Dance Magers

Gawker Rich Man Buys House Next to Ex-Wife, Erects Giant Middle Finger Outside | Jalopnik This Map Will Show You Drunk Driving Limits All Over The World | Jezebel Women Totally Mad IRL for Stuff Their Boyfriends Do in Dreams | Lifehacker How to Avoid Injuring Yourself During Everyday Activities

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Few people expected that Bryan Cranston would prove such a badass in Breaking Bad after playing Hal, the goofy dad from Malcolm in the Middle. In this sketch, we learn the truth: that Walter White's entire story was just Hal's nightmare.

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In yet another odd chapter from the US's movie rating history, the MPAA would not let Raiders of the Lost Ark's famous exploding head scene pass without an R rating—until director Steven Spielberg agreed to obscure the phony gore with flames.

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When United States Post Office planes took to the skies in the 1920s, they had their own version of the roadway's yellow line. A series of giant concrete arrows and gaslight beacons helped point the way from New York to San Francisco.

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An international team of scientists have just held a qubit's memory state for 39 minutes. That might not sound like much, but it's 100 times longer than the previous record. It's a groundbreaking achievement that could pave the way to freakishly fast computers.

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Bad Robot just tweeted the first official production picture from Star Wars: Episode VII, featuring director J.J. Abrams meeting R2-D2 in person, and it's the first real, tangible proof that this sequel is really happening. Anyone else feel it's weirdly surreal to see the two of them together?

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“I wouldn’t know a spacetime continuum or a warp core breach if they got into bed with me.” -Patrick Stewart

It’s the end of the week once again, and so it’s time for another Ask Ethan segment! There have been scores of good questions to choose from that were submitted this month alone (and you can submit yours here), but this week’s comes from our reader garbulky, who asks:

Why does gravity decrease the further away you are from the object? I’ve read that it does decrease with distance squared but not why it does this.

This question seems so simple, and yet the answer — to the limits of our understanding — is nothing short of profound.

Physics, and science in general, doesn’t normally address the question of why when it comes to natural phenomena; it normally sticks to how. You give me an overarching theory, such as a set of laws, and physical objects with specific properties, such as a set of particles, and science tells you how those objects behave according to the predictions of that theory. Gravity is no exception.

For centuries, Newtonian gravitation was the most successful theory describing forces on the largest scales, saying that every object in the Universe that has a mass exerts an attractive force on every other object in the Universe with a mass, and that the magnitude of that force is proportional to the mass of both objects and inversely proportional to the distance between them. That’s what Newton’s law of universal gravitation says, and what it tells us is — in principle — how any system of particles will behave under the influence of gravity.

This is relatively straightforward to simulate with modern computers, and the match between theory and observation is spectacular.

Can we say something intelligent about why gravity works this way, though? Let’s think about our own neighborhood for a minute.

The Sun, the largest mass in our Solar System, is orbited in circles and ellipses by practically every known object, from planets to asteroids and (most) comets. There’s something special about circles and ellipses that we don’t normally think about as special: they’re stable, closed orbits, meaning that these objects return to the same point they started at after what we call a year.

That alone, mathematically, tells you something incredibly interesting. You see, all forces are vectors, meaning they have magnitudes and directions. In the case of our Solar System, the direction of the force on each object is (to an excellent approximation) towards the center of the Sun. Want something to go around the Sun in a closed orbit? Guess what.

You only have two options! One is to have a force that obeys an inverse-square law (like gravity does), and the other is to have a force that increases linearly with distance (like a spring does), and there’s a theorem that proves those are the only two possibilities!

So it could have gotten stronger or weaker as the distance increased, but only in one particular way, or we wouldn’t have stable, closed orbits.

And since those are the types of orbits required to have stable, moderate temperatures necessary for life, we sure did luck out that these are the laws governing our Universe!

Now there are some forces where the force increases as your distance from the object increases: the strong force is a great example! And there’s even an example of a type of force that has no direction and is constant everywhere: that’s what dark energy is, permeating all of space equally!

The thing is, though, saying that gravity is an inverse-distance-squared force is an incomplete story. In fact, the very fact that we have an orbit in our Solar System that very clearly isn’t closed is how we wound up replacing Newtonian gravity with our modern theory of gravity: General Relativity!

