Jerry Falwell is dead.
Haha.

In other sucks to be Christian fundamentalist news, Normal Bob Smith, creator of JesusDresUP.com, updated his site yesterday with pictures of weirdos hanging out at union square.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water….WATER TIGERS!!!!

More reasons to stay on dry land after the jump. Thanks Fark. (more…)

The Nageswaran family of Freehold Township, NJ, found out today that the silver hunk of rock that crashed through their roof was not a meteorite, but a simple, Earth-based piece of scrap metal. Srinivasan Nageswaran was clearly bummed by the news.

“That’s the nature of science,” he said Friday. “If the conclusion from the test says it’s not a meteorite, then it’s not a meteorite. We have to move forward.”

While the Nageswaran family prepares to bravely soldier on in light of the disappointing news, the man who determined that the object was not a meteorite, Rutgers University geologist Jeremy Delaney, could only offer an antiquated pop culture reference in response.

“That’s the $64,000 question, and there’s probably no way to answer it. A piece of scrap iron dropped out of the sky. The question is how did it get into the sky in the first place? That one I simply cannot answer.”

[Source]

Clownfish actually pretty good at directions, scientists say.

A month or so ago, I saw a bit called “Bears and Balls” on the Colbert Report in which he told the Nation to invest in bees because they’re disappearing and no one knows where they’re going or why they’re gone. That got filed away somewhere in my worry locker but eventually got lost among forgotten worries like “envelopes laced with anthrax” and “razor blades hidden in Halloween candy.” But after a conversation at a party over the weekend, and reading this article, the bee dilemma has been brought to the forefront.

Honeybees are dying. No one knows why. At least not yet. Honeybee is a bit of a misnomer though, as they don’t just make honey but pollinate 90 percent of North America’s flowering crops. No more bees? No more apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. Forget about citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

About one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 per cent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being (stuck with grains and water,â€? said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA’s bee and pollination program.

(This is the biggest general threat to our food supply,� Hackett said.

Enjoy that salad.

Floating free of his wheelchair, Stephen Hawking participated in the NASA training exercise known as the “vomit comet” and experienced the feeling of zero gravity for the first time. The 64 year old scientist basically rewrote physics and probably knows the secret of life in the universe, so you figure this experience would be about as mundane as blinking. Not so.

Before taking off over the Atlantic Ocean, Hawking acknowledged that experiencing weightlessness even for a few seconds would be a welcome change from life in the wheelchair. “The chance to float free in zero-g will be wonderful,” he said through his computer voice synthesizer during a pre-flight news conference. “I want to demonstrate to the public that anybody can participate in this type of weightless experience.”

Read more.