Quantum entanglement was strange when it was conceptualized.   It violated Einstein's famous speed limit in his Theory of Relativity and he called it spukhafte Fernwirkung - “spooky action at a distance” and sought to note the flaws in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the Copenhagen interpretation.   The result was the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox.

I hope you didn't see my first-to-worst performance in last night's hotties vs. nerds edition of ABC's WIPEOUT. If you did, you know what happened: after winning the round of 24 by almost a minute and then winning the round of 12 by the equivalent of a furlong, I got stuck in the round of six trying one element over and over -- the wrong way -- as people I had beaten in the first two rounds passed and eventually eliminated me.

Nuts--'twas a very good shot at $50k that my family of four surviving on my writer's salary could've used.

The term sperm competition can be used in two ways.

In the broad sense, it involves a large range of morphological, behavioural and physiological attributes, including courtship and copulation behavior (for example, a male that guards females to ensure that he’s the father).  

In the narrow sense, which is the focus of this article, sperm competition is used to denote the physiological processes occurring inside the female’s genital organs after multiple matings.

(For a brief review on the complexity of sperm selection, see Wigby and Chapman, 2004).

 By James Todd (in italics) and Kim Wombles

Maybe your need to feel like a Hollywood celebrity outweighs the long-published perils of cocaine use and you just need a little something to push you back over the edge to sanity - if so, crusty, purplish areas of dead skin that are extremely painful and can open the door to nasty infections might do the trick. 

The condition is called purpura, usually a range of rare disorders, but increasingly associated with the use of cocaine, specifically cocaine that has been increasingly contaminated with a de-worming drug used by veterinarians. The drug, called levamisole, was found in 30 percent of confiscated cocaine in 2008 and 70 percent in 2009, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Other than wasting away due to illness, there is no shortcut to weight loss.   You can, of course, simply not eat at all and that will work but if you resume your old habits you would gain the weight back and the drastic changes to your body might do harm.

Some people are motivated to lose weight - as long as it can happen right now.  And any number of gimmicks and diet programs will help, if you just buy the book or the meals.    But the failure rate is far greater than the success rate because, ordinarily, if people had the discipline to stick to a weight loss plan, they wouldn't be obese.    

Whenever friends or family learn that there exists in the depths of the sea a particular species known as the Dana Octopus Squid, they draw the obvious conclusion that I must have been named after this squid, or (even more flattering) the squid was named after me. Alas, neither is the case. Wikipedia reveals all:

Taningia danae is named after Danish fisheries biologist Aage Vedel Taaning (1890–1958), who often traveled on the research vessel Dana.

Of course, the truly perceptive will note that since my name has two n's, there can be no possible connection between the squid and me.

Writing at the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang blog,  Jason Samenow advocates an idea he recently saw pitched by atmospheric scientist Alan Betts, namely that science studies be accompanied by layperson explanations.

The world is changing. Climate change, deforestation, and much more, are all having an impact on our litlle planet. A question that follows this statement quite naturally, is 'Will the earth's organisms be able to adapt to the changing circumstances?'

Well, probably, some will, given enough time. But that might be a problem.

The world is changing fast. So the question should really be 'Will the earth's organisms be able to adapt to the changing circumstances fast enough?'