Science

I've written several times that space exploration is one of those government programs I don't mind paying for. The public sector has funded the human need to expand our horizons since the time of Columbus. So I was dismayed when I heard Persident Obama might be cutting the money for a return to the moon, especially since it sounded like one of those tired, typical "Why should we waste billions on such extravagances when there are so many problems in our back yard?" arguments. Instead of going to the moon, NASA would be funded to . . . more closely monitor global warming.

I growed up in rural Kentucky where many of us spent most of the summer outside with no shoes on, scoffing at the prissy few who felt the need to protect their delicate little tootsies (I think we called them "Hoosiers") so this is no big surprise to me, that "Long-Awaited Barefoot Running Study Finds Sneakers Are Harmful" because "Shoes change the human foot strike and may lead to more running injuries":

Dang, of course a great bargain would show up while I'm still paying off the Christmas-gift purchases:

We're all going to die! Just not as soon as we had imagined. The good news is that the folks at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have moved the hands of their Doomsday Clock one minute back from midnight, to six minutes before the hour. The bad news is that they've added something else to their fretting besides atomic Armageddon:

The campaign to save Mother Earth by ridding her of all those pesky, polluting people achieves a modest but notable success:

A huge swath of the country is getting snow and it's raised an unusual and potentially dangerous problem for motorists.

After some good tabloid trash, I always like to read a good "We're all going to dieeee!" yarn, too:

A STAR primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth was revealed by astronomers yesterday.

It will self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.

If you've been in the winter frame of mind for weeks already, at least make it official. Happy Winter Solstice! The good news is that this is also the shortest day of the year. The days will start lenghtening before you know it. "Solstice," by the way is from the Latin phrase for "sun stands still."

I know there are a lot of you Santa deniers out there. How can one person possibly keep track of all the boys and girls in the world? How can he make all those toys? Most absurdly, how can he deliver all those toys in one night? The people trying to sell this nonsense must have cooked the data.

But, I tell you, the science is settled, OK? He uses the Internet. A lot of the Elves are really automation. Santa makes use of science and technology the rest of us just don't have at our disposal yet:

Today's "Well, duh!" research:

When I watched my aunt suffering with Alzheimer's, I thought that must be the worst condition to be in while still alive. To still know what and who you once were but feeling your mind slipping away and realizing you can't do a damn thing about it -- could anything be more horrible?

Maybe this: