It has been confirmed that Britney will appear on an upcoming episode of the hit show Glee. There’s no word yet on what specific role Britney will play in the episode, which will be entirely devoted to her own music.

Britney’s songs are likely to be experienced as the hallucinations of several of the show’s characters when they are anaesthetised during a visit to the dentist. So maybe that means Britney will play the role of a sexy dental hygenist?

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, rainbows are said to be the necklace of the Goddess Ishtar and they represent her promise to remember the mythical deluge that wiped out much of human civilisation. This tale was later appropriated by Christian mythologians, who claimed that the rainbow was a sign of God’s promise to Noah that there would be no further floods.

In Hindu mythology, the rainbow represents the bow of the mighty storm-god Indra and in Nordic mythology a rainbow named the Bifröst Bridge is said to connect the realms of Ásgard and Midgard.

But there is another story about rainbows that is told far more frequently than any of the examples I’ve given above: a story about a leprechaun and an ellusive pot of gold.

In Irish folklore, it is said that greedy leprechauns to hide their gold “at the end of the rainbow” to keep it safe.

If you stop to consider that rainbows are actually an optical phenomena that varies depending on the location of the viewer, making it impossible to ever actually reach the “end” of one—hiding your gold at the end of the rainbow begins to seem like quite a brilliant idea… if you’re a leprechaun, that is!

But something about this story seems a little wrong to me. Upon hearing it I’m certain that many children immediately stop caring about the rainbow itself and instead become obsessed with a pot of gold that they’ll never be able to find. It is as though rainbows aren’t valuable enough without inventing the idea that we should be able to exploit them for material gain.

This strikes me as a cunning act of misdirection (I blame the leprechauns), an artifice designed to stop us from realising that the “pot of gold” isn’t at the end of the rainbow; it’s the rainbow itself.

The Finnish government first passed the legislation late last year. The move places internet access alongside healthcare and educational services as fundamental rights that all citizens should be able to benefit from.

In today’s fast-paced world Hanuman is providing heroic boons to some of his devotees in a decidedly more “modern” fashion: by granting them Visas that allow them to seek their destiny abroad. Alleged “hordes” of people are descending on a temple in Delhi each day in order to ask Hanuman to solve their visa difficulties.

Worshippers are not charged for visiting the “Visa Hanuman” temple and one astrologer who works there is quick to reveal that the temple’s new-found notoriety is not entirely positive, as she told interviewers: “People think it is us who help getting visa which is not true. It is just a temple where they can pray and ask for God’s help.”

Hospital officials have confirmed that prior to 2002, a fully-equipped hospital ward was rented out to a film company with the resulting film generating “substantial income” for the hospital.

The story was raised in a debate about improving transperancy in government accounting.

Despite popular belief, Napoleon Bonaparte (the French Emperor who the term is named for) was not particularly short by the standards of the time in which he lived. This misconception may have arisen because Napoelon was frequently depicted alongside Imperial Guards, most of which were of above-average height.

Most psychologists consider the term a negative social stereotype and it is not considered an actual mental disorder.

Ah, the 70’s… such a simpler time.

Anyway, Pagan Island is awesome and I want it. Plus I realised the other night that if I had a plane (and a pilot) and some armed mercenaries, I could actually have it, because there’s no human population there to stop me.

The island is home to two active volcanoes (named North and South Pagan, respectively) and beaches of black sand. A volcanic eruption in 1981 (ah, the 80’s… such a simpler time) forced the last inhabitants to leave the island and it has been deserted (at least officially) ever since.

I say we take it.

Aside from exploiting animals, everybody knows that horse racing carnivals are mostly about hats. Traditionally, racing events see women don outlandish headgear in an attempt to outdo one another at some sort of primitive mating ritual.

This is nothing new, what is new however is that an increasing number of men are allegedly embracing this strange hat-wearing custom and the below image (which, I must warn you, may be alarming to the elderly, the over-sensitive and possibly even young children) provides an example of this.

My, what a jaunty hat that fellow is wearing and what excuse does he have for it? Being at the races, of course.

But if you ask me (I know that nobody did, but for now I am taking the liberty of pretending so in an attempt to get this ill-fated update “off of the ground” as it were) there is no suitable excuse for wearing such a hat. Unless, of course, it is a magical hat that imbues the wearer with incredible abilities, which I’m pretty sure it’s not.

Which brings us to our first and last installment of “Good Hat, Bad Hat”…

Good Hat: Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones’s rugged stetson is the perfect example of a good hat. Not only does it match the rest of his outfit, but it also protects Indy from the harsh rays of the sun and all manner of unsightly beasties that are likely to fall on him from above.

Bad Hat: Justin Timberlake

While I’m sure there’s at least a handful of teenage girls (or teenage girls trapped in the bodies of grown women) that disagree with me on this, there’s nothing that can be said to save Justin Timberlake from the humiliation of this truly terrible khaki number. I generally like to avoid putting things on my head that look like they fell out of an elephant’s ass.

Good Hat: Astronaut

Preventing asphyxiation and brain death while you float hundreds of miles above your home planet makes this a pretty good hat.

To those of you sitting there going “that’s a helmet, not a hat”: I don’t want to hear it.