Because the orbit of Mercury precesses, or doesn’t close on itself, that was our first major hint that something was not quite complete about Newton’s theory of gravity. It took about half a century to solve this problem and replace Newtonian gravity with Einstein’s General Relativity, and one of the things we realized from that is that gravity isn’t exactly following an inverse-square law, but that’s only a great approximation when the involved distances are large and masses (and energies) are small.

We’ve come up with a whole host of predictions that have been borne out by experiment and observation, including the gravitational bending of light, the different orbital mechanics of systems with large masses and small distances, gravitational redshift, and many, many others.

But the greatest advance that’s related to this question of the strength of gravity is the knowledge that all orbiting bodies do not technically obey an inverse-squared force law.

All orbits under General Relativity come from forces that behave ever so slightly stronger than inverse-square laws, and this means that they will eventually decay over long enough timescales. The innermost planets will have their orbits decay first, followed by progressively outer worlds, because the distance is larger. Eventually, in the absence of all other phenomena, everything would spiral into the gravitational source at the center of all orbital systems.

For an object like Earth that orbited an imaginary, infinitely-long-lived Sun, it would take something like 10¹⁵⁰ years for the orbit to decay, but it means that a true stable, closed orbit is a phantasm, something that doesn’t really exist in this Universe!

At least, in a Universe governed by General Relativity, which is the best law of nature we have to describe gravity. In the weak-field limit (an approximation) — when masses are small and distances are large — this can be shown to reduce to Newtonian gravity, which is where the inverse-square-law-with-distance comes from!

But why do we have General Relativity as the theory that governs gravitation in this Universe, with the particular details that it has? I can’t say for certain; no one can.

Which means I have to resort to the standard cop-out answer: the force of gravity is this way because the laws of nature cause it to be. We can imagine a Universe where those laws are different, but this is the one we’ve got, and we don’t fully understand why the laws are this way any deeper than that. We can observe phenomena, infer the laws, test them in new and spectacular ways, and maybe someday we’ll understand why the laws are this way. In the meantime, this is the best answer we’ve got!

I’ve made no secret of how much I despise Stanislaw Burzynski, the self-proclaimed cancer doctor and medical researcher who has been treating patients with an unproven, unapproved chemotherapeutic agent since 1977, seemingly slithering around, under, over, and past all attempts to investigate him and shut him down. Along the way, Burzynski has become a hero to the cancer quackery industry, touted as the man who can cure incurable cancers that science-based medicine can’t, even though his treatment, antineoplastons, allegedly peptides isolated from blood and urine that normally keep cancer in check in healthy people, are by any reasonable definition chemotherapy. Indeed, they are toxic, with a number of side effects reported, the most common and dangerous of which being life-threatening hypernatremia (elevated sodium levels in the blood). All you have to do is to type Burzynski’s name into the search box of this blog, and you’ll find copious documentation of the abuses of patients, science, and clinical trials perpetrated by Stanislaw Burzynski and the cult of personality that has evolved around him. He’s even acquired his very own film propagandist, a credulous fellow named Eric Merola, who has made two astoundingly bad documentaries that are nothing more than unabashed hagiographies of the brave maverick doctor curing cancer where no one else can. They’re chock full of misinformation, pseudoscience, spin, and obvious emotional manipulation, and the first one, at least, was very popular.

For the longest time, I’ve been hoping that major mainstream news organizations would take this story on. It’s happened from time to time, but until 2013 it hadn’t happened in a long time. Earlier this year, the BBC featured Burzynski in an episode of its long-running series Panorama. It was a mixed bag that took the fairly easy path of making it all about the patients and never really delved into what I believe to be the central mystery of the four decade long Stanislaw Burzynski story, and that’s how he’s managed to keep his medical license and register clinical trials right up until 2012. That was a disappointment, although much of the rest of the Panorama episode was very good. He still has his medical license, but as I’ve pointed out several times, the FDA placed a partial clinical hold on Burzynski’s antineoplaston phase II clinical trials back in the summer of 2012. A partial clinical hold means that no new patients could be enrolled in his clinical trials, but patients already on them could continue to receive antineoplastons. In 2012, apparently a child died on antineoplastons, and so a partial clinical hold was placed on the trials involving children. That clinical hold was extended to adults in January 2012, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth among Burzynski apologists, as the FDA investigated between January and March. We now know the results of that investigation, but we never knew much about how that partial clinical hold came about.

