Let's get Mars-curious!

Brace yourselves, because after decades of searching, NASA scientists may have finally discovered evidence of alien life!

"Well it's about goddamn time..."

-Everybody

NASA's other rover, Mild Interest,
stopped transmitting after realizing
that nobody was paying attention to it. 

Now un-brace yourself because this is science and we're going to have to walk it back a bit. Said evidence is methane gas which NASA's un-inspiringly named Curiosity rover picked up in the thin Martian atmosphere along with organic compounds in the planet's soil. Alright, so it's not exactly a towering alien obelisk, or a fleet of disc-shaped starships hovering over our major cites, but still...alien life? Maybe? I mean, this is something to get excited about, isn't it? Or maybe not. With typical scientific caution, NASA's Curiosity team has been quick to manage our expectations when it comes to earth-shattering news.

Space: it's really not all that interesting,
so like, don't get your hopes up.

Here's what team member John Grotzinger had to say about the find:

"That we detect methane in the atmosphere on Mars is not an argument that we have found evidence of life on Mars, but it's one of the few hypotheses that we can propose that we must consider..."

-John Grotzinger,

disappointing us with science 

Oh...so you've basically got nothing. Thanks NASA. And you wonder why you have to resort to shaking down billionaires just to get funding.

Pictured: An artist's rendering of NASA's new fundraising strategy.

Tremble puny Martians,
at our superior weaponry.

I don't want to tell NASA how to do its job, but-wait, yes I do. Hey NASA, here's how to do your job: instead of taking every mind-blowing discovery you make and sucking all the wonder and joy out of it like a bunch of fun-sucking space vampires, why not try and get the public excited about it? I'm not saying lie to us, I'm just suggesting that maybe instead of focusing on how it's too early to jump to conclusions (and it is), you could tell us all the things this could mean. You said that the presence of methane gas could mean that Mars is, or at least was, home to microbial life. That's kind of a big deal and it also means we could conquer Mars with a bottle of Purell. Run with that.

Look, if there's a chance of finding life on Mars, no matter how microbial and boring, we should totally go find it. Not because we're just curious about it, but because we have a burning desire to explore new frontiers. Of course we'll then probably exploit these new frontiers for financial gain, but hey, we're pretty noble up to a point...

Behold: the mighty herds of gassy Martian cows grazing on the crimson plains of the Red Planet.
Sure, it's not super-likely, but if it panned out the government would fund the shit out of NASA.

Dog Gone Shame

Hey everybody, it turns out that your pets are little more than animated meat puppets and they aren't going to heaven after all. Maybe. I really don't know anymore. The whole thing is more than a little confusing. What is clear is that journalists are really, really bad at their jobs.

"Kids, meet Paws McGee! Enjoy him while you can because he,
like your childhoods, will one day fade and die leaving a void
in your soul that you'll never be able to fill. Merry Christmas!"

-The Worst Parents Ever

"And that concludes my weekly address.
Now, who's up for gelato?" 

Catholics around the world were briefly given the impression that there's a hereafter for pets when Pope Francis said:

"The Holy Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this wonderful design also affects everything around us."

-Pope Francis, the cool Pope

The Italian word for 'of' is extremely
similar to 'Your pets have souls and
you'll see them again in heaven.'

If you didn't find that entirely clear, you're not alone. But some reporters at an Italian newspaper somehow misinterpreted his statement to mean that animals have souls and can get into heaven. This story then got conflated with the time Pope Paul VI told a sobbing child that his recently deceased dog will be waiting for him in the afterlife and suddenly every news outlet on the planet was saying that Pope Francis has just announced that Catholic heaven has a dog park. And that's when the Vatican stepped in and called 'merda taurorum.'

Above: the official Vatican response.

Or you know, whatever the Latin word for bullshit is. A spokespriest has clarified that Pope Francis said nothing about an afterlife for pets and that the journalists who ran with the story are terrible at journalism. Like Fox News terrible.

"There is a fundamental rule in journalism. That is double checking, and in this case it was not done."

-Father Ciro Benedettini,

crusher of dreams

"Goodbye Nemo, I'll miss you.
Say hi to grandma for me."

So much for doggie Valhalla then, right? Well, not necessarily. Leaving aside the irony inherent in a representative of one of the world's oldest religions calling out journalists for saying things that have no basis in fact, Father Benedettini didn't say that animals have no souls, he just said Pope Francis didn't say anything about it. And remember, Pope Paul VI did tell that kid that his dog was humping legs in next world, so if papal infallibility is to be believed, then maybe Catholic animal lovers can look forward to an eternity of picking up dog shit in heaven.

Of course if dogs and cats have souls, it stands to reason that other animals would to. Other animals like say chickens and cows, you know, the ones people tend to eat. Congratulations Catholics, you've just been given a whole new thing to feel guilty about. 

And that's why your home is haunted by
the restless spirits of a thousand hams.

Rick Perry to reporters: 'I'd vote for me!'

Yup, there it is. Does he carry one
around with him or something?

