Jockstrip: The world as we know it

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

It could be like Florida without oranges -- Pasadena, Calf., without the Rose Parade floats. The beautiful floats that draw thousands to the annual procession likely will all be built elsewhere soon.

The Los Angeles Times reports the tourists who line up to tour the Rose Palace parade float barn this holiday season could unwittingly be witnesses to the end of an era.

The Rose Palace, a city-owned facility, is the only place in Pasadena where floats still are built, but that legacy is threatened by rising rent and its location in the middle of a redevelopment zone. Parade organizers are considering moving the facility out of town.

The Times says the relationship between the Tournament of Roses and the city has cooled and already more than half the parade floats are made at tournament-owned barns elsewhere.

NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS

Unlike the frail human form -- a diamond is forever. With that in mind, Chicago-based LifeGem is offering to take carbon extracted from the ashes of a deceased loved one and turn it into a synthetic diamond.

The Washington Post reports LifeGem offers this option in 139 funeral homes nationwide and first deliveries are due in mid-January.

Carbon usually is incinerated and turned into gas during cremation but LifeGem found a way to capture the carbon before that happens. It then sends the carbon to a company in Pennsylvania that purifies it and turns it into graphite, which is sent to a lab in Russia, where it is subjected to enough heat and pressure to turn it into a diamond, the Post reports.

The stone can be cut in any style and mounted as a pendant or a ring or whatever you want. A quarter-carat diamond, not including cremation or setting, is $1,995.

TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING

A Grand Strand, S.C., funeral home is offering a free burial for anyone killed in a New Year's Eve wreck -- as long as they first sign a contract admitting they intend to get drunk or do drugs and then drive.

"We don't expect anybody to come in and sign the contract," Chris Burroughs, funeral director at Grand Strand Funeral Home and Crematory, told the Sun News in Myrtle Beach. "It's a way to let people know if you drink and drive, you can end up in the funeral home."

South Carolina has more deaths caused by drunken driving per capita than any other state. Last New Year's, six South Carolinians died between Dec. 30 and Jan. 2.

The program's founder, funeral director Barry Miller of Hope, Ga., said nobody has ever signed the contract in the four years he's been offering it there.

AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY

The San Jose Mercury News writes Santa Clara County will give $3.5 million in stipends to childcare workers to help increase the pay and educational levels of the profession -- known for its low salaries and skills.

Earlier this year CARES, or Compensation and Retention Encourage Stability, gave $3 million in stipends to more than 2,200 childcare workers.

The Mercury News says this is part of the county's effort to elevate child care from babysitting to a profession with training and compensation that mirrors public school teaching.

Many childcare providers and preschool teachers have just a high school education and in California, a preschool teacher makes about $21,000 a year, compared with about $48,000 for an elementary school teacher.