Jockstrip: The world as we know it

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

Members of the Upper Darby Volunteer Fire Department in Pennsylvania are in hot water after allegedly taking a ladder truck to a Rolling Stones concert and allowing a sexy female concertgoer to climb aboard and bare her thong for picture-takers, according to the Philadelphia Daily News.

"It was really hard to miss her," said Tom Kelly III, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer from Pottstown who was covering the Stones concert as a free-lance photographer.

Fire Chief Edward Cubler said he was extremely disappointed and called it "conduct unbecoming" a firefighter, the paper reported.

As Kelly recalled to the paper: "Then all of a sudden there's a helmet on her. Then all of a sudden the pants come down. People were passing by right in front of the place and you've got a bare butt with just a string on a fire truck, one guy taking pictures."

NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS

It's not all talk of war and Iraq for the United Nations these days. The U.N.'s environmental program has announced three new additions to its endangered species list.

The hairy kneed camel, the Blind River Dolphin and the Great White Shark -- made popular in the "Jaws" movie series --- are now on the list maintained by the Convention on Migratory Species.

Being on the list means countries that are home to these animals must take action to protect them from hunters and environmental dangers.

The tri-annual meeting of the convention was held in Bonn, Germany, this week and considered 36 different species.

TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING

The Rampant Rabbit, made famous when mentioned by the women of the hit HBO series "Sex in the City," is being recalled.

Sex toy retailer Ann Summers in Britain is issuing a world-wide recall of its hottest-selling vibrator out of concern the shaft is defective.

The company Web site says the recall is a precautionary measure because "a component may fail which may cause discomfort to the customer."

The rabbit-eared devices were sold between May and September.

AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY

Transitsearch.org is looking for amateur astronomers who can keep watch in the night sky.

The Web site says since 1995 more than a hundred planets orbiting nearby solar-like stars have been discovered, along with a transiting planet orbiting the star HD 209458 -- opening up a new era in astronomy.

Today's technology also makes small but very capable telescopes hooked up to laptop computers affordable so thousands of amateur astronomers probably already own observatories which, when properly configured, are capable of "reliably detecting the periodic dimming which occurs when a close-in giant planet passes in front of the parent star as seen from Earth," the site says.

Transitsearch.org is coordinating this observational effort to allow experienced amateur astronomers and small college observatories to discover transiting extrasolar planets.

-