Wondering about who to vote for in 2016? Well wonder no longer:

"Running for the presidency's not an IQ test. It is a test of an individual's resolve. It's a test of an individual's philosophy. It's a test of an individual's life experiences..." 

-Texas Governor Rick Perry,

probably while standing in 

front of the American flag

Here, let's take apart Perry's list of presidential prerequisites and see if we can suss out just who he thinks should be the next President:

Here, for no reason, is a map of Iraq.

'It's a test of an individual's resolve.' According to the dictionary: Resolve is a noun and means a strong determination to do something. So a person's resolve is their willingness to stick with it, no matter what. You know, stay the course. Presidents should totally have that. Unless of course the thing they're doing is a terrible idea in the first place, then resolve kind of becomes a stubborn refusal to listen to those around you even in the face of incontrovertible evidence that what you're doing is pointless, wrong and ultimately doomed to failure.

Let's use it in a sentence: It's takes a lot of resolve to compare alcohol abuse to homosexuality, in San Francisco and then offer a half-assed non-apology. Hey, Rick Perry did that! I bet he has a lot of resolve.

Resolve: It's sort of like the white, rich-guy word for 'chutzpah.'

Above: Proof that God is angry with
Texas and, by extension Rick Perry.

'It's a test of an individual's philosophy.' Something tells me he's not talking about Immanuel Kant. In fact, I think he may be referring to Christianity: America's unofficial, official religion. Say, who do we know who's not only Christian, but like, super-Christian? Hmm...let's see...hey, during his last presidential campaign, didn't Rick Perry speak at a bunch of prayer rallies? And didn't he also once ask everyone in Texas to that pray for rain during a drought? He sounds pretty Jesus-y to me.

...yet still somehow more patriotic
than the rest of us. How's that work?

'It's a test of an individual's life experiences...' Ok, so I know what you're thinking: technically, everyone who's alive has life experience, so what's the big deal? I think here, he's probably talking about political experience. Specifically the kind every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has had, like the Senate, the House, being the governor of a State-wait a minute, Rick Perry's the Governor of Texas and that's a State (despite bumberstickers to the contrary).

Stubborn, aggressively Christian and a holder of high office? Holy shit, it sounds like Rick Perry is talking about Rick Perry! Um, incidentally, why isn't there an IQ test for presidents?

He's the total package! Why even bother holding an election?

Don't look up!

Hey everybody, good news: it looks like our civilization is probably not going to be reduced to a barbarism! At least not because of an astroid impact. Well, at least not because of this specific asteroid, and at least not in the immediate future.

Don't worry, there're still plenty of reasons our society is doomed:
Pandemics, ape/robot uprisings, alien invasion...not zombies though.
You can scratch zombies off the list. They're objectively preposterous.

Good luck with that,
future generations.

The 370-meter hunk of divine wrath was discovered recently by Russian scientist Vladimir Lipunov who said that its orbit would take it into smashing range of the Earth every three years and that we should all start living in a perpetual state of fear. NASA scientists on the other hand issued a statement yesterday saying that 2014 ur116 (yeah, that's the thing's name) is not likely to hit us in the next 150 years so we can all just relax, safe in the knowledge that ur116 is someone else's problem.

So, who do we believe? The jittery Russian scientist who's constantly looking up at the sky, (or down at his dash-cam) waiting for death from above? Or the underfunded American space agency who is still, still, having to explain to idiots that the moon landing was real?

Pictured: The third of six moon landings NASA spent billions
of dollars and years of effort faking just to fuck with us.

As foretold in Mad Max:
Beyond Thunderdome.

Well, both it turns out. While we probably won't be attaching Lipunov's name to the rock that finally goes dinosaur-killer on us (better luck next time!), both he and NASA agree that we should be tracking the thousands of near-Earth objects which could (but probably won't [but theoretically could]) come crashing down upon us and reduce our cities to burnt-out ruins controlled by gangs of mutants led by Tina Turner and Master Blaster. And I'm not really sure how I feel about this.

It seems reasonable to track potentially threatening asteroids, but I guess the next question is, what then? Until we have some method of landing Bruce Willis and enough explosives to divert said doom-rock, what'd be the point?

What? Sending the star of Live Free or Die Hard makes about
as much sense as sending a rag-tag team of oil-rig workers.

Above: History was full of stupid.

In some ways, the likelihood of a significant, extinction-triggering impact, has remained more or less unchanged for all of human history. People living in the middle ages were in just as much danger of getting crushed by space rocks, but they didn't have to worry about it. Of course, they also didn't have to worry about witches or werewolves either but that didn't stop them from burning people alive. Um, what was I talking about again?

Oh. Right. Look, I'm not suggesting that shouldn't track these things, I'm just wondering if maybe we should stop freaking everybody out every time a rock flies by.

See that son? That's space. Space hates us, and wants to kill us.
It's the reason you'll never grow up. Learn to fear the unknown.

Let's hasten our rapid decline!

