Tuesday morning roundup...

It's been a while since I've done a roundup post (that and I don't have a theme for today!). So without further ado, here are three cool stories I found on the world-wide Interweb recently.

As if The Happiest Place on Earth wasn't enough of a draw to visit the Sunshine State, Universal Studios, via Yahoo! Travel, has revealed plans for "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter," a new theme park area. Visitors to the park area enter through an archway designed to block out all signs of the Muggle world they just left behind, and the WWoHP will include rides like "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey," which takes guests through scenes from the movies and inside a Hogwarts Castle made to look 700 feet tall. Every shop is Harry Potter-themed, meaning Ollivanders will sell wands, Zonko's will sell Sneakoscopes, and Honeydukes will sell Chocolate Frogs. Visitors can send mail with a Hogsmeade postmark from the Owl Post and take a pull on a draft of butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks.

CNN.com contributes my other two stories of the day. The first article features Susan Jacobs and her "Wheels of Success" program. Born out of personal experience in how hard it can be to get to a job without reliable transportation, Jacobs started the foundation to provide cars to low-income workers in Florida. The program refurbishes donated cars before offering them to qualified full-time workers. Since 2003, Wheels of Success has provided 280 cars to clients and helped another 280 people with vehicle-related services.

The second article relates to Maria Toor Pakay. The 18 year-old Pakistani girl is the No. 10-ranked squash player for her home country and stands 91st in the world. But the really remarkable thing is she originally hails from South Waziristan - a stronghold of the Taliban. In her hometown, girls are punished for attending school, much less playing sports. But Maria's father recognized her talent and moved the family to Peshawar, so his daughter could reach her full potential.

Odd little ends...

It's not terribly often I can say I was inspired by a pink grasshopper. No, I'm not talking about an "adult beverage" or a character in a children's book. Daniel Tate, an English schoolboy on an outing with his great-grandfather, spotted a common grasshopper who was born a little special. The 11 year-old boy was looking for grasshoppers at a wildlife event last week at Seaton Marshes Local Nature Reserve and at first thought he spotted a flower. He changed his tune when that flower hopped. The Yahoo! article also has photos of other pink insects found in nature. I'm not a bug-lover, but the pics are pretty cool.

Today's "weird but true" theme pretty much unspooled from there.

MSNBC.com posted a feature on its green technology page about the Chevrolet Equinox. I know absolutely nothing about cars. I can tell you the make and model of my car, but when one of my male friends pause in mid-sentence to drool over a passing vehicle, I'm at a loss. However, Chevy's hydrogen-fueled test car recently reached its 1,000,000th mile driven. Nearly 5000 everyday people have driven more than 100 pollution-free Equinoxes in the past 25 months, and many report they cannot tell a fuel cell car from a gas-fueled one. The only thing emitted from these "green" cars is a wisp of water vapor out the tailpipe. Once they start putting hydrogen fuel stations in more than 70 places in the US, sign me up.

Anything that helps shelter dogs I'm in favor of, as I'm sure you've all glommed onto through this blog if not by impassioned soap box speeches by yours truly. The San Francisco Chronicle's City Brights blog by Ken White highlighted the organization Working Dogs for Conservation, a Montana-based group utilizing some of nature's best sniffers in conservation efforts. Many dogs are turned over to shelters because they are too active for families (doing research on breeds before adopting or buying would be the smart option here, but do not even get me started...). Dr. Megan Parker and her research team find uber-focused dogs in shelters and train them to help her and her team in conservation efforts. The dogs are minimally invasive to nature and excellent and exuberant trackers. Seven of the nine dogs working for the WDC are rescues, and mind you, these are the dogs that are usually unadoptable, labeled "out of control," "obsessively active," and "crazy."

(Photo courtesy of APEX and Yahoo!)

Mmm...chocolate. And other good ideas...

Most of you know I am not a giant fan of driving. I don't really know why, but I've just never seen the appeal of road trips, and I really don't like being stuck in a car for hours on end. I will make trips that are four hours or less simply because the hassle of flying (which I actually hate more than driving) is too much for me. But maybe what develops out of the following story will improve my dim view of motor vehicles. I mean, how can the addition of chocolate make anything worse?

Researchers from the University of Warwick in England have built an F3 race car out of biodegradable materials that can go up to 145 mph, and it runs on chocolate factory waste. Seriously. I found in on msnbc.com, so it must be true. : ) Can you imagine, driving down the Mass Pike and all you smell is chocolate? That would make my trips surrounded by Mass-hole drivers much more bearable. Maybe in this time of the restructuring of the car industry, the people on top will take notice that it is possible to build a fast, environmentally friendly car.

Yahoo! announced the winner of the most-publicized job search in the world yesterday. A British man is the lucky one chosen for the "World's Best Job" - blogging about northeastern Queensland, Australia. He gets free accommodations in a gorgeous locale for a year just for blogging about how terrific the reef is. He also gets paid $111,000. This guy sounds perfectly suited - having ridden an ostrich and kissed a giraffe. Yes, Virginia, dream jobs do still exist...

Yahoo! this morning had the final story for today. Clayton Homes has created the "i-House" - a prefab, "green" home that is so far from a trailer that it's not funny. It has bamboo floors in addition to solar power and other energy-saving appointments. It has a V-shaped roof which holds a roof-deck, and at $100 to $300 per square foot, it's much cheaper than green AND conventional alternatives. I'm not really a fan of modern architecture, but this looks appealing, even to me. 

(Photo credit: msnbc.com)