THE MAGPIE:AND SO, as we blunder our way to ecological catastrophe, a timely reminder of the ingenuity of the human species for making money out of all situations. (An early aside. Have you noticed the extent to which car advertisers are trying to convince us that their vehicle is soooooo green that, well, it virtually reduces global warming? Spews out global coolant in fact! Only a matter of time before they suggest that nine out of 10 polar bears who expressed a preference said they preferred to drive an . . . ).
Anyhow. There's a company named Bloomsberry in Salem, Massachusetts, that makes chocolate bars which it sells in whimsical wrappers. They've teamed up with another outfit, TerraPass, a green energy broker, to offer . . . Climate Change Chocolate bars.
Just what the world needed, eh? "Our Climate Change Chocolate bar is meant to educate while tasting great." Hmmmmmm. "It comes in a wrapper with 15 tips for lightening your environmental impact. These helpful hints teach you how to save energy by making small changes to your daily habits . . . Climate Change Chocolate comes with a verified TerraPass offset of 133 pounds of carbon dioxide reductions, the average American's daily carbon impact. We hope this small offset will be the first taste of a lower-carbon lifestyle for Whole Foods shoppers who decide to take responsibility for their climate change impact."
So there you have it. Totally guilt-free chocolate. Get fat and save the planet in one fell swoop.
Welcome to Magpie, a new offering on Fridays in this spot. Why Magpie? Well, the bird is known for its garrulity, mischievousness, and is famous in folklore for its love of small bright objects which it will steal and turn to its own devices.
And that's as close a definition as Magpie can come up with for this column - an eclectic collection of, well, stuff, to be contemporary and florid for a moment - stuff, like, cuttings from the newsroom floor, as it were, stuff filched from other papers, news services, the web, readers' e-mails . . . basically anything that raises a smile but got left out in the stampede to serve up lashings of tribunal, carnage on the roads, economic jitters and globalisation.
A few examples . . .
Traffic policemen in the Romanian town of Timisoara are to learn ballet in an effort to make them more graceful.
"We see this new concept as a way to make our agents look better on the streets," Dorel Cojan, head of community police in the Transylvanian town, is quoted by ananova.com. "They can learn how to be agreeable and make the traffic more fluent at the same time. After all, it's all about grace."
Sorin Baltica, a dancer with the Romanian Opera in Timisoara for 27 years who is training the 20 volunteer officers, said: "I think this is a positive thing and I am glad I can help."
Can't you just see them pirouetting down in Templemore? The sub-aqua unit could do Swan Lake, Magpie suggests helpfully.
Meanwhile, across the border in Hungary, a policewoman has been sacked after she was spotted in a hard-core porn movie.
Livia Kovacs, a 36-year-old member of the Budapest police force, was spotted in the Triple X-rated film by a colleague who then told superiors. They fired her for bringing the force into disrepute and, crucially one imagines, misusing her police uniform. In the movie, she plays a dominatrix who uses her police handcuffs and a truncheon during a wild sex session.
Livia wasn't the slightest bit bothered about her sacking. "I don't care about being fired," she said. "Since news spread about my acting debut I have been flooded with offers from producers to do more films."
Can't see that in Templemore.
Don't expect east European police tales every week but . . . in Romania detectives have decided that ghosts were responsible for the vandalism of homes in Lilieci.
Families reported bicycles flying through the air, objects moving on tables and candles blown out when there was no wind. "We can find nothing to suggest it was anything other than what the people claim," said a spokeswoman.
Seen any small bright objects? If so, please e-mail what you have to magpie@irish-times.ie