Unless you have culturally been living under a rock, you have heard of Area 51 - Roswell, New Mexico.   Supposedly an alien spacecraft came down there in 1947 and a vast government conspiracy sprung up to build the thing and keep it secret for nearly 70 years.

Annie Jacobsen, journalist and contributing editor at the LA Times (they are thrilled about that plug) says the UFO was just a Soviet spy plane that came down due to weather.    But that isn't the end of it.    The Soviets, no strangers to eugenics, had staffed it with genetically engineered pilots, 'alien-like' children aged 12 or 13 and Stalin hoped to cause some panic in the U.S., a la the Orson Welles radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" in 1939.

LED bulbs will finally be bright enough to replace 100-watt incandescent light bulbs but there is a problem - they will cost $50 each.  And won't be available until after the ban.  And they produce almost as much heat as incandescent bulbs, making them ridiculously inefficient.

Advocates always believe in legislating perfectly healthy businesses out of existence because they contend 'the miracle of capitalism' will make the replacement they just subsidized and mandated through government fiat cheaper.   Well, why should they get cheaper when the government created a monopoly market?    If capitalism works, and $50 is a good price to pay for a light bulb, it doesn't need government bans on regular light bulbs.

The 2010 miniseries from the UK, Genius of Britain: The Scientists Who Changed the World ships for Americans May 31^st.

Nothing is convenient to criticize like the food industry.   Environmental mullahs blame farmers for nitrogen and pesticides and greenhouse gases, though farming has actually "dematerialized" in the last 30 years and is producing the more food with only 60 percent of the land used in 1980.    Meanwhile, cultural fundamentalists decry the Utopian ideal every culture in history always sought to attain - cheap food.  So cheap people can eat a lot and choose to get fat.

Io's global "ocean" of molten rock beneath the surface feeds its prolific volcanism, a new study finds.

Unlike Earth's magma, which tends to cluster in pockets around the edges of tectonic plates, Io's magma is found in a global reservoir at least 30 miles (48 kilometers) deep, the study suggests. This huge reserve of subsurface molten rock helps explain why Io is the most volcanically active object in the solar system, spewing out 100 times more lava than all of Earth's volcanoes combined.

NASA's Galileo reveals magma 'ocean' beneath surface of Jupiter's moon - Kids Science Zone

Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday.

In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the Imperial Palace, Lord Vader declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that agents of the Imperial Army and stormtroopers of the 501st Legion had finally cornered Kenobi, one of the leaders of the Jedi rebellion, who had eluded the Empire for nearly two decades. Imperial officials said Kenobi resisted and was cut down by Lord Vader's own lightsaber. He was later dumped out of an airlock.

Since 1988, students at the University of Arizona were given a questionnaire in order to determine their attitudes toward science and pseudoscience, as well as examine their basic scientific knowledge.   Hadas Shema, Information Science PhD student, tackles those results and compares them to similar NSF studies.   The results show a large amount of pseudo-scientific acceptance.

Should it be surprising?   Perhaps not.  Students are supposed to be open to knowledge and learning early in their college days and a lot of those students will be in the humanities and unfamiliar with what makes science into science.

Science 2.0 fave Darlene Cavalier, the Science Cheerleader, has big news.   

The “Science of NFL Football”series, produced by NBC Learn, NBC Sports and the National Science Foundation in partnership with Science Cheerleader and the NFL, won a Sports Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Outstanding New Approaches Sports Programming.

Gooooooo, Darlene!  Gooooooooo science!

From BathMums, a brewing controversy over a baby friendly cafe for new mothers that has suddenly started charging a 'corkage' fee (if you are unfamiliar with the term, it is a fee a restaurant charges if you bring your own wine to go with your meal rather than buying it from the restaurant) to mothers who bring their own baby food.

Jika Jika, means "twist" in Zulu so it's no surprise.   The obvious question is, what's next?   Will mothers get charged for breast feeding too?