Open Science Thread

This is one of the most entertaining science related posts I read all last year. It’s raw and irreverent and should not be read by anyone who is easily offended, but with Young Earth Creationist Mike Huckabee emerging as the right-wing fundamentalist champion, it’s strangely appropriate on several levels. Here’s a taste:

For the next few hours, we would fully commit to what Bunting would later poetically call "jerking off in their fundamentalist faces." With my tiny-armed Jurassic chum riding shotgun ... It was show time...."Hiiiiiii!" I shouted like a maniac at anyone within earshot. "Yow!" I yelped in unison with one firm clap of my hands. I bounced in the wheelchair with glee, for I was among God’s special people. I almost envied them in a way. Unencumbered by reason and logic, their minds drowned with sweet ignorance and incredible fairytales, they were the true freaks.

• A freaky storm with wind gusts well over 100mph lashed the San Francisco area leaving one-million residents without power. But I suppose when you live in a shake-n-quake prone, mud-sliding, blazing fire-trap of a region, perched on top of a violent boundary between two tectonic plates, you can handle a little wind and rain.
• There is currently a 1 in 78 chance [Correction: 1 in 28 chance] that space rock WD5 will hit the planet Mars at the end of this month. It could produce the kind of spectacle that would allow us to finally know; are any of those F/X cinematic meteor impacts even close to the real thing?
• Last but not least, I award this slot to Pure Pedantry’s timely Friday rant called "I Hate You Iowa Caucuses."