Why the Wombat Smiles

On our 2001 trip to Australia, Lisa noticed that various road signs warning of wombats made the pictured wombat appear to be smiling. I think it's because the womabt knows, tohugh it will likely die immediately if you hit it, you're not going to do so without significant damage to your car if not yourself: Australians in freak wombat crash: Two men in south-eastern Australia have survived unharmed after their truck hit a wombat before crashing off the side of a bridge.

Police have said the airborne vehicle then landed in the top of a tree above a river.

…

The vehicle careered violently out of control, smashed through a guard railing and over the side of a bridge.

The men and their truck then landed in a tree.

After some precarious teetering, they crashed back to earth, falling about 20 feet (6 metres).

Another article: Wombat crash pair survive bridge plunge

Head down to the pub for a cuppa nice warm beer

On one post-Webahead jaunt to London, Todd dragged me into a pub near Covent Garden. He really, really, really wanted to try warm beer. Now, I'd been to the UK a couple of times before and had enjoyed most beers I'd had and found they were cool, not ice cold as in the US, but definitely not warm. As I recall, we ordered two pints of Bass and, I have to admit, it was warm. Not sure if we even finished the pints, as I recall it wasn't exactly a bar for tourists and I think we moseyed on out pretty quickly.

Anyway, a recent UK assessment team found that many beers are being served literally hot, from 20° C to 35° C (68-95° Fahrenheit): British beer 'too hot to handle'The recommended temperature for a hand-pulled pint is from 11C to 13C but assessors found 44% of pints bought in 2,000 UK pubs exceeded 13C.

Real-time Forecast of Earthquake Hazard in the Next 24 Hours

Via Science Daily: Real-Time Forecast of Earthquake Hazard in the Next 24 Hours. It presents a USGS generated map of California which uses color coding to indicate the change in earthquake probability for various zones. It also explicitly states that it's not to be used as an earthquake prediction system, it's just a statistical mapping of data based on past data and recent events.