What is going on with buses in Canada?

A woman just attacked a Toronto bus driver with a hammer for not dropping her off soon enough, the AP reports.

Our theory: Greyhound jinxed the industry with that marketing campaign "There's a reason you've never heard of bus rage."

They pulled the ads after the recent Greyhound bus decapitation in Manitoba, but not soon enough to remove the bus rage curse . . .

According to The New York Post, nudism - including nude dining, yoga and stand-up comedy - is all the rage. One such club discussed in the article:

About 50 diners - whose motto is "no hot soup" - regularly turn up for Ordover's monthly meals held at venues including the Mercantile Grill on Pearl Street and Pete's Downtown in Brooklyn. They're served by regular restaurant staff - forced by city laws to keep their clothes on.

Here's the answer to our first question: the naked diners bring their own sheets and towels to sit on. Our second question, though, remains unanswered: Sure it's hot, but what's wrong with air conditioning?

Last week, we interviewed the World Champion Chessboxer, a 19-year-old Russian math student, for TIME magazine, and remembered why we love our job: we get to research things like chessboxing.

The matches work like this: competitors alternate between three-minute rounds of boxing and four-minute rounds of speed chess with one-minute breaks in between to get the gloves off and hunker down at the chess table. The winner is determined by knockout, checkmate, or referee decision.

Here's an excerpt from our conversation with the winner, Nikolaj Sazhin:

Our friend Brendan Kennedy at MTV just filed this report about the biggest online dance battle of all time, now raging on YouTube. The competitors: Miley Cyrus and her friend Mandy versus the ACDC dancers.

Here's the original April volley by Adam Sevani (Moose from Step Up 2: The Streets, which looks awesome) and Jon Chu (the movie's director).

Miley and Mandy generated this response. Then Chu smoked the girls with an answer (above) that featured Adam Sandler, Diana Ross and Lindsay Lohan. Miley appeared to be defeated. Then this happened . . .

Woo-hoo, it's Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day! This year's theme: Making Choices for a Better World.

There are no kids in our office today. We're thinking the holiday may have jumped the shark. Here are a few theories why:

1. They made the already too-long name Take Our Daughters to Work Day even longer when they added Sons in 2003. More importantly, this move diluted its original mission, which was to get more women in the workplace and to make sure young women knew that they could make their own money.

2. Back in the day, the holiday was very rah-rah, yes-you-can, little girl! But now when you tell the official site's Dream Calculator you want to run the country, it's all, "Are you sure?"

This AP story on the world's oldest person, 115-year-old Edna Parker, has a lot of sunny details about balloons and roses, and it's all very lovely, but what we wanted to know was how did she do it?

The article, anticipating this question, runs down the latest developments in longevity research. Basically, here's what you need to live past 100:

1. Amazing mutant genes that ward off aging.
2. Healthy habits.
3. The ability to handle stress well.

The various life expectancy calculators around the web more or less concur with that estimation, although they give more weight to one element or the other. We just took this quiz and were told we should live to 95. This one says 89. So we're convinced the first one is superior.

How long does it say you'll live? Does that sound about right to you? Would you even want to live to be more than 100 if it meant outliving your children like Edna has?

MSN today has an item on its homepage that appears to be vying for the Guinness World Record for Most Clichés in a Lifestyle Post. It's called the Wife's Bill of Rights, and here's a sample:

Amendment I
We have the right to dislike your buddies.
We know it's important for you to have your guy friends, but you should know by now that we're not turned on by your stories of the good old days at college, your sexual exploits, or which relief pitcher the Red Sox should trade. Disappear for a while and be boys-it's OK, go chug beer and high-five-but please don't expect us to be happy when your friends come over and put their feet on our coffee tables or leave their beer cans on the floor.

We just ran a piece on Babble about baby sign language, which (at least in our part of the country) has become incredibly popular of late. In "Hands Across America: Is baby sign language an essential or a rip-off?" Pamela Paul writes:

Baby signing - for babies who can hear perfectly well - has become something of an epidemic. Classes are taught everywhere - from community centers to music schools to Y's to prenatal yoga centers. Dozens of books (including a Complete Idiot's Guide to Baby Sign Language), videos, DVDs and workshops from companies like KinderSigns purport to teach the method to parents eager to foster early language skills in their infants.

Airport indignities - from requiring booties be taken off a sleeping baby at security to unexplained multi-hour delays - have started to make the Greyhound bus station seem downright pleasant by comparison.

