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.

Ottawa, Kansas, April 6, 2008 -- The presidential campaign of dark-horse candidate Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) may be facing an new hurdle with the announcement that the virulently anti-abortion neo-conservative is pregnant. The Brownback pregnancy is, in the words of campaign press spokesman Diana Herodias, "really not part of the game plan and may create some serious challenges to our crusade for the White House".

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?"