Now, thanks to Liz Szabo at USA Today, we know from her article Doctor accused of selling false hope to families:

On the last day of his life, Josia Cotto’s parents gave him a choice.

The 6-year-old boy had been fighting an inoperable brain tumor for 10 months. When his mother, Niasia Cotto, found him in his bed, unresponsive and unable to open his eyes, “we knew there was nothing else that we could do,” she said.

An ambulance took Josia to a hospice room at a local hospital. His parents covered him in a soft, blue-and-white blanket, hugged him and held his small hand for the last time.

“We told him the choice was his, whether to keep fighting or be in peace with God,” said his mother. “He chose.”

Josia’s parents would have paid any price to save him.

A Texas doctor, two months, earlier, had given them one: $25,000 upfront, by cash or check.

It turns out that Josia Cotto was the child who died of complications from Burzynski’s treatment:

The FDA’s patience with Burzynski apparently wore out after Josia died.

In a report sent to the FDA after the boy’s death, Burzynski’s staff acknowledged that his last blood sample, taken the day he passed away,showed a blood sodium level of 205 millimoles per liter, a level that is typically fatal. Burzynski’s staff blamed that reading on a “false laboratory report based on a contaminated sample.”

Yet hypernatremia is one of antineoplastons’ most common side effects, known to doctors for two decades.

One of Burzynski’s own informed consent documents — the form that patients sign before they begin treatment — put the risk at 21%.

On July 30, 2012 — six weeks after Josia’s death — the FDA forbade Burzynski from giving antineoplastons to any new children.

I was astounded to see that number. I’ve never, ever seen a sodium level that high. Typically, normal is typically between 135 and 145 mEq/L, with slight variations of that range depending on the lab. Burzynski’s excuse, which I’ve heard at various times as being due to an “improper blood draw” or as described above, is purest nonsense. A bad blood draw typically produces falsely elevated potassium levels, not sodium levels. Unless the technician spiked Josia’s sample with 3% saline or something like that, there’s no way to get the leve that high. Josia almost certainly died because of hypernatremia from antineoplaston therapy.

To me, this is the biggest revelation of the story: The story and identity of the child who was killed by Burzynski’s treatments. We also learn that—surprise! surprise!—Stanislaw Burzynski is an enormous tool. Look at him dismiss his critics, particularly former patients, many of whom, let’s recall, have terminal cancer, many of whom are dead:

Burzynski dismisses criticism of his work, referring to his detractors as “hooligans” and “hired assassins.”

As for criticism from former patients, Burzynski says, “We see patients from various walks of life. We see great people. We see crooks. We have prostitutes. We have thieves. We have mafia bosses. We have Secret Service agents. Many people are coming to us, OK? Not all of them are the greatest people in the world. And many of them would like to get money from us. They pretend they got sick and they would like to extort money from us.”

History will vindicate him, Burzynski says, just as it has vindicated other persecuted medical “pioneers,” such as Louis Pasteur. In the future, Burzynski says, everyone will use his therapies, and the cancer treatments used today — such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiation — will be regarded as barbaric. “There will be a time when people will see the light,” he says, “and our treatments will be used by everyone.”

You know, whenever I hear Burzynski fans like Eric Merola accuse skeptics of attacking cancer patients, of accusing them of horrible things, I think I will throw this quote right back in their faces. Here’s Burzynski calling his patients prostitutes, thieves, and mafia bosses, and “not the greatest people in the world,” while accusing them of wanting to “extort money from us.” Not surprisingly, he also liberally uses the Galileo gambit, but that’s not surprising, as he’s repeatedly made the hilariously arrogant and scientifically ignorant claim that he is a pioneer in genomic and personalized cancer therapy and that M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and other world-class cancer centers are “following his lead.” Indeed, he claimed to have invented the field 20 years ago. Sadly, his publication record does not support such grandiose claims.

