Snyder said the lost towels cost the hotel chain about $3 each. But, he said, Holiday Inn doesn't mind that guests take them. Snyder said most guests feel the towels are part of the cost of their stay.

So does everyone else in the world just leave room in their suitcase for the hotel's towels when they leave? What do you do, stick the wet ones in there after you take your shower, or do you ask the maid to bring fresh ones, and then pack those? I can't believe that any hotel actually "doesn't mind" that guests steal their towels, but I guess it sounds better.

I do take the little mini toiletries that hotels leave out, I do consider them a take-homeable amenity. But I definitely don't steal the towels. And anyway, ewwww. I mean, I can use towels that other people have used by just sort of not thinking about it, but I don't want to take them home.

I remember when I used to travel a lot for work and, consequently, stayed in better hotels, and when I'd get room service I'd always take home the little individual catsup and mustard bottles, and I'd even feel a little bit guilty about that. But I didn't steal the silverware, too.

Yahoo! News - Holiday Inn Offers Towel Thieves Amnesty

I've known for awhile that the Missouri cell phone emergency number was *55, but since I've never had to use it, I don't actually know if that means that my phone can call it (I have a Missouri area code), or whether that means that it works in Missouri. I still don't actually know, but I found this site today: Mobile Emergency Numbers, and it says that in Kansas you can dial *HP for the Kansas Highway Patrol, or *KTA while on the turnpike.

This page indicates that *55 is actually the number to dial on a cell phone if you want to reach the Missouri Highway Patrol, not an emergency number in general. It also says that *47 reaches the Kansas State Police.

Here's another list of emergency numbers across the country.

It's all very confusing.

STLtoday - News - Story: "Macek attributed the penguins' audacious behavior to the species' fearlessness and lack of intelligence. The fearlessness comes from living on isolated islands without land predators. And the low IQ means it often takes them a couple months to learn what a parrot might figure out in a day. "

I thought this story about penguins escaping from their area in the St. Louis Zoo was pretty funny. That was until I read the last paragraph about the cheetah escaping:

Penguins aren't the only Zoo residents testing their boundaries. On Aug. 12, a female cheetah climbed up a wall in the River's Edge area and leaped out of her pen. She startled some visitors before Zoo workers herded her back to her enclosure.

I'm thinking that perhaps the zoo needs to spend some more time figuring how how to keep the animals in their assigned spots.

Link from Mimi Smartypants.

Yesterday I started getting hundreds of virus-infected emails, and they're still coming in today. Every time I check my email, I have forty or fifty new ones. Symantec has some good information about the virus, or worm, I guess it should be called, which is named W32.Sobig.F@mm. It doesn't affect Macs, except to make me dread checking my email . . .

Symantec Security Response - W32.Sobig.F@mm

Mondegreens (misheard lyrics) from Jon Carroll. My favorite:

Oh, and Mila Mitra heard Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" as "I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day, the dog said good night."

["the dark sacred night"]

In some species, such as coho salmon and quail, weedier, less aggressive males are the top choice of females, New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

"People just expect the dominant guy to win. But females learn through personal experience that these males can be hurtful," according to Alex Ophir, of Canada's McMaster University in Ontario.

CNN.com - Studies: Big guys don't always get the girls - Jul. 31, 2003

Link from Misty Bell.