Hoax: Dalai Lama NOT on Twitter corrects this:

Welcome to the official Twitter page of His Holiness the Dalai Lama - administered by The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

"His Holiness thought it was prudent to make his office open and assessable to a more youth and technologically advancing audience."

Does the Pope Twitter?

Not a crop circle

The Mysterious Cones of the Egyptian Desert. At I09,

Created by Greek artist Danae Stratou and the DAST art team in the mid-1990s, this earthwork art is called "Desert Breath." It covers 100,000 square meters in the Egyptian desert near the Red Sea, and took several years to create. At its center was a fairly deep pool of water, and the whole project was designed to slowly erode over time. Which is exactly what's happened.

Here's what it looks like from the ground:

There's a zoomable Google Maps satellite image at Satellite Sights.

Dogs as pop art: Creative Grooming. I'm a cat person, had no idea what a poodle's life might be like. I'm speechless in the face of this.

War on cheese: I missed this on.Jan. 17 in the Guardian. US roquefort tariff angers French:

They were left battered by farmer Jose Bové's attacks on McDonald's and bruised by the birth of the "freedom fry". But yesterday the French and the Americans proved they had the stomach for another gloriously messy food fight.

Less than a week before it leaves office, the Bush administration has sparked anger across the Atlantic by tripling the import duty rate on roquefort cheese to 300%, a move which the US hopes will "shut down trade" in the sheep's milk product by making it prohibitively expensive.

The decision, part of Washington's attempts to force the EU into dropping its ban on hormone-treated beef, was greeted with disbelief by the French government and by farmers in the south-western Aveyron region who depend on the industry for their livelihoods....