Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Stories below the fold

headline of the day

Mars Rover Detects Simple Organic Compounds

but it remains unclear whether they were formed via Earthly contamination or whether they contain only elements indigenous to the planet.
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Headline of the day take two:

Sweden runs out of garbage, forced to import from Norway

the country relies on waste to heat and to provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes through a longstanding waste-to-energy incineration program. So with citizens simply not generating enough burnable waste to power the incinerators, the country has been forced to look elsewhere for fuel. Says Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency: “We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration.”
They are welcome to come here and clean the garbage from the local vacant lot and open trench sewers...

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 Dave Barry notes that the oh so trendy Turner prize is as classy as ever

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Bald cats are friendliest, but moggies are the grumpiest, study finds

Pedigrees were found to be notably more amiable, and the friendliest of all was the hairless sphynx cat, which was even happy to visit the vet and be bathed. The researchers believed the sphynx’s affectionate nature could be due to its reliance on humans to keep warm.....

Those identified as the most unfriendly were non-pedigree, crossbreed “moggies” — also known as domestic short-haired cats — which are Britain’s most common variety. They scored poor marks for their interactions with humans, being the most likely to ignore their owners and run away from strangers.
 photo from CatManDo blog, who has an article on the favorite cats of movies/tv...

which brings up this trivia question: What is the name of Data's cat (and why should a robot need one)? answer here.

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