Mars Seen As Poor Vacation Destination!

While Elvis continues enjoying his indefinite stay with his lil' Martian buddies -- providing free concerts, devouring endless jelly doughnuts, and posing for the "Face on Mars" -- scientists keep debating whether that planet is really such a great getaway destination.

Ever since we discovered huge riverbeds and frozen water on Mars back in the '70's (curiously right around the time Elvis, ahem!, "died") astrophysicists have had this idea that the place used to be pretty hospitable and only became a barren, meteor-scarred, forsaken wateland in comparatively recent times.  But now a student at Colorado U in Boulder (with her professor and some others) has decided that's baloney!

According to doctoral candidate Teresa Segura, Mars has always been a rotten place.  It's just that the place is periodically slammed by gargantuan asteroids that fill the thin air with dirt and scalding hot water, which then rains back down and carves out the fabled riverbeds.  See a report she gave on it back in April, 2002 here.

What A Guy!

Cuddly Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to give UN Weapons Inspectors the right of way so they can prove how benign and innocent they are.  This one day after his VP declared, "They're all spies, I tell you!  Spies, all spies!"

Meanwhile, the former head of Saddam's nuclear weapons program says the lovable tyrant just has an inferiority complex.

Talk About Your Paradigms!

According this this story on CBS, the most popular toy in Pakistan is the Osama bin Laden action figure!  Says one deluded kid, "As you know, Osama is very popular in the whole world!  The same thing is happening in Pakistan. People like him, and he has become a celebrity now."

Pardon me while I shudder involuntarily.

"Children like Osama's car!" declares an equally enthused little girl.  "They want to buy toys like Osama's cars or Osama's guns."

Osama's car?!  What the heck kind of car is he famous for??