Spotting A Highly Annoying 'So-So' Social Trend

Warren The Pedantic

Over the last several months, we have spotted a new social trend that is highly annoying. It seems that whenever anyone is afforded a public forum—be they doctors, lawyers, reporters or political talking heads—they begin their response to a question in the following manner: "So, ....." For example, "So, Anderson, it turns out the two Marathon bombers were......" Or, "So, the rebels in Syria seem to be closing in on the Assad regime...." ARRRGGGH! This pedantic, condescending approach is enough to make you want to send the remote control right through the HD display! It's as if the speaker is somehow lecturing those of us in the 'great unwashed' who couldn't possibly possess their depth of understanding. I tried to trace back the precise moment in time when it all started. My earliest memory of being rubbed the wrong way by this phenomenon was a mere seven months ago—during the debates between then-U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Scott Brown and his then-challenger Elizabeth Warren. Time and again, Warren would begin her answers with: "So, ....". Of course, she had a reason to be pedantic and annoying: she was a Harvard professor. Nevertheless, it came up in every debate. Condescension squared. She won the election. And the trend lives on. Thanks a lot, Elizabeth!

North Korea, Nuclear Weapons And Magical Horses

'Magical' Horse

Amid all the sabre-rattling from the 30-year old megalomaniac in Pyongyang, it's instructive to remember how warped a society North Korea really is. Exposed to only party propaganda 24 hours a day, its citizens live in a hazy netherworld of fantasy. As the 101st anniversary of their founder's birth approaches on Monday, fantastic tales of irrationality are again emerging. Here's our favorite: Apparently, Kim Il Sung was literally on fire during a battle, when his 'magical white horse'—Lassie-like—dumped him in the snow where he rolled out the flames. But let's go to the original text from the official news agency—it's so much more colorful:

"It was only when the horse began to run with the wind that he discovered the flames on his coat. He had no time to pull it off. At this critical moment, the horse slowed down in front of a snow-covered depression and then slid into it sideways, with its forelegs folded in. The President stumbled into the snow, and the fire on his coat was put out as he rolled over in it. Other stories say that the white horse's foreleg tapped on the fallen tree and the sound woke the President up and that he was surprised to see tears trickling from the horse's eyes as it should have a premonition of parting to be used as draught horse for the people in the guerrilla zone."

Ah, tearfully sentimental magical white horses. And this lunatic's grandson has nukes?

Oldest Universal Light Is Captured By Telescope

Literally, 'Let There Be Light'

An amazing image has been captured by the European Space Agency's Planck Telescope—one that displays the oldest light in the universe—about 380,000 years after the big bang. Before that time, light did not shine through the cosmos. Specifically, the image represents small variations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from when the universe first came into being. The information essentially confirms most cosmological theories of the universe's development. Based on the data, estimates are that "everything" is about 13.82 billion years old—adding about 80 million years of age to earlier estimates. The astonishing image map shows us what happened in the "first trillionth of a trillionth of a second" after the Big Bang. The Pope could not be reached for comment.

Scientists Announce Confirmation Of 'God Particle'

Fittingly, one day after a new pope was named in Rome, scientists in Italy announced their certainty that the Higgs boson (or 'God particle') has been discovered. At a physics conference in the Italian Alps, only hours away from the pomp and circumstance in the Vatican, scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) made the announcement. The so-called 'God Particle' explains how matter takes on size and form in the universe. The fact that the Higgs boson actually exists—unlike a fantasy deity—helps confirm a theory that the size and shape of matter is determined when particles interact in an energy field with the key particle. This could be one of the most momentous discoveries in scientific history. Surely, it has more significance that what just happened in Rome. We can now say with confidence, "Habemus Deum particula".

Jurassic Lark: Geneticist's Neanderthal Redux

Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School is a very well-respected geneticist. So, it's a little bewildering to hear of his bizarre plan to resurrect an extinct humanoid species via DNA manipulation. Church wants to reconstruct Neanderthal DNA, inject it into stem cells, and implant an embryo into a host human mother. We're all for scientific advancement, but this seems more like a bad George Romero film from the fifties. While Church rightly states that Neanderthals—who became extinct about 30,000 years ago—do not fit the stereotype of mindless caveman, what possible benefit could come from this scheme? Is Church thinking at all about the ethical implications of his experiment? How safe can it be for a being equipped with 30,000-year old DNA to be dropped into the 21st century? With all due respect, this seems like a dumb idea.