There’s a lot more in this story, some of it contained in the sidebar stories Experts dismiss doctor’s cancer claims and Families run out of hope, money after cancer treatments. Other than some of the revelations that I didn’t really know much about before, much of what is contained in the rest of this story will be familiar to regular readers here. For instance, experts are saying the same things I’ve been saying for a couple of years now about Burzynski’s anecdotes of “miracle cures,” such as Hannah Bradley and Laura Hymas. The reasons for these anecdotes include:

• Burzynski often relies on anecdotes, which don’t tell the full story.
• Burzynski’s therapies are unproven.
• Burzynski’s patients may have been misdiagnosed.
• Burzynski’s patients may have been cured by previous therapy.

There’s a reason why I’ve spent so much time deconstructing Burzynski anecdotes, and it’s for all of those reasons plus that anecdotes are often interpreted incorrectly by patients without medical training. Even doctors who are not oncologists sometimes interpret such anecdotes incorrectly to indicate that the cancer therapy chosen is the therapy that cured the patient. It’s not just Burzynski patient anecdotes, but it’s any cancer cure anecdote. That’s why clinical trials are necessary to differentiate all these confounding effects from actual effects due to the treatment. Indeed, the patients featured in Ms. Szabo’s article have nearly all been discussed by me before, including Mary Jo Siegel, who had a fairly indolent cancer for which the standard of care has changed from very aggressive treatment up to and including a bone marrow transplant to less aggressive therapy that acknowledges that these are fairly indolent tumors. Worse, her story is lost in the mists of time, where what now exists are only highly selected medical records posted on various websites.

Indeed, Ms. Szabo even explains one aspect of the concept of pseudoprogression in a simpler way than I did, lo, those many moons ago:

Many of Burzynski’s patients are terminally ill and have had one or more previous types of conventional cancer care — surgery, radiation or chemotherapy — before they see him.

But these therapies may have delayed benefits, taking weeks or months to shrink a tumor. So patients treated by Burzynski may credit him for their progress, just because he was the last doctor to treat them, says Peter Adamson, chair of the Children’s Oncology Group, an NCI-supported research network that conducts clinical trials in pediatric cancer.

Conventional cancer treatment can also cause tumors to swell temporarily, due to inflammation. A patient who isn’t familiar with this phenomenon may assume her tumor is growing. When that swelling subsides, patients may assume it’s because of Burzynski, Adamson says. In reality, the tumor was just returning to its previous size.

To avoid such confusions, researchers typically require patients to wait before starting a new treatment, Adamson says.

FDA inspections, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, show that Burzynski has repeatedly failed to follow that basic practice.

Pseudoprogression can be a real confounder in assessing the response of brain tumors to therapy, being observed up to 28% of the time. It’s most common after surgery and radiation therapy, although it can happen after chemotherapy too. Not coincidentally, Hannah Bradley had surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, and Laura Hymas had radiation and chemotherapy. These are the sorts of pitfalls that real cancer doctors doing real clinical trials already know about and work to minimize. Burzynski, in his arrogance, never thought he needed to bother with the sort of expertise that could validate his therapy. None of this stops Burzynski patients from being lured into spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Burzynski’s treatments.

It’s very heartening to see a story like this in a major news outlet, and I must congratulate Ms. Szabo for her thorough deconstruction of the phenomenon that is Stanislaw Burzynski. True, a bit of false balance did sneak in here and there. For instance, the Siegels are featured as are other Burzynski patients who believe he cured them when he almost certainly did not in a video accompanying the story, and the title of the series is a rather cliched “Science or Snake Oil.” However, the false balance that is so ingrained in the culture of journalism seems to be noticeably less apparent in this article than on many other stories about Burzynski that I’ve read. That’s good.

Before I close, I can’t help but mention that the most disappointing thing about this news story was that it still hasn’t revealed what I consider to be the two central mysteries of the Burzynski saga: First, how is it that Stanislaw Burzynski can still practice medicine? I know it’s Texas, but this has been going on for nearly 37 years. Second, why has he been allowed to continue to do clinical trials up until a little more than a year ago, and why is it that, even now, the FDA hasn’t shut him down permanently? Ms. Szabo sheds a little light on that, but nothing that regular readers of this blog don’t already know about the political machinations in the 1990s that led to Burzynski’s six dozen phase II clinical trials. Apparently, even Ms. Szabo and USA Today couldn’t crack that nut. Maybe public pressure can. The concluding section of the story tells us why we need to try:

No one told Josia’s parents about any of this.

Not Burzynski. Not the FDA.

