So apparently, Fresnoi, we're living in what was once a prehistoric wonderland. Check it out, from the S.F. Chronicle:

Fearsome bear-dogs, large herds of three-toed horses, the original camels, the first perching birds, giant tortoises, early elephants, rhinos and a vast menagerie of other species flourished in a dramatic milieu in California's Central Valley that has long been a source of fascination and frustration for scientists seeking to uncover its long-guarded secrets.

"It just blew me out of my mind," Xiaoming Wang, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, said after he laid eyes on the skull of a previously unknown badger-size creature that is not only a new species but a whole new genus within the mustelidae family of otters, skunks, weasels and their kith. "It looks like it was very ferocious."

Sweet. Who's going to pay for the new "Welcome to Fresno: (Former) Home of the Bear-Dog" sign?

From Charles McCarthy's story in today's Bee:

Two employees of the network TV show "COPS" didn't have their cameras ready early Wednesday, sheriff's deputies reported, when a man jumped into the back of their pickup and began talking to the moon.

California Highway Patrol officers responding to a 2:20 a.m. 911 call near Highway 41 and Lucky Lane reported that they found a man standing in the back of the pickup, naked from the waist down.

Our art critic Donald Munro has a roundup in today's Life section looking at some local Web sites -- SierraHiker.com, Scary Squirrel World, Adventure Namibia, Birdmom.net and Famblog. Check out the Web design tips from Suzi Arnold of Think Inkless. Self-promo alert: I also added my voice to the rankings, and contributed a sidebar critiquing the sites for design, accessibility and whatnot.

Now we can add a third reality TV star to Fresno's growing dynasty:

Josh Koscheck, a former NCAA wrestling champion who recently moved to Fresno, is one of the participants in Spike TV's reality show "The Ultimate Fighter," which airs on Monday nights on the cable television channel.

Catch him tonight at 11 on Spike TV.

Also from the always-excellent Collision Detection comes the story of a brain-damaged woman who's just started talking after 20 years of silence.

On Saturday, her brother asked whether she knew what a CD was. Sarah said she did, and she knew it had music on it.

But when he asked her how old she was, Sarah guessed she was 22. When her brother gently told her she was 38 years old now, she just stared silently back at him. The nurses say she thinks it is still the 1980s.

I spend a lot of time evangelizing about the Internet and how much it continues to change our world every day. I consider myself pretty aware about how fast technology is moving, what our mediascape is doing, etc. Still, I'm blown away by this 2004 article that charts the creation of full-fledged online societies in games like EverQuest and The Sims Online. Check out this excerpt, describing a discovery by economist Edward Castranova:

So everyone's been all excited (OK, and a little bit wary) about California's stem cell research initiative, because the research has the potential to reveal new cures for untold ills. But Wired today's got the goods on what's really fueling the hype -- breast implants.

In case you missed this tidbit from The Bee, check it out -- the Regional Jobs Initiative (not to be confused with the Fresno Collaborative Regional Initiative) has unveiled a shiny new Web site. A quick scan doesn't reveal who designed the site, but a note "from SBR" left in the comments in the HTML code suggests it might be local Web guru and MindHub founder Suzanne Bertz-Rosa.

OK, while this might not be quite as impressive as last week's Internet audio juggernaut (or maybe our priorities are just twisted), it's still pretty darn cool. At WhiteHouseTapes.org, you can listen to over 5,000 hours of secret audio recordings made by six of our former Presidents -- Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. (Via ResourceShelf.)

And while we're on the subject, we may as well point you to the BBC's amazing archive of audio interviews with luminaries from Chinua Achebe to William Butler Yeats.

This week we head off in two directions. First, take a look at the great Outdoors and twin-tip skiing (with some superb photos). Then, try your hand at balancing the budget of the Fresno Unified School District and let us know how you'd change the district's financial problems.

A Fresno State discussion entering its second day today promises no less than an examination of faith, truth and knowledge. Os Guinness, author of Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin, leads the talk. The blurb for the book sounds kind of hot:

Is there such a thing as absolute truth? Many postmodern academics say "no"---treating it as a relative concept or merely a matter of human convention. Guinness begs to differ!

Awesome!

On the lovey-dovey-est day of the year, we thought we'd take a stroll back through some of the most heart-stirring tales to grace the pages of The Bee over the last year. Hope you enjoy a few stories about love gone right.

All right, it's over. Online dating is officially mainstream. So mainstream, in fact, that it's already becoming passé amongst the cyberati.

So where's a would-be read-only Romeo to turn for some digital lovin'?

The realms of Norrath, clearly.