Bad Hat: Snoop Dogg

Let me hear you say… “Yee-haw?” There’s so much wrong with this picture I don’t even know where to start. The inimitable Snoop Doggy Dogg has long shown a penchant for clothing of the “head” variety, donning everything from velvet pimp hats to bandanas.

But no matter how hard I try I just can’t imagine Snoop Dogg out on the old corral rustling thoroughbreds, or whatever it is exactly that cowboys do.

Good Hat: Boston Rob

In the same way that Superman wears an “S” on his chest, reality star Boston Rob wears a “B”… on his head.

This hat is good for two reasons. To start with it appropriates the already iconic symbol of the Boston Red Sox and uses it to firmly establish the “Boston Rob” character. Plus it shields him from the sun while the rest of the Survivor contestants stand around blinking like moles.

It makes you wonder if he’s the only one that’s actually allowed to wear a hat, or if the rest of them are just idiots.

Bad Hat: Victoria Beckham

It is generally agreed upon that in order for a hat to be “good” it must also allow the wearer to actually see while they are wearing it. This hat could doubtless be improved upon by the cutting of eye-holes in the front, although then she’d look like one of those executioners from an old Warner Bros. cartoon.

Got any favourite (or least favourite) hats of your own? Discuss all manner of headgear in our forum!

It’s weird, “going away”. For a time you live somewhere else, you look out at a different view and then—before you know it—you’re back again and it’s as though none of it ever happened. In a lot of ways going on a holiday isn’t that different from visiting Narnia. No matter what adventure and whimsy you encounter on your journeys when you get back everything seems just the same as it’s always been. The mundane settles over your life once more and the scent of pine trees is replaced with that of mothballs.

And that all sounds a little more depressing than I intended it too. As a self-professed hermit, I believe that the benefits of being home cannot be ignored. No longer are you forced to climb trees in search of wild fruit for your supper, but can rely on the comforts of a microwave and a well-stocked freezer. For the record, I don’t currently own a microwave because I don’t trust them. But if any microwave companies want to send me a microwave for free (preferably one capable of time travel and/or the remote detonation of fireworks) my opinion could well change.

Enough! That’s enough! The point is that I’m back. But surely the world didn’t stop turning while I was away, surely there were still some sort of “important events of note” that I missed out on. Of course there was.

Hugh Hefner saved the Hollywood sign. I first learnt that the Hollywood sign was in dire peril while watching Ellen, something that is becoming an alarmingly frequent habit of mine. At the time she was calling for donations to save the iconic letters and revealed that no less than $900,000 was needed to prevent them from redeveloping the area around it.

“Pfft,” I said aloud in my empty hotel room. “Why, surely $900,000 is but a drop in the pan for many Hollywood residents. Surely the sign is not in such dire perils as this Ellen would have me believe!”

A mere one day later my powers as the world’s most powerful clairvoyant was proven, with the announcement that Hugh Hefner (I think he has something to do with magazines, but I wouldn’t know anything about that) had single-handedly donated the required funds in order to save the Hollywood sign from certain destruction.

The thing that worried me about this was: how long until “They” (you know… Them) start asking for even more money to ensure the continued existence of the sign? Surely the future of the Hollywood sign is still “hanging over a barrel of monkeys” (I messed that up, didn’t I?), as they say.

Actually, no. As it happens, the Hollywood sign itself was never really in peril at all and the fact of the matter (like anyone cares about those) is that it was merely the uninhabited land to the west of the sign that was in question. This had more to do with displacing wildlife (they have wildlife in Los Angeles? Surely that vixen, Ke$ha, doesn’t count…) than it did with saving any sign.

So what exactly did Heff contribute his hard-earned dollars for? Does he even know what’s going on anymore? Oh yeah, apparently it was part of a deal to buy the actual land that the Hollywood sign occupies; a deal that also involved Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Neither of them seemed to get nearly as much media attention as Hugh Hefner did, which I guess is to do with their relative lack of involvement with marvelous female breasts.

An oil-tanker leaks into the Gulf of Mexico. This is one of those news stories that makes me genuinely sick to my stomach. But as an oil-swilling inhabitant of the Earth, it’s difficult to point the finger. The fact is we’re all reliant on oil and it’s this reliance that makes such horrifying environmental disasters possible in the first place.

The great “climate change debate” that has filled our news screens in recent months seems to miss the point entirely, because whether or not human beings are responsible for climate change does little to acknowledge the countless ways in which we are undoubtedly damaging the planet every day in pursuit of full gas tanks.

It’s disgusting and disasters like this should be enough motivation alone for us to investigate alternative energy sources…

Like nuclear fusion.

“Nuclear fusion, what?” I hear you say. “Isn’t that the foolish stuff of science fictions?”

Well yes, of course it is, but that’s not going to stop a bunch of hot-shot scientists from firing the world’s biggest laser in the hopes of creating the Earth’s tiniest star (there’s a whole sort of philosophical appeal to that statement that means I’m sticking to it, even if somebody tells me it’s hopelessly incorrect).

The aptly-named National Ignition Facility began “powering up” it’s lasers last week, as part of a plan to fire 192 intersecting beams of light at a single point in the hopes of creating a reaction six-times hotter than the centre of our own sun.

Of course it’s not dangerous. Never is with these scientist types.

It’s been nice knowing you.