Platte Flats, Utah, June 29, 2166 -- Extra-terrestrials from the planet Koob in the star system Rigel Kentaurus announced today their 200,000-year program of observing and testing human life is now complete.

Koobian Holograph Device

The announcement is expected to come as a welcome relief to the millions of individuals whose generally unwilling participation in the program has long been met with ridicule, ostracism and flawed diagnoses of mental disorders.

Reno, September 22, 2155 -- The festivities were frolicsome, the conversation frivolous, and as the last of the guests slip one by one through the vapor-lock and into their plasma cubes for the bounce home, the hosts sigh at the hurricane-like swath of residue left by the merriment: glass shards, cracker crumbs, innumerable dribblings of hors d'oeuvres. But do they don decontaminant apparel and reach for broom and dustpan?

Individual NannoGoat (shown in front of a half-inch $500 coin)

Fort Meade, Maryland, August 12, 2006 -- With all the controversy surrounding President Bush's illegal NSA (National Security Agency) wiretap surveillance program, some of the benefits and the remarkable technological successes brought into being by the admittedly unconstitutional operation can be easily overlooked. One of these unheralded achievements carries attributes that many will find surprising: namely, four legs and a tail. Meet Mother, the NSA's router-sniffing spy dog.

Washington, D.C., December 12, 2005 -- The Federal Emergency Magnifying Agency (FUBAR) has posted a new consumer preparedness section on its Ready.gov "Panic Now Before We're All Dead" site dedicated to improving citizen readiness in the likely event of a near-certain imminent deadly bird flu outbreak. Michael Brown, former FUBAR head and currently sub-assistant layout coordinator for the Ready.gov site, said, "It's a real hit. This site tells you everything you need to know to get ready for an avian flu epidemic. Pandemic. Epidemic? Does anybody know what the difference is?"