Corruption on the rise?
"The world is a more corrupt place now than it was three years ago, a poll suggests. Some 56 per cent of people interviewed by Transparency International said their country had become more corrupt," BBC News reports. "In Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq and India, more than 50 per cent of people said they had paid a bribe in the past year - many of them paying off the police. Meanwhile, a BBC poll suggests that corruption is the world's most talked about problem."
Think you're a big eater?
"The filter-feeding strategy of blue whales, the largest animals on Earth, may explain their enormous size, according to a study that determined a single mouthful of food can contain 457,000 calories, or 240 times as much energy as they burn when grabbing that mouthful," Livescience.com reports. "Blue and some other whale species eat by taking enormous mouthfuls of water and filtering out their meals, often tiny crustaceans called krill, using plates of baleen made of keratin, a protein found in hair, fingernails and feathers. A team of researchers led by Jeremy Goldbogen, who is now at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, calculated the efficiency of eating this way. Their math supports the long-standing assumption that baleen whales are much more efficient feeders than their smaller relatives, the toothed whales, which hunt down individual prey. … Although the finding isn't a surprise, the baleen whales' efficiency is unprecedented in the animal kingdom, said study researcher Robert Shadwick, who studies animal biomechanics at the University of British Columbia."
On history's dung heap
"Researchers say a curled-up brown fossil dredged up off the Dutch coast is an ancient piece of hyena dung, the first found in the North Sea dating back to the Late Pleistocene era, 12,000 to 100,000 years ago," Associated Press reports. "Jelle Reumer, director of the Rotterdam Natural History museum, called the prehistoric piece of poop 'a beauty.' It was found during work to expand Rotterdam's port and went on display [last]Thursday. Reumer, a paleontologist, said the dung was dated by its sediment layer. He hopes a second example is found so it can be broken apart, studied and dated more exactly."
Comic stripped
"It's been a tough time of late for adventurous redheads on the comics pages," the Chicago Tribune says of the changing roster on its funny pages. "Little Orphan Annie ran out of tomorrows six months ago. Now, the deadline is fast approaching for reporter Brenda Starr's final edition. After one last office holiday party on Jan. 2, the seven-day-a-week Brenda Starr, Reporter will go the way of the Teletype."
E-vengeance
"Vengeance is generally very personal," Thedailybeast.com says. "There's the jilted lover who slashes an ex's tires in the middle of the night; or the disgruntled employee who sneaks toilet water into his or her boss's tea. That said, it doesn't mean you couldn't use a little help posting elephant droppings, or tricking an ex into thinking [he or she]has an STD. Lucky for those who don't believe that 'revenge is a dish best served cold,' it seems that it has never been easier, with the Internet offering a variety of services to exact some payback. 'Alex,' the founder of www.crabrevenge.com, says he doesn't have any morals or ethics and so doesn't feel any twinge when sending off packages of pubic lice to customers. Notably, he says, nine out of 10 of them are women. 'We get both hilarious and heart-warming feedback from our customers. One female customer told us that we saved her marriage by successfully taming her philandering husband.' "
Cats aren't as needy
"Dogs have more to look for under the tree this Christmas than cats do," Associated Press says. "Fifty-six per cent of dog owners say they'll buy their pets a gift this Christmas, but only 48 per cent of cat owners plan a gift. A majority of all pet owners - 53 per cent - said in an Associated Press-Petside.com poll that they plan to get their animals a present this holiday season."
Thought du jour
"I have never for one instant seen clearly within myself; how then would you have me judge the deeds of others."
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), Belgian writer and Nobel laureate