Geminids Peak Dec. 13: “If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor.

…Studies of past find the “Gems” have a reputation for being rich both in slow, bright, graceful meteors and fireballs as well as faint meteors, with relatively fewer objects of medium brightness.

…Geminids also stand apart from the other meteor showers in that they seem to have been spawned not by a comet, but by 3200 Phaethon, an Earth-crossing asteroid. Then again, the Geminids may be comet debris after all, for some astronomers consider Phaethon to really be the dead nucleus of a burned-out comet that somehow got trapped into an unusually tight orbit. Interestingly, on December 10, Phaethon will be passing about 11 million miles (18 million kilometers) from Earth, its closest approach since its discovery in 1983.

The Geminids perform excellently in any year, but British meteor astronomer, Alastair McBeath, has categorized 2007 as a ‘great year.'” (Yahoo! News)

“…Rare and interesting neurological case study: penetration of the brain by a deer antler. CNN.com also has a video describing the event and the injury. In a nutshell, 5-year-old Connor Schick found a deer antler during an outdoor vacation in July. He tripped while carrying it, he fell on it, and it penetrated his brain through his eyesocket. (OUCH) Below is the MRI of his injury, with his doctor holding up the offending antler for dramatic effect. antler%20brain%202.bmp Credit: CNN.com Connor was quite lucky. Not only did he survive, but is making a full recovery after antibiotic therapy, with no permanent behavioral consequences. Despite being inserted three or four inches into the frontal lobes, the antler amazingly missed his eye, the ocular muscles, and any important vascular structures.” (Retrospectacle)

It keeps getting worse, says Andrew Sullivan: “Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is unloading what he found after being granted access to various Bush Office Of Legal Counsel opinions. Every time you think you’re hallucinating about the powers this president has accrued to himself, you come across a reality more surreal…” (The Atlantic)

‘World’s dumbest couple?’ “As journalists and detectives across the world struggled to unravel the mystery of the “back-from-the-dead” canoeist, a single mother with a computer and an inquiring mind beat them to it.

The woman, who has not been named, typed “John, Anne, Panama” into the images section of Google, the Internet search engine. Up popped a photo of John and Anne Darwin taken in Panama in July last year, which appeared to refute their claims not to have seen each other since his “death” in 2002.

She emailed the picture to Cleveland Police and the Daily Mirror newspaper, which published it on its front page the next day, beneath the headline “Canoe’s this in Panama?”. When confronted with the photo, Mrs Darwin admitted the man was indeed her husband, and conceded it was time to “face the music”.

She has now left Panama for Britain, where Mr Darwin has been arrested on suspicion of fraud. “My sons are never going to forgive me. They are going to hate me,” she said yesterday. “It looks as if I am going to be left without a husband, a home or a family now.”” (Telegraph.UK)

Nonbelievers have long been more tolerant of believers in office than the other way around. “Whatever bland assurances they may offer to the contrary, both Romney and Huckabee have implicitly endorsed religious tests for a presidential candidacy. Both suggest that only leaders who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are qualified to lead. Huckabee says that we should choose a president who speaks ‘the language of Zion,’ meaning a fundamentalist Christian like himself. Romney says that among the questions that may appropriately be asked of aspiring presidential candidates is what they believe about Jesus Christ, a question he endeavored to answer in a way that would assuage suspicions about his own religion.” — Joe Conason (Salon)