Jose and Niasia Cotto had no idea that their son’s death prompted an investigation by the FDA, until they were contacted by USA TODAY.

The Cottos had long believed that Burzynski could have cured their son if only they had taken Josia to see him first, before giving him radiation and chemotherapy. They had even hoped to launch a non-profit, A Life for Josia Foundation, to help other children with cancer gain access to Burzynski’s treatment.

Now, they don’t know what to think.

Remember how I said that Bob Blaskiewicz will want your help? Now’s the time to contact him, if you haven’t already.

My family looks pretty different, and it gets a lot of attention.  The vast majority is positive, and most of the rest is just curious or wondering – but every now and then someone says something REALLY stupid, unkind or offensive.  A lot of the time, if the kids don’t hear it, I let it go.  If they say it in front of the kids, I sometimes take them to task. And sometimes, I give free rein to my sarcastic side.

(Note, some of these questions are not, in and of themselves, that offensive, and so don’t worry if you’ve asked them.  It is HOW people ask them – in front of the kids, loudly, thoughtlessly, as though they have a right to know things that are private.)

1. I always think <Black/biracial/hispanic> children are the most beautiful children in the world” (Usually said loudly, in front of all my kids).

My evil favorite answer: ”Yup, after I gave birth to four ugly white children, I had to go get me some pretty ones.”

2. ”I guess having all these rainbow kids is trendy now that Brad and Angelina are doing it.”

My evil favorite answer: ” I always have been a style leader. I just wish they came in more colors, because these guys don’t look good with these shoes.”

3. “Are they identical?” (Asked of my BOY-GIRL twins)

My evil favorite answer: “We can’t afford the surgery to have them made identical yet.”

4. “Where did you get them all?” (said incredulously)

My Evil Favorite Answer: “They are Albanian.”  (This is only funny because we live near Albany, NY).  I’ve also been known to say that we downloaded them from the internet.

5. ”He/She is so cute. I don’t understand why you haven’t adopted him/her already.

My Evil Favorite Answer:  ”I know, it is SO UNFAIR of their parents to love them and try and get them back – I mean, how dare they? If it was you, I’m sure you’d just sign them over. But then again, they ARE cute…”

6. Don’t you worry that the kids might have…welll….PROBLEMS down the road?” (Usually said in a stage whisper in the children’s hearing.)

My Evil Favorite answer: ”You mean they might grow up to be officious busybodies who have no idea what’s appropriate or inappropriate? Yes, that is a worry.”

7. How much did they cost?”

My Evil Favorite answer: “Four liters of blood, my left arm and my immortal soul. And it was totally worth it.”

8. Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to have children.” (Referring, of course, to my children’s bio parents)

My Evil Favorite Answer (best said totally deadpan): ”I definitely think you should be the one to decide who those people are.”

9. “Are you going to tell them they are adopted?” (Said most recently in front of my black twins who came to me at 3 1/2).

My Evil Favorite Answer “No, why, do you think they’ll guess?”

10.  Don’t your REAL children pick up bad habits from THOSE kids?

My Evil Favorite Answer: “Actually, I’ve been raising homicidal maniacs all along, I’m just worried the foster kids aren’t learning to be sociopaths fast enough from my boys.  We may have to bring in tutors.”

11. “How many fathers do they have?”

My Evil Favorite Answer: “It is hard for me to remember those sorts of things.  We’ve had a LOT of pool boys.”

12. “I couldn’t love a child that wasn’t related to me by blood.  How can you love them?”

My Evil Favorite Answer: “Good thing that prohibition on incestuous marriage isn’t enforced too strictly if you couldn’t love anyone who isn’t biologically related to you.”

13. “How much do you get paid?”

My Evil Favorite Answer: ”They reimburse us enough to be able to take care of the kids. But they don’t pay enough to make talking to idiots worthwhile.”

 

Homo sapiens evolved about 200-150,000 years ago in Africa, but our story as a species stretches back much further than that with early human ancestors. And the evolution of Homo sapiens is itself a tangled tale, full of unanswered questions and gothic family melodrama. Here are a few facts you may not know about the human evolutionary story.

