No doubt lots of good happened to some folks this year, but overall 2011 kind of sucked in my book. Here's just some of what could happen in 2012 to make it a much, much better year for all: The first completely earth-sized planet will be found orbiting in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. The Higgs Boson could be confirmed. The U.S. space program will get a big shot in the arm from SpaceX and other newspace firms. We can at last stop saying two-thousand and blank, and start saying twenty-twelve or whatever all through the teens. And last but not least, the economy could take off thanks in part to new inventions, from solar-cell paint for homeowners to orbiting power stations for a growing world. Dare we dream web developers will solve the seemingly intractable hung web page dilemma, or that Twitter will introduce a decent user interface? It's worth hanging in there to find out, progressive comrades and assorted liberal fucksticks, because once the new year really gets going, and the corporate coffers are opened up like Scrooge's plugged firehoses, 2012 may end up looking a lot less like 2008 and a lot more like 1995. Hopefully, without a conservative Bush-esque administration waiting at the end to fuck it all up.
- The three wisemen couldn't have been that wise, afterall, they believed in astrology. But the golden rule states he with with gold, and frankincense and myrrh, makes the rules ... except when frankincense is rapidly disappearing thanks to climate change and over farming. Hallelujah!
- I doubt the traditional media or much of the right-wing blogosphere wants to admit that one of the fastest growing blog collectives—and perhaps the fastest growing—at the ass-end of 2011 was a merry band of scientists, atheists and skeptics at FreeThoughtBlogs. Our plans for world domination and the violent execution of Santa Claus continue apace!
- For featherbutt fans: The unusual intelligence of birds is getting to be well known. And new research indicates our flying friends are no slouches when it comes to math:
When tested, they were able to do the task even when unfamiliar numbers of things were introduced. In other words, having learned that two was more than one and three more than two, they could also figure out that five was more than two, or eight more than six.