Until someone else tops this, this will officially be the grossest story covered this day. In Taiwan, while being trucked to a facility where scientists can conduct research (or the autopsy), a 60-ton dead sperm whale blew up all over the street. As in all over the street, all guts, all gory, reports MSNBC. Eww.

The biology and physics lessons implicit here are that the decomposition of dead biological material in a corpse produces gas as a by-product. And that if this gas does not escape, like a balloon waiting to pop, it places strain and pressure on its containing vessel until something finally has to give. Either that, or the whale decided to pass gas post-mortem. Researchers at the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan say that there's still enough of the whale to research.

Oh please, you're not looking at this story because of the implicit biology and physics lesson, are you? Gee, maybe some whale blubber will go well with some microwaved giant calamari.

Watching the documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" made me squirm - not because it's fugly, but because of the thought that those documentary scenes could happen to our Earth if we don't take appropriate actions.

So what's with the global warming talk? If you live in the Midwest and East parts of North America, then you'd know that these places are experiencing an unusually warm winter.

MSNBC reports that temperatures are running 10 and 10 degrees higher than normal in those places. Ice fishing tournaments in Minnesota were cancelled for lack of ice and golfers at Chicago are having a grand time at the fairways.

Nothing wrong with that, but heck, it's still January. In fact, New York City experienced a November and December without snow for just the second time. The first time that happened was way back in 1877.

Meteorologists have given explanations as to the possible reasons of the weird weather. They said that this due to the combination of El Nino and jet stream. El Nino can lead to milder weather especially now that it is under way in the Pacific Ocean; while jet stream, which is a high-altitude air-current responsible for holding back warm Southern air, is going farther north than usual over the East Coast.

This is also affecting winter-related businesses. Ski resorts are praying for cold weather to arrive soon and firewood businesses are struggling to make ends meet. As for the global warming clause, meteorologists also said that this weather change isn't caused by global warming since weather is somewhat prone to short-term fluctuations. That's the silver lining in this scenario...for now.

Virgin Galactic, a division of the Virgin group owned by multi-millionaire Richard Branson plans to have it's own plane/rocket hybrids in flight as early as 2008. Former soap star Victoria Principal, designer Philippe Starck and a senior member of an unidentified royal family have already snapped up tickets for one of the worlds first space tourist flights in 2008.

Self-made millionaire Branson told MSNBC on Monday that Virgin Galactic were on track to launch the sub-orbital flights for the year after next and that they have already sold tickets to its first 150 passengers at no less than $200,000 per ticket! Along with the 150 passengers with tickets already, Virgin Galactic confirmed that 300 potential passengers were going through a detailed reservation process while 60,000 had registered interest via the Virgin Galactic Web site. Design work on Virgin's SpaceShipTwo spacecraft that will most likely carry the passengers is expected to be completed next year.

The spacecraft to be used by Virgin is based on SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 won the $10 million Ansari X prize offered to the first private organisation to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. Virgin Galactic are building five models of SpaceShipTwo, a larger version of SpaceShipOne. Virgin said that the $200,00 customers will spend only 15 minutes in space, including just five minutes of weightlessness.