Today, American Airlines canceled 200 flights, 10% of its schedule, to inspect certain aircrafts. It's not like security and safety aren't the top priority. And God knows it's better to make sure there are no problems rather than let a faulty craft go up in the sky.

Still, we can't help but think of all those poor people (hundreds, the report says) stranded at the airport with no recourse.

We just ran an article on Babble this week called "The Six Biggest Pregnancy Myths: In defense of sushi, cheese, hair dye - and common sense." It immediately, inevitably got a gazillion comments about fetal alcohol syndrome.

But the author of the story, L.J. Williamson, isn't saying pregnant women should go out and become raging alcoholics or eat cat litter. She's just saying the anxiety about what pregnant women eat and drink has gone too far. She writes:

As I was preparing to leave the hospital after the birth of my son, a nurse sat me down and solemnly told me that it was very important, while breastfeeding, to "avoid all spicy foods like Mexican or Indian." I imagined a sari-clad wife cradling a newborn and looking on sadly as her Mexican husband cleared their refrigerator of tikka masala, pork vindaloo, and chorizo sausage, restocking it with a twelve-month supply of Swanson's Hungry Man Meatloaf Dinners.

We just ran a piece on Babble excerpted from the book Microtrends about how the number of old new dads is on the rise. The authors, Mark Penn and Kinney Zalesne, report that:

In recent years, much fuss has been made about Older Moms, and how women's careers plus advances in fertility treatments are prompting childbearing up to, and even past, the age of 40.

But what's missing is attention to the Dads, who are also increasingly older, and who don't face the same biological hard-stop that kicks in for most women around age 40.

Check out this chart, which graphs rising paternal age:

A St. Louis town is contemplating a bill that would ban swearing, drinking contests, table dancing and other typical drunken behavior from bars. City officials claim crowds in downtown St. Charles get a little too rowdy and hard to control after a night out. So to combat the problem, cuss words and dancing might become illegal.

Burning Question Number One:

How will banning filthy language in bars help to control an overly drunk crowd of people? Besides that, isn't it an unnecessary violation of the first amendment to tell people they can't say a four letter word in an adult atmosphere? Saying bad words doesn't harm anyone. They just shouldn't be said in front of young children, or to degrade a race of people. Other than that, anyone should be allowed to say whatever word they wish to say.

Burning Question Number Two:

No table dancing? Really? Table dancing doesn't hurt anyone! In fact, I encourage table dancing! Nothing generates love and happiness in a bar more than a woman moving the beat of great music. In fact, if people want to get on top of a table to express themselves in a drunken rumba, I say kudos to them!

Here's a Thought:

If a crowd of people get too rowdy after a night of drinking, why not limit how much alcohol they can have rather than banning cuss words and dancing? I don't think there should be a three drink maximum. But bartenders should be able to say no to customers when they're getting out of hand. Banning drinking games in bars might actually be a good idea for this particular St. Louis town. Making sure bartenders don't keep giving people drinks while they're falling on the floor from over-intoxication could be another good idea.

Let's focus of real problems people! Free speech and dancing is what makes this country great. Let's not snatch it away from our fun-loving counterparts.

Finally 2008, the future is here.
Children are often said to be the future. So what do you think a future where billions of poor children from all corners of the globe have access to a laptop.
Well, the future is now with One Laptop Per Child.

via videosift.com

I love the technocrats and their charity ideas. Just think, in 10 years when these kids are adults maybe they will have knowledge to start a business, or learn how to provide energy and clean water to their village, the possibilities are endless. So these kids will gain knowledge to improve their communities, now all they need is money to get started.

Enter Kiva.

via videosift.com

Sending mail from beyond the grave is the hot new thing for the dead set. This AP story explains how an Oregon man arranged to send Christmas cards out this year after he had died. The cards (return address: Heaven) read:

"I asked Big Guy if I could sneak back and send some cards. At first he said no; but at my insistence he finally said, 'Oh well, what the heaven, go ahead but don't (tarry) there.' Wish I could tell you about things here but words cannot explain.

"Better get back as Big Guy said he stretched a point to let me in the first time, so I had better not press my luck. I'll probably be seeing you (some sooner than you think). Wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Chet Fitch"

If you don't have a friend who will abet you in such a stunt, there's always MyLastEmail.com, which will send out emails from you at some appointed date after your death. The weirdly corporate-looking site's mission statement reads: