So there’s this choir in Poland, and they’re in the middle of a storm, and there’s about 37 of them.

One of them has a video camera and starts filming the storm outside when from out of nowhere comes this tornado, which flips the whole goldarned bus, with everyone in it, and the guy still filming!

Of course the only reason I’m putting this link up is because no one got seriously hurt.

You can watch the video here.

The Time Magazine website’s just posted up a supercool slideshow about meteorites and the damage they’ve caused on earth. Some pretty awesome pictures there, but the real fascination comes from the strong reminder the photos present that when it comes to cataclysmic meteor strikes on earth, it’s not a question of “if” but “when”.

Check out the slideshow by clicking on this link.

People don’t usually toss lots of junk into a city water reservoir, unless as part of a comic-book villain’s plot to take over the world or something.

But the Ivanhoe Reservoir in Los Angeles recently got 400,000 shimmering black plastic balls dumped into it for reasons that sound like they also cam from a comic book story.

Called “shade balls”, the spheres were meant to block the sun’s rays from entering the water and triggering a rare reaction between sunlight and chlorine which produces with bromate, a known carcinogen.

The balls are just a temporary fix, though, while the city sets up a permanent underground reservoir.

Take this 17-pound, black-skinned marvel of watermelon-ness. Last Friday, it fetched a record $6,100 at a market in Hokkaido. That comes out to around $360 a pound.

Why spend so much on the so-called “Densuke” watermelon? Because, says a spokesperson for the Tohma Agricultural Cooperative, it has a “different level of sweetness”.

Sweet, indeed.

Tickets–check.

Food and beer–check.

Face paint–check.

Tick vaccine–check?

With some six million football fans expected to descend upon Switzerland and Austria for this year’s Euro 2008 in June, scientists are sending out an advisory to be careful of ticks.

13,000 people were hospitalized in Eurpoe for tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) last year, up 30% from last year. TBE is endemic to Switzerland and Austria, so if you’re going, make sure your behind is covered, so to speak.

A report published in Singapore revealed a sharp increase in consumption of shark’s fins over the past year. More than 470 tons of shark’s fins (just the fins, mind you) were eaten in Singapore in 2007, compared with only 182 tons in 2006.

This increase was directly linked by the report to higher incomes and increased number of weddings (24,000 to be exact–the highest number since 1990), at which shark’s fins are served to guests as a delicacy.

Thousands of bats have been dying since March of this year due to a mysterious outbreak known only by the telltale white substance on the heads and wings of the bat carcasses.

“White-nose syndrome” was first observed February last year, and has continued to attack bat colonies and mystify scientists. Other symptoms seen in the dead animals include emaciation, lung problems and a microscopic fungi growing on their bodies. Affected species include little brown bats, big brown bats, northern long-eared bats and eastern pipistrelle bats.

If you notice a large-scale die-off of animals in your area you can report it by clicking on this link.

Rare-animal researchers seem to be working extra-hard lately. First there was that mythical Vietnamese turtle a couple of weeks ago, and now a team of US and Filipino biologists have found a specimen of a dwarf cloud rat (it was dead when they found it, though) in the northern mountain territories of the Philippines. It was only the second such sighting in history, and scientists know almost nothing about the elusive creature, apart from the fact that it spends its life in tree branches, living in high rain forest canopies.