A few days back, it being the Halloween season (at least in America - do other cultures indulge in pagan madness of this sort?) I saw, on some social network or another, a neat carved pumpkin that looked like, I kid you not, R2-D2 from "Star Wars."

It looked quite neat and I have never been a pumpkin carving guy, outside the stuff I do with the kids, but it seemed like a fun idea and a way to do something with the kids.

The worst thing government has done is get into the recycling business but even worse than that is over-doing it.   Where I live, the local government recently started 'separating' garbage, declared more things recyclable, then made the recycling collectible only every two weeks.  Result:  Government employees are getting paid to come by and empty garbage containers that are 20% full and the recycling one is stuffed after 10 days.  Meanwhile, the delay in recycling is so huge it is basically a landfill anyway.

If you are in the Washington, D.C. and only have 48 hours to kill, I have bad news - the USA Science&Engineering Festival has likely packed an entire month of good stuff into this weekend, so you will need Solomon-like wisdom to choose what you want to see.

Larry Bock, head visionary of the event, is a master of logistics, planning and science enthusiasm and we've gushed over his achievements before - but just being able to get an event on the National Mall is more work than most of us would do and adding 1500 activities and 75 stage shows is downright amazing.

I get quite a lot of press releases, as you can imagine.  Dozens or hundreds depending on the day.

I don't know who decides this "week" stuff - generally, I assume people who do the marketing make the rules so if I decide I want a Science 2.0 Week I get a few people to promote it and that's that, I have a Science 2.0 Week.