Western thought, from the sciences to the arts, have been based upon the rich mythology and history of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.  One which seems to guide the subconscious thought of many of our political and financial leaders is the myth of Saturn (Chronos).  Saturn, the Roman name for the Greek God Chronos, became the ruler of the deities after overthrowing his own father.  However, Saturn, like most power hungry individuals, quickly aged and forgot the crimes perpetrated by his own father -- 

Does it take effort to tell the truth or are you naturally honest? In other words, are you truthful or a liar? A Harvard neuroimaging study showed that you're wired to be one or the other.

The study watched subjects' brains as they were presented with the opportunity to win money through lying. When honest people told the truth, their brains were at peace. When dishonest people lied, the control centers of their brains crackled to overwrite the truth with a lie. And here's the cool part: even when dishonest people happened to tell the truth, researchers watched their brains actively override the temptation to lie.

Icon for Cosmic Embryo: Erupting star V838 Monocerotis 

”On 2010-09-26, at 5:01 AM, Frithjof A.S. Sterrenburg wrote:

Dear Richard!

Sorry to hear you have been in the claws of the barber-surgeons.  Hope everything is well now!… As for your itinerant existence, you begin to resemble the mathematician Erdös! Cheers, boy, get well soon!"

I am 21% of awesome.  But the rest, well, as with last year, I thought I'd let everyone know what you hated. My two worst columns from last year, the only ones to get under 400 visitors, were:

1) AGU Meetup? (San Fran, Dec 13-17), at 154 visits.
2) Dating Advice or disaster in the making?, an anemic 257 visits.

Yeah, I can see it. Neither calls to me. The first is just reaching to regular readers who might be in San Francisco, the second is a reblog of someone else's bad dating advice.