Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.

In a December in which bumblebees, butterflies and even swallows have been on the wing in Britain, European brown bears have been lumbering through the forests of Spain’s Cantabrian mountains, when normally they would already be in their long, annual sleep.

People with generally positive outlooks show greater resistance to developing colds than do individuals who rarely revel in upbeat feelings, a new investigation finds.

Frequently basking in positive emotions defends against colds regardless of how often one experiences negative emotions, say psychologist Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and his colleagues. They suspect that positive emotions stimulate symptom-fighting substances.

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Each year, as Christmas looms ever nearer I find myself slipping further into my Scrooge persona; my biggest problem with the holiday is the profusion of things that light up and sing. Rampant commercialism of any sort gives me the fear, and every year it seems like the true meaning of Christmas gets further and further obscured in the mess of disposable commodities emblazoned with holiday characters.

Great news for solar tech dudes. 40% efficiency is a great rate.

New Solar Cell Breaks the “40 Percent Efficient” Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.

On December 5th 1933, prohibition was repealed here in the states and once again american drinkers could quaff their favorite hooch without fear of legal repercussions. Freedom is a good thing, and I suggest that we all celebrate in the matter best befitting the holiday.

Me, I’m planning to be found crawling across my floor, screaming strange incantations at the ceiling fan before midnight falls. Enjoy!!

there is something (at least to me)
deeply satisfying about emptying a pen,

they’re such transient objects,
it can be hard to hold onto one
long enough to drain every
word, correction and doodle
out of it

i just finished a pen
in the process of brainstorming,
and spared a moment to think
of all those things
(most of which will go
forever unremembered)
that it created before
its timely end

Drug warriors scored a virtual victory after the 2006 U.S. elections when they hurriedly extended the War on Drugs to a psychoactive substance previously exempt: nepetalactone, the main psychoactive ingredient in catnip. It is well known that the sniffing of catnip makes some cats “turn on.” Their eyes open wide, they roll over on the floor, they hug and bite the catnip toy and kick it with the feet, and they friskily run to and fro, similar to human beings who go crazy ingesting psychoactive drugs.

While catnip does not have the same effect on human beings, the advocates of banning catnip have pointed out that children who give their cats catnip and then see the cat being “happy” might get dangerous ideas about getting high. They think, if the cat can feel good, why not them too? Indeed, the first step to marijuana addiction may well be catnip! According to the drug warriors, catnip has been a major gateway to the human abuse of drugs, and yet there has been no prohibition.