In one of the happier stories that I've read today, Reuters is reporting that a Polish man unintentionally saved a 110 lb. Saint Bernard who had been thrown out of a two-story window when he walked underneath it. The man, who was definitely caught off-guard (it's hard to prepare for that sort of thing), suffered some bruises, and a little psychological shock from the incident. As for the dog, who'd been defenestrated from said window by a drunken owner, he seems to have escaped with nary a... READ ON

PZ Myers of Pharyngula is trying to identify the fuzzy thing at right: I got a request to help identify this bizarre creature. I'm guessing it's a slug caterpillar, from the family Limacodidae, although I couldn't possibly narrow it down further, and could be completely wrong. Whoever was filming it can be heard telling someone not to touch it—which is a good idea. These things shed fine hairs that can cause a painful allergic rash. It's kind of cute, anyway. ... Update: He thinks it's a puss... READ ON

Back in my old New York apartment, whenever my roommate would jump on the bed, begin shrieking, and start dropping books on the floor, I knew exactly what the sound meant: a spider had infiltrated the house. Today, however, arachnophobes and dreaded bug-fearers the world over can breathe a deep sigh of relief: Eurocosm is featuring the greatest bug-catching device on the market, the Spider Catcher! The device works by simply squeezing a handle to open and close the bristles delicately around a... READ ON

We promise, we'll quit with the ice-cream fixation once the weather cools down, but: In its quest to create ice cream as voluptuous as butter and as virtuous as broccoli, the ice cream industry has probed the depths of the Arctic Ocean, studied the intimate structures of algae and foisted numerous failures on the American public. ... For Americans who spend each summer wrestling with temptation, there is fresh hope in the freezer case. New industrial processes, including one that involves a protein cloned... READ ON