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Because Japan always gets way cooler stuff than the rest of the world, this is the line of Super Mario toys purveyor of barely-burgers McDonald's will be giving away in the country's Happy Meals. Here in the US? No clue, probably a pamphlet about exercising. All the Mario toys either play music or perform an action. Anybody want to move to Japan with me? Actually, let me rephrase that -- anybody want to move to Japan and let me live with you rent-free? I can cook and clean. I'm never going to, but I know how.

Because what fun is shaving a penis into the beard of a passed out friend if everybody's going to mistake it for a rocketship, Phillips has just announced the first beard trimmer with a laser guide: the Phillips Beard Trimmer 9000. That's right -- the 9000. I generally prefer my beard trimmers over 9000, but that's just me and I once had to shave with a lawnmower. Admittedly, when I used to trim my beard around the neck, cutting too far was my number two reason for getting pissed and shaving the whole thing off. The number one reason? Too scratchy. "Fascinating." Isn't it? Stay tuned for the order I brush my teeth. Keep going for a video about the thing. Then look in the mirror and get sad about how your Movember beard is shaping up. Thanks to me, for being manly enough to grow a beard, but being devilishly handsome enough to know I don't need one to hide my face.

This is a short commercial for Volvo (previously: a hamster driving a Volvo) featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme performing his famous splits between two reversing Volvo big-rigs. It was supposed to "demonstrate the precision and directional stability of Volvo Dynamic Steering," but really just reminded us Jean-Claude Damme is a badass with balls big enough for astronomers to consider planets. "Hey!" YOU HEARD ME, PLUTO. Keep going for the worthwhile video with BONUS Enya soundtrack. Heck yeah! \oo/ Thanks to David R, who could do jumping jacks between two reversing Volvos but refuses because he has enough respect for Jean-Claude to not show him up.

This is a video of Danish archer Lars Anderson demonstrating the ancient archery techniques he's been practicing. The key to a lot of them is holding spare arrows in your hand instead of a quiver. Doing so, Lhars can shoot 10 arrows in 4.9 seconds, shoot 11 arrows before the first hits the ground, shoot through chainmail, shoot three arrows in less than a second while falling, and shoot three disks while running backwards in 1.12 seconds. I wish I was better at archery. I think the bow might actually be my favorite weapon if you don't count laser blasters or psychological warfare. Keep going for the worthwhile video, but feel free to skip around. You can't turn off the robotic narration though. There's also a shorter one after of Lars hitting targets from the back of a motorcycle. Thanks to Boulder, who asked me to stand by a tree with an apple on my head but I politely declined.

I want to be the broken telephone Rick calls his dead wife on! The Walking Dead edition of Monopoly is actually kind of brilliant.

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Did I stutter? This one does exactly what is says on the tin, folks. Hit the jump for the clip, if you dare, then we'll discuss what we can learn from the footage. Because you're damn right there's a teaching moment to be had here.

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The folks over at Language Log are calling the word tuhao (definition: bling) "the hottest term on the Chinese internet these days." Today, we want to know your favorite new words spawned by the internet. Is the word you need not yet flying all over the interwebs? Then now is exactly the right time to propose it.

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Note: Video after the jump is 400% NSFW and should not be viewed by anyone ever. You know what? I'm not even going to post the video, just link to it HERE because that's how wrong it is. Because some people's perversion knows no limits, this is a video demo of an Oculus Rift virtual reality display that's been coupled with a Novint Falcon haptic control device holding a Tenga brand wiener pleasuring tube. It all made me very sad. Because what use is a new technology if perverts can't use it to have imaginary sex with anime characters? *ring ring* Hold on, I need to take that. Hello, God? Wait -- are you sure? Hey, you're the boss, I just work here. Of course, it's your call. *hangs up* Sorry about that folks, now if you'll excuse me... *lifting cover from big red button* SAY YOUR PRAYERS. Thanks to Ferrous and lebeeps, who agree if this is the future they're building time machines to live in the past.

This is the set of dragon bone armor made by Redditor Starkfelt17. Me? I haven't felt 17 since I was 17. Although I did feel 19 a couple weekends ago when a friend produced a tray of Jello shots from the fridge. Obviously, the costume isn't real dragon bone because real dragon bones are insanely expensive and you can usually only find them in powder form as a potion ingredient. Although I do know a guy. I could probably get you a decent sized dragon bone for the right price. "How much are we talking?" $50,000 sound fair? "Deal." Whoa -- awesome. Meet me back here in a week with the money. *one week later* Here you go -- one large, authentic dragon bone. "Did you have a peg-leg a week ago?" I was born with that. Keep going for a shot of the back. Thanks to oblyvaeon and V, who have been selling fake fairy wings to witches for years. Haha -- dragonfly wings, right?!

