Unpacking Day 8

Almost done.

Meet the hottest toy of year

Move over Elmo, this year's hottest toy is a toy hamster.

The hottest toy this holiday season is not a ticklish red monster. It’s a fake hamster.

Known as Zhu Zhu Pets, the artificial rodents have some advantages over the real thing. They do not stink, chew electric wires, or run around their cages making noise at night. In fact, they do not need cages.

Children are delighted at how they coo and scoot about unpredictably. Parents are delighted not to have to clean up after them. And at $7.99 each, the hamsters arerecession-friendly.

With any toy like this there's one simple problem:  Good luck finding one.  They're nearly sold out everywhere.

Running the camera during today's Fox and Friends

Wow, kinda creepy Sarah Palin look-a-like shows up at book event

Gov. Sarah Palin talks with a woman who's (spelling original) looks resemble that of Gov. Sarah Palin at Borders bookstore during the third "Going Rogue" book signing event Thursday, November 19, 2009, in Noblesville, IN. 

This is pulled straight from Palin's Facebook page.  Update:  Yes the grammar in the above paragraph is from Palin's Facebook page.  

Writing found on the Shroud of Turin!

A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus.

Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery.

Barbara Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, says in a new book that she used computer-enhanced images of the shroud to decipher faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the cloth.

She asserts that the words include the name "(J)esu(s) Nazarene" — or Jesus of Nazareth — in Greek. That, she said, proves the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have mentioned Jesus without referring to his divinity. Failing to do so would risk being branded a heretic.

"Even someone intent on forging a relic would have had all the reasons to place the signs of divinity on this object," Frale said Friday. "Had we found 'Christ' or the 'Son of God' we could have considered it a hoax, or a devotional inscription."

Read the full post here