What would summer be without a rat invasion? Only the latest rat invasion goes beyond the typical tales of rats annoying Newbury Street foodies. The rats are now going after our innocent children. In fact, in the latest rat attack, a 7-year-old girl was being good and throwing away some trash at Clement Morgan Park in Cambridge. She was thanked for not littering when a rat jumped out and sank its teeth into her pinky.*......

The mayor has opened his virtual food court so you can find out if your favorite Boston eatery is a squeaky-clean bastion of hygiene or a rat-infested hellhole. We wondered what happened to the swanky spots that Northeastern journalism students found to be filthy back in September, so we looked them up: Figs (As in Todd English's Figs) - Failed on Aug. 2, for many reasons, including "Management has not properly trained staff to use......

Word is out that there's a plague of rats in the city. Not that it's anything new. Rats fall in and out of vogue in Boston media all the time. Around this time last year, the Globe did a story on a rat invasion in the Back Bay. For the record, the Back Bay did not handle it well. In the latest story, David Abel at the Globe reports that rat complaints are up: "In......

Honest-to-goodness Nobel Laureates, along with a few non-Laureates, indulged their silly sides on Thursday night when Harvard University hosted the 2007 Ig Nobels ceremony. The Annals of Improbable Research magazine (that sounds like something Dave Eggers would have thought up) grants the "Ig Nobels" for achievements in "unusual and imaginative scientific discovery." Here's a list of this year's winners in all the Ig Nobel fields from the Guardian UK: Medicine: Brian Witcombe of Gloucester and......

If you thought Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy has been around forever, you would be right. The man is old. And Congress has proof - he was recently honored for casting his 15,000th roll call vote in the Senate. The only ones who beat him are the still-alive-but-barely Robert Byrd and the dead-as-a-doornail Strom Thurmond. It's finally a bit of good news for Kennedy, whose family recently encountered a White Van Man, whose ex-wife was found......

The Red Sox have been living large off of the Foes' inferior bullpens all season. Sadly, what goes around came around last night. The unstoppable Okajima and unbeatable Papelbon were respectively stopped and beaten by the Yankees, who took 2 out of 3 from the Sox for the second straight series. This one was a typical Sox-Yankees seesaw affair. Josh Beckett pitched well, but spotted the Yanks a 4-0 lead. But the Sox got it......

Boston just got its own food scare thanks to tabloid TV show Inside Edition. They brought their "Rat Patrol" into several restaurants, including the Quincy Market McCormick & Schmick's, Ruth's Chris, China Pearl, and other establishments. After having to sit through some crap about Anna Nicole's momma, we discovered that Inside Edition really does have a dedicated "Rat Patrol" of five people standing around and looking tough while they sniff out rats under the cover......

"Chasing the local rats of the sky" from Kevin Church.......

Austinist gets arty with an interactive guide to SXSW, loved some local art galleries and a new art exhibit and lamented the possible loss of "Friday Night Lights" production to New Mexico. Bostonist was happy they finally found an Anna Nicole Smith connection to their fair city and that an Apple Store was opening up. They were less happy that new rules have been established limiting underage shows and that their Governor is spending......

In the grand American tradition of public humiliation which Nathaniel Hawthorne so lovingly depicted in The Scarlet Letter, Boston residents will soon get "Hester Prynned" – not because they've been fooling around but because they aren't paying their trash bills. The city is going to list the names and addresses of those who don't pay their trash bills on the city website. That smells like a privacy violation, but nasty garbage piling up smells pretty......

MIT researchers have developed a prototype for land-mine detection. Unlike the bulky machines we've seen used before that set off the mines as they sweep the landscape these machines use sound to pinpoint the location of a mine. The prototype if employed could prove an effective mechanism in defeating abandoned land-mines. Robert W. Haupt, a technical staff member at Lincoln Lab, explores innovative ways to find and reduce the large number of land mines abandoned......

While many argue about the discrimination in this city, this ideology is also affecting the vermin in the city sewers as well. As many shocked restaurant patrons came to find out last Thursday, rats do not add to the ambience when inhaling a filet mignon on Newbury Street. Louis J. Antonellis, a local labor union guy for Electrical Workers Local 103, decided he had had enough with the Capital Grille after fighting with them for......

Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bid's Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues with our World Cup broadcasters here, but this......

Baltimore's "Stop Snitchin!" franchise has been making waves here in the Bay State. In the Herald's editorials today is a story about the shirts being sold in New Bedford and worn to a highly-publicized murder trial in Boston last year. The Herald also reports about a mysterious business card dropper advertising contract hits on "filthy rats." The editorial supports tougher penalties for witness intimidation. Apparently, the motivation behind "Stop Snitchin" is to dissuade people......