still awake and actually taking notes. In art school, the shrill-voiced teacher of pre-Columbian art would enunciate the mostly unpronouncable names associated with the subject as we leaned against our seatmates and lost consciousness. I still cannot bring myself to look at it in museums.

But what worked for me might not do for someone else. Perhaps with a bit of guidance, an insomniac could take a series of classes, true. But tailored to their particular likes and dislikes in course subjects. And via a computer hookup so they could watch lectures in bed in order that their heads won’t do that annoying drop thing when sitting upright. Professors of these classes would naturally be chosen for their dull, quiet voices with emphasis on droning. Lots of diagramming on low-contrast blackboards.

Just thinking about it makes me want to drift off.

For certain coral reef fish, gender is not a predetermined thing, as it is for most of us.

Does your laptop or cell phone make you feel sick? Do you feel strangely warm, dizzy or nauseous around electrical equipment?

Perhaps you have electromagnetic hypersensitivity, the subject of a new study by the University of Essex. People who suffer from EHS find it next to impossible to work at their computers or use mobile phones without distress. Some resort to viewing their monitors with binoculars from a distance.

As we adapt to our high-tech lives, was this bound to happen?

A new study shows a link between the age of fathers and the probability of autism. Researchers say that gene mutations may be the culprit, although other factors could be involved.

Being a fairly new fan of the now defunct sci-fi series ‘Farscape’, I am aware that ‘peacekeeper’ is not always a positive, calming word.

But that, of course, is all fiction. Today the Beeb reports that France is sending 1,600 troops to join the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon.

I often joke that my Powerbook can double as a cooking device because it heats up so much. Now Apple announces that it is replacing the lithium-ion batteries in the G4 12-inch iBook, 12 and 15-inch PowerBooks.

But not the 17-inch.

Speed-eating 26 ears of corn in 20 minutes, Emily Cotterill beat out three big male opponents. She’s 13.

Fans of Braveheart remember the vivid blue paint Mel Gibson and his followers wore into battle. That paint is derived from woad, a plant in the broccoli family that contains large amounts of glucobrassicin, a powerful anti-tumor compound that is especially effective against breast cancer.

When AOL goes looking for gold bars in suburban backyards, it comes up with some heavy duty loot. The kind of stuff most of us see only in caper movies.

Users of the service will be the ones with a chance at the gold, the vehicle and $75,000 in cash.

When a friend hosted two students from China recently, she said they could not get enough of The Simpsons during their brief stay.

Looks like they were wise to get a good fix while they could.

With four million Flickr users and their 200 million uploaded photos, that’s quite a database of images. But will customers be lining up to buy?

The truck was moving 25 penguins, an octopus and several fancy fish to a tourist attraction in Galveston. As trucks sometimes do, it overturned, spilling out the penguins and the others, who were protected by plastic bags. Some of the bags, unfortunately, spilled their contents as well, and some fish didn’t make it.

The octopus survived. Most of the penguins huddled in a ditch, and will get to compare notes on exactly what happened. A few died.

What or who is Udderbelly?
a) The latest cow that escaped from a slaughterhouse and emerged a heroine
b) A new band whose members are all morbidly obese
c) the Anti-Cow
d) Performance venue shaped like a cow

Hint: it’s purple

At the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar, a customer can ask a staff member to dress up as someone he would like to beat up. Then he can do so. It’s all part of the plan.

Glassware can be destroyed, and yelling is also permitted. Spraying the aquarium with real bullets is frowned upon, however.

That last was not part of the story, but it was such a memorable scene in F/X.

Can’t we all just take a deep, cleansing breath?

The sexy look of a high heels plus the comfort of a flat. In one shoe. You’re kidding, right?

An idea whose time has definitely come, and one that should be implemented on the majority of high heels.

If you regularly lift more than half your body weight, doctors advise that you’d best get your heart checked. Young and healthy lifters are in danger of torn aortas if they have an undiagnosed aneurysm or an enlargement of the aorta.

Unfortunately, death often occurs because doctors do not think to look for a torn aorta when fit young men show up in the emergency room with chest pains.

The citizens of Lyme Regis in the UK have hurled dead eels at one another for some 30 odd years. It’s a much-anticipated event (conger cuddling, it’s called) of ‘Lifeboat Week’ with funds raised going to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Two teams of nine each stand on flowerpots while a large eel on a rope is utilized to knock as many off as possible, with the last man still standing declared the winner.

However, and there’s always a ‘however’, the animal rights people heard about it. Or should I say, the dead animal rights people.

This year, a buoy was substituted. Needless to say, the traditional spectacle lost some of its charm.