“…we suffer from damn stupid design, as many readers noted in response to our seasonal competition, which asked how you would modify the human body if you were not restricted in any way. As Stephan Peters puts it: ‘The human body is crammed full of messy plumbing, circuitry, scaffolding, dodgy components and building materials, and is riddled with workarounds to compensate for poor initial design as a result.'” (New Scientist Back Page)

“Australian scientists have proved what is common knowledge to most people — that teaspoons appear to have minds of their own.

In a study at their own facility, a group of scientists from the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health in Melbourne secretly numbered 70 teaspoons and tracked their movements over five months. Supporting their expectations, 80 percent of the spoons vanished during the period — although those in private areas of the institute lasted nearly twice as long as those in communal sections.

‘At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a workable population of 70 teaspoons,’ they wrote in Friday’s festive edition of the British Medical Journal.

They said their research proved that teaspoons were an essential part of office life and the rapid rate of disappearance proved that this was under relentless assault.

Regretting that scientific literature was ‘strangely bereft’ of teaspoon-related research, the scientists offered a few theories to explain the phenomenon.

Taking a tip from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books, they suggested that the teaspoons were quietly migrating to a planet uniquely populated by ‘spoonoid’ life forms living in a spoonish state of Nirvana.

They also offered the phenomenon of ‘resistentialism’ in which inanimate objects like teaspoons have a natural aversion to humans.” (Yahoo! News)

“NASA scientists have observed an explosion on the moon. The blast, equal in energy to about 70 kg of TNT, occurred near the edge of Mare Imbrium (the Sea of Rains) on Nov. 7, 2005, when a 12-centimeter-wide meteoroid slammed into the ground traveling 27 km/s.

‘What a surprise,’ says Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) researcher Rob Suggs, who recorded the impact’s flash. He and colleague Wes Swift were testing a new telescope and video camera they assembled to monitor the moon for meteor strikes. On their first night out, ‘we caught one,’ says Suggs.” (NASA)