The screwcap has come to champagne. OK, not exactly, but the Maestro opening system has debuted from Champagne house Duval-Leroy and Alcan Packaging. Made of aluminum and plastic, the bottle closure has a lever on the side which you pull up to get the same “pop” that you’d get with a cork.

Call in the Mythbusters and don’t give Fido a fancy glass drinking bowl. Bellevue firefighters believe that the sun shining on a dog’s glass water bowl set a deck on fire, causing an estimated $215,000 in damage to the house.

I was disturbed to read that Seattle’s first world’s fair, the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, had “a display of incubators containing live babies.” They were an attraction run by Dr. Martin A. Couney who held his first incubator exhibit at the World Exposition in Berlin in 1896. He obtained premature infants from Berlin’s Charity Hospital and reportedly had great success in keeping them all healthy at the fair with the help of trained nurses and wet nurses. He repeated the exhibit in London where English doctors refused to allow their babies to be put on exhibit. No problem, he got preemies from Paris. Couney continued to exhibit incubators and babies at fairs, eventually immigrating to the United States where he set up a regular summer exhibit at Coney Island. His 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair exhibit was a grand affair with its own special building. By all accounts the babies received excellent treatment, so despite the icky sensationalism and questionable ethics, Couney saved lives with his incubator exhibits and educated doctors on the care of premature infants. He considered his life’s work complete and retired when the Cornell Medical Center in New York opened its own facility for preemies. (sources from Neonatology on the Web: 1939 New Yorker article, 1979 Pediatrics article)

The crew at the International Space Station was treated to a special viewing of the new Star Trek movie on Friday. Paramount provided a copy of the film which NASA reformatted in five hours and transmitted up to the station where they watched it on a laptop. More pop culture is arriving at the ISS next month, when Astronaut Timothy L. Kopra blasts off. For his ISS trip, he’s bringing a signed copy of Echo & The Bunnymen’s album “Ocean Rain”. A big fan of the group, Kopra emailed them to ask for an album to take up into space. Bunnyman Ian McCulloch was thrilled saying: “Now it’s official. We are the coolest band in the universe.”

Jim Henson’s Fantastic World, a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution, opens at Seattle’s EMP this coming weekend. The exhibition includes drawings, storyboards, television and movie props, photographs of Henson and his collaborators, and, yes, puppets (muppets even!). The EMP has supplemented their exhibit with an interactive puppet TV studio provided by local puppetmaker Annett Mateo. Titled the “Mudgarden Experience at the Rainbow Connection” it’s a puppet rock band inspired by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Visitors can operate the band members and create their own TV performance.

Thousands showed up on Thursday in Lincoln City, Indiana for the official release of the new penny. Commemorating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and the centennial of the Lincoln penny, four designs will be released in 2009 illustrating different stages of his life. Collectible versions of the coins will also be minted with the same metal content as the 1909 version: 95% copper, 5% tin and zinc (regular pennies are still 2.5% copper, the rest zinc).

There’s some small irony in the news that the Sony Metreon, showcase of high tech games, is now the location of a farmer’s market. Island Earth Farmers Market, open every day, is renting space until a planned renovation. The mall has been sold and the new owners include the Westfield Group which has been snatching up and revamping malls everywhere. They plan to integrate the building more successfully with the surrounding neighborhood. The movie theater will remain.

Ctrl Alt Del pillows for your couch rebooting needs. And, perhaps more appropriately, Esc.

I missed news about this recent little drama in the Boston Public Garden: duckling Pack was stolen from the Make Way for Ducklings bronze sculpture in early April. He was soon found leaning up against a tree in Beacon Hill, four blocks from his home. Pack’s siblings have experienced similar incidents in the past. Quack was stolen in 1987 right after the sculpture was installed. Mack was stolen in 1988 and Quack was returned only to be taken again in 1992. Jack was taken in 1999 and returned. None of the duck thieves has ever been caught.

I’ve been expecting to learn new things from our son’s education, mostly new discoveries and events that have taken place since my time in school. I’ve found that I’m also filling in gaps in my knowledge, even though he’s only in preschool. Today he brought home a book about Balto, the sled dog who led the final two legs of the “serum run” that brought diphtheria antitoxin from Anchorage to Nome. Balto became the hero of the 1925 serum run, keeping to the trail in blizzard conditions and avoiding cracking ice on the river. There’s a statue of Balto in New York’s Central Park. I was a little creeped out to find out that his body was turned over to a taxidermist after he died and is now on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (try explaining that to a four year old — who now wants to visit stuffed Balto). Although Balto and his musher Gunnar Kaasen received all the immediate media attention, Togo and musher Leonhard Seppala actually ran the most difficult and longest leg of the relay. The other relay teams received even fewer accolades. The Iditarod race, while not inspired entirely by the serum run, does commemorate its participants. Stuffed Togo is on display at the Iditarod headquarters in Wasilla, Alaska (nowadays more famous for a certain former mayor).