Everyone knows wine is romantic. Any cunning Casanova can Cabernet his way into a lover's heart.

But a number of people -- and Fresno's got its share -- say forget the lover, just pass the cabernet. For many, wine's not just a beverage, it's an experience.

These oenophiles can catch some kindred souls up on the big screen in the movie Sideways, which finally made its way to Fresno in January after opening in limited release way back in October. The movie is full of characters who don't just love wine -- they love wine, as a moment of dialogue from Miles (the main character, played by Paul Giamatti) demonstrates.

Correction: An earlier version of this article described Dr. Bita Ghafoori and Dr. Robert Hierholzer as being professors at Fresno State, not UCSF-Fresno Medical Education Program, as is the case.

For many veterans, the longest battle in any war is fought long after returning home. A number of men and women who've faced the tremendous stress of combat later experience a range of biological and psychological effects we've come to call Posttraumatic Stess Disorder, or PTSD. From that number, according to the National Center for PTSD, almost a third may develop a chronic form of the disorder, which might afflict them for the rest of their lives.

Why is PTSD chronic for some, but only temporary for others? Could love play a role? That's the question a couple of UCSF-Fresno professors are asking.

This has been making the Web rounds for a while, but it deserves to be seen. A team of sociologists went to this almost-all-white, 1,000-student high school and asked over 800 of the students whom they were hooking up with. As relationships blossomed and withered over 18 months, the researchers formed this map of connections between the students. The most common pattern was the plain old boyfriend-girlfriend, represented on the map by a pink dot and a blue dot connected by a line. Isolated strings of relationships pepper the map. Then, in one corner, you've got this spiky monster ring of hookups -- that's what happens when the sexually moderate boys and girls get ensnared by the playas and play-ettes. In the whole 882-student web, I counted only a single gay pairing and a single lesbian one.

Have fun with this, music fans. Among the many, many, many, many excellent offerings available from the Internet Archive lurks this incredible resource: over 20,000 downloads of live tracks from the concert performances of over 800 artists. All free, many in mp3 format, listed with the bands' full permission. Among the artists represented (from a quick tour): Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Ben Kweller, Glen Phillips (formerly of Toad the Wet Sprocket, also represented), Guster, Jump Little Children, Michael Franti and Spearhead, umm, the Dead, I could go on ...

"K-Fed" makes an appearance in this morning's USA Today, pegged to the release of the cover story about him in the latest Details magazine. The newspaper pulls some choice quotes from the Details spread, e.g.:

Anyone who's popped in the Garden State soundtrack and rocked out to "Let Go" by Frou Frou knows the power of a good singer with an androgynous voice. And in that spirit, we've got to give props to Fresno's own (OK, OK, currently Seattle's) Matthew Miller, he of American Idol fame. If you haven't seen him perform, listen to the mp3 before you watch the video, to get an unfiltered perception of his voice. (Nod to LJ's melissa~lee.)

INT. CITY HALL -- MIDDAY

Fluorescent light floods a modern-looking conference room. From the dais, the seven members of the Fresno City Council glower at one another and the mayor.

Watch video and audio from Fresno's Chinese Lunar New Year parade, along with information about the Lunar New Year traditions, from the Beehive.

Halo's hitting the big screen, reports IGN. Well, possibly. Microsoft's hired a screenwriter, and apparently isn't looking to be heavily involved past the screenplay stage. So at this point, it's too early even to put the film in development hell.

Alex Garland, the reputed script monkey, first became known in the U.K. for his novel and subsequent screenplay, The Beach, and is probably best known in the U.S. for his screenplay, 28 Days Later.

Mike Osegueda passes along word that Jimmy Eat World is planning on making Fresno a stop-off on its North American tour this Spring, co-headlining with Taking Back Sunday. Get ready for some emo-punk goodness, possibly at the Selland Arena, says Mike.

ABC 30 runs down the list of places in Fresno where you're most likely to get ticketed for speeding. (I mean, not you specifically, of course. Clearly you never speed.)

Trying to put together an Anti-Valentine's Day party for me and all my single, bitter friends, I'm beginning to come to a dismal conclusion: I have no single friends. Not in Fresno, at least.

OK, that's an exaggeration. I have some single friends, but they are few and far between. The statistics bear this out:

Just look at that. We go out of town for a measly four days, and Fresno up and gets hoppin'. Let's recap ...

What does it take for Roger Rocka's Dinner Theater to transition from one of its smallest shows ever to one of its largest? Here's a multimedia look at the set strike of the musical "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" and the load-in of "Beauty and the Beast." Macromedia Flash Player required.