2007 Weird News
From a Greek nunnery turned into a marijuana farm by two men posing as gardeners to a South African man with a gunshot wound told by a doctor to "walk the pain off," the world was full of weird news in 2007.
A Moscow woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat.
"I was burning like a torch," the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. "I don't know what I did to deserve this."
In another unusual living arrangement, a German man left his dead mother seated in her favourite armchair at their shared home for two years after her death of natural causes at age 92.
Yet not everything that smelled like a corpse was really dead in 2007. In the German town of Kaiserslautern, police broke into a darkened flat expecting to find a corpse after neighbours complained of a nasty smell seeping out into the hallway.
But instead they found a tenant with very smelly feet asleep in bed next to a pile of extremely foul-smelling laundry.
There were sadly many deaths in 2007 that were hardly noticed, such as in Zagreb, where a Croatian man who boarded a night tram and died in his seat rode through the city for more than six hours before the driver discovered he was dead.
Installing a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL) is the quickest, easiest way to save energy -- and money. Unlike incandescents, CFLs convert most of the energy they use into light rather than heat.
Anything that has an LED (light emitting diode) that glows even after you turn it off continues to draw power (that you pay for). Your TV, mobile phone charger, and printer are likely culprits. Unplug the offenders from
wall sockets and plug them into power strips instead. When you leave a room, flip the strip switch to cut the flow of electricity. 
Australia is one of the few developed countries that still allow Ewaste to be dumped into landfill. This is broken up and over time leeches into groundwater, contaminating soil, water and ultimately our children. An estimated 92.5 million electronic items are held in Australian homes, an average of 22 per household. 
As a society we have become reliant on fossil fuels to generate energy. Each year a typical house pumps approximately 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The equivalent amount of greenhouse gas would fill 11 average homes.
If your food could talk, it would tell quite a tale. Typical grocery store produce travels hundreds of kilometres before it ends up on your plate. All this travelling burns fossil fuels and results in carbon emissions -- a
fancy term for pollution. Buying from local farmers means you're not only getting the freshest food possible, you're saving energy.
Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent, and is currently in drough. With each year that passes our fresh water supplies become more scarce. To ensure that we have fresh water supplies in the future we need to be much smarter about how we use our water resources. 
Spending less time tending to your lawn actually makes it greener -- in every sense of the word. Most grass species fare best when they're kept at least 6 centimetres tall. The length creates more surface area to absorb sunlight, which creates thicker turf and deeper roots, which means you won't need to water as often.
Everyone has a role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Choosing an energy efficient appliance is one way to do that. For example, a battery charger labelled with the Energy Star logo will use 35 percent less energy than a standard one. 
Whenever you wash just a few clothes or dishes at a time rather than waiting for a full load to accumulate, you're wasting water, power, and money. The average Australian family of four washes about 540 loads of laundry a year, which consumes up to 91,000 litres of water, and more than 150 loads of dishes, which uses about 7,000 litres. Most of the energy consumed by washers goes toward heating the water -- about 90 percent in the clothes washer and 80 percent in the dishwasher. Combining half-loads, choosing short cycles, and using cold or warm rather than hot water in the clothes washer racks up savings.
Your backyard ecosystem is as intricate as any wild patch of land, and it pays in many ways to enlist its creatures on your side. Birds eat many insects; they just need a water source and trees and shrubs for cover and nesting. Many insects are beautiful -- and beneficial. Ladybugs aren't just cute; they are voracious eaters of aphids. 
An orange line shows the most direct route the ice-free Northwest Passage beside partially blocked Northeast passage (blue line) in this Envisat ASAR mosaic.