Just in time to fill my Christmas list (front and back), this is Black Milk Clothing's new Adventure Time collection. It's probably what I'm most thankful for this Thanksgiving season. "Not your friends and family?" AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA. Wait, were you being serious? Keep going for a ton more of the collection, complete with the models making funny faces. Thanks to PYY and Stiles, who agree adventure times are the best times provided you don't count sleepy times, snack times and sexy times.

Astrophotographer Chad Powell captured this vision of the Milky Way arcing phosphorescent over England's Isle of Wight, which island is renowned for its lack of lightpollution.

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Adventure Time is coming to the streets of Manhattan this Thanksgiving, with a Jake and Finn (plus Snail peeping around from Finn's back!) balloon making it's first appearance in the 87th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I'll be watching. I'll be watching while making my famous green bean and broccoli cheese casseroles. They're secret family recipes! The secret is not washing your hands. Thanks to Cindy, who knows all too well I'll probably spend Thanksgiving morning outside KFC waiting for it to open.

Marvel has a pretty decent head start on DC at this point, in terms of creating a movie universe — hence DC's rush to do Batman Vs. Superman. But according to Guillermo del Toro, DC is going to get there soon, and his team of supernatural misfits will be part of the plan.

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If you have not read Julia Ioffe's story about getting whooping cough at the age of 31 (also see follow up), you might want to. Here's some further context, Vaccine Refusals Fueled California's Whooping Cough Epidemic. This topic has been covered and dissected in great detail by many writers and scientists, so I won't repeat what you already know in regards to herd immunity. There's no point in preaching to the choir. Rather, I want to offer a personal perspective. Over the past few years I

About a month back a researcher at Yale published survey results which showed that Tea Party members exhibited more science knowledge than the general public, somewhat to his chagrin. I wasn't particularly surprised, because the knowledge of science as it relates to political ideology is somewhat complex. Often the right-leaning get lower marks because of strong reactions to questions perceived to be ideological. It's a rather robust finding that the more intelligent are more ideological, so it

In 1876, the outlaw Clelland "Clell" Miller was buried at Muddy Fork Cemetery in Kearney, Missouri. You can visit his grave. But the body interred at Muddy Fork may not be Miller's at all, as 3D scans of a skeleton discovered in Grand Forks, North Dakota – purported to belong to Miller – now show.

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You've heard of all-terrain vehicles before, but this drone takes the concept to a whole new level. It can reconfigure itself to traverse air, land and even water. The "Multi-Modal Vehicle Concept" was designed at the Sandia National Laboratories in California to streamline unmanned military missions. Instead of having to choreograph a series of three or four different vehicles, this single, souped-up transformer could do it all. The vehicle starts as a flying machine, but needs no runway to

Many of you probably know about Dave Chappelle's black white supremacist sketch (NSFW video!), though fewer are aware of Leo Felton, a white supremacist (ex, after he was outed) with a black father (a less tragic outcome than Dan Burros, the Jewish American Nazi). I know, these sound like they're out of South Park episodes, though the last two are actually not fictional. But now the media is exploding with news that a DNA test has suggested that a notorious white supremacist is 14 percent black.

This is a series of Pokemon monster themed boyshort 'Pokepanties' made and sold by Etsy shop MakersWay. They kind of make your ass look like Charmander's, Squirtle's, Pikachu's or Bulbasaur's. If your lover is more into that than they would be your regular ass, RUN, DO NOT WALK to the closet, throw all your stuff in a garbage bag, and leave immediately. You ever asked a lover to wear a paper mask of your own face while doing the nasty? I regret it. Keep going for the fronts of each. Thanks to Hop Tan Le, who prefers panties that accentuate the ass you've got, not make it look like a fictional monster's.

The problem with creating Stuxnet, the world's most sophisticated malware worm, is that it could eventually go rogue. Which is precisely what has happened. The US- and Israeli-built virus has spread to a Russian nuclear plant — and even the International Space Station.

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