At some point we need to either ban cigarettes or call off the fundamentalist ranting about smokers.  Yes, smoking is bad for you, everyone knows that by now, but having the state of California increase taxes on cigarette smokers - making the state government even more reliant on them - while they use some of that money for anti-smoking campaigns, which means the government now wants to kill the revenue source it is making itself more reliant on, is the kind of thing only...well... progressive government would do.

Eye evolution is always interesting stuff, as I last discussed regarding Dr. Ivan Schwab's "Evolution's Witness".  

A new finding suggests that the compound eyes evolved right at the origin of this branch of the evolutionary tree, long before the sorts of hard exoskeletons we now consider typical of arthropods.

When rational people give up, all that is left are zealots - that means the conduct of some nations at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) could be a sign reasonable discussion of controlling emissions are out the window.

It has been hoped for years that a meaningful successor to the Kyoto agreement could be in reach soon but it's a little silly to have the world's top CO2 emitter exempt from CO2 emissions cutbacks - not to mention India, Brazil and Mexico, who are also exempt and don't want that to change, since they are much poorer than China and China remains exempt.

Let's hope bizarre stories regarding Sweden's nationalized health care system are the exception - worried Americans have enough on their minds without wondering if a government life/death panel will suddenly decide not having legs is not good enough reason to have a wheelchair.

A man from Nyköping in eastern Sweden has been denied a power wheelchair despite having had both of his legs amputated after a long struggle with diabetes. The health authority remained "uncertain if the impairment was permanent".

Modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa but some new research suggests humankind left Africa traveling through the Arabian Peninsula instead of hugging its coasts, as long thought.

Over 100 newly discovered sites in the Sultanate of Oman might confirm that modern humans left Africa through Arabia long before genetic evidence suggests - the sites are located far inland. in the Dhofar Mountains of southern Oman, away from the coasts.

A large statue of king Amenhotep III, who ruled from 1390-1352 B.C. and was the grandfather of the famed boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, has been unearthed by Egyptian archaeologists.

The 44 foot tall statue is made of colored quartzite and is composed of several large pieces that,  once put together, will depict the king as standing.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities says the latest find was made at the king's funerary temple in the southern city of Luxor.

Statue of Egyptian king Amenhotep III found - The State

You may have seen recent McDonald's commercials for its "McRib" sandwich - that means it is back again, just like it has risen from the dead for the last 30 years.  What is a McRib sandwich?  No one knows; it is Chicken McNuggets, except made of pork.   Young people love the things for the same reason some people loved Sigue Sigue Sputnik when I was young; people like things if they become so bad they are good.

The McRib, like bad music, does not appear on any predictable schedule - it isn't like a Shamrock Shake, coinciding with a holiday about persistent alcoholism.   So why does it keep appearing?

Scientists in the United States have come up with a tool for automatically analyzing digital photographs, making it possible to gauge the extent to which images have been altered or retouched. Advances in image-manipulation software have made it trivial to radically alter the appearance of models and celebrities in photos, notes Hany Farid, a computer scientist who studies digital forensics and image analysis at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to read like the dead. Not just to read dead authors—something a little bit creepier. Yes, I am aware that recapturing the actual experiences of long-ago readers is impossible, like visiting Mars or traveling in time. Still, I can’t help reading inscriptions, plucking out old bookmarks, decoding faded marginalia. I catch myself wondering who was reading this a century ago, and where, and why?