So have you ever been ordering at Starbucks and wished that you could, you know, avoid speaking to another human being? Well, problem: solved.

"Yeah, I'm going to need 7 needlessly complicated and time consuming
drinks for me and my entire office as well as several paninis which will
all need to be warmed up. Oh, and I'll be paying entirely in nickels."

-The person in front of me in line at 

Starbucks, every goddamn time

Above: ancient people standing
around, talking, circa 3500 B.C.E.

Starbucks, apparently in an effort to further cement their reputation as one of the accelerating factors of our civilization's rapid decline (full disclosure: I go there all the time. I'm part of the problem, and I'm at peace with it), is introducing an app which will allow you to order on your smartphone. Now, instead of having to communicate with another person like a primitive, you can order online, slouch into the store, grab your coffee and go before you even feel the death stares of the fifteen or twenty people you just bypassed in line.

"Lines. Am I right?"

Look, believe it or not, this isn't a rant about how we're turing into a bunch of glassy-eyed zombies poking at our smartphones in public instead of interacting with one another, it really it isn't. If anything, starring (or even pretending to stare) at Facebook while standing around waiting for my coffee is a great way to avoid accidentally making eye contact with strangers. Eye contact is proven to lead to small talk, and no one wants that. My issue rather, is the stunning vulnerability our increasing dependence on smartphones has left us with.

"Searching for: 'Truck-U, you
stupid. Peace of ship phone.'"

While the machines might eventually attain sentience and wipe us out in nuclear hellstorm, that day is some time off. Want proof? Try asking Siri a simple goddamn question. Scarlett Johansson in Her, she is not. That said, I don't know about you, but I can't remember a single telephone number for anyone I met after 2004, I'll check a weather app before looking out the window and I haven't owned a watch since the 90's.

Yeah, that guy.

I'm bloody helpless without it. Sure, we have the total sum of human knowledge at our fingertips at all times, but what if we loose our phone? Or a bad update bricks it? Not only will we be unable to consult IMDB about that actor that was in that thing, you know, the guy? Not only that but we'll be unable to order a Pumpkinspice Latté as the part of the brain responsible for remembering complex drink orders will have atrophied.

I'm all for the future, wherever it takes us. We could all end up as brains in giant robot bodies or as a hive mind of cyborgs, and I'd be cool with it. But let's not, I repeat not, get so reliant on our goddamn cellphones that we can't function without them.

"Shit, what was his name? He was in Guardians of the Galaxy. James 'C' something,
maybe Raleigh? O'Reilly? James O'Reilly? Is that it? Damnit, I wish IMDB was working..."

-Third of Four, not able to let this go

NASA's gonna party like it's 1969!

Look out everybody, the future of the past is here today and it looks a lot like the tomorrow of yesterday! This morning NASA launched the first test flight of Orion, a spacecraft designed to eventually carry astronauts to Mars. And by spacecraft, I mean rocketship. Sigh.

After the launch, NASA scientists enjoyed the smooth,
smokey flavor of Winston, the official cigarette of NASA.
Winston: Tastes good-like a cigarette should!™

"Honey, I don't want to rush you but the
universe closes at 5. So could we like,
boldly get going sometime today?"

Here's Mike Curie, NASA's public relation's guy:

"...and lift off at dawn, the dawn of Orion and a new era of American space exploration!"

-Mike Curie, wordsmith

Yikes. I know this is just a test flight and all, but that's his one small step? And is this really the dawn of a something? I mean, it's 2014. A more accurate analogy might be 'this is the late afternoon of American space exploration we're still sitting in the driveway, impatiently waiting to get on with it.'

Goddamnit Florida, this is
why no one likes you.

In addition to its uninspiring send-off, the Orion program has already faced some setbacks. It was supposed to launch yesterday, but gusty winds and a boat sailing too close to the launch area forced the space agency to hold off a day. Yup. Wind and a boat. To be clear, this is a vehicle that's supposed to carry 4 astronauts the tens of millions of kilometers to Mars through cosmic radiation, micrometeoroid collisions and frell knows what else and it was held up by wind and some assholes on a booze cruise. Holy shit. 

NASA estimates that the 20 square feet of
living space inside the Orion would go for
 $4200/mo in San Francisco. Plus utilities.

Oh, and let's get back to the tens of millions of kilometers. The trip to Mars is probably going to take something like 200 days there and 200 days back. Add to that however long our intrepid explorers want to spend running experiments and disproving internet rumors of Martian Bigfoot and we're talking like a year and a half to two years in a confined space with three other people floating through the airless, radiation-bathed final frontier. The plan is to add a slightly roomier living module, but the cast of Real World is ready to kill each other after an hour and a half and they get a pool.  

If he's so great, how come
we don't have warp drive?

I don't mean to beat up on NASA. It's not like the embarrassingly slow crawl towards space exploration is their fault. The space agency's budget is something like $17 billion this year. To put that in perspective, the kid that owns Facebook is worth $33 billion. We, as a species, value a forum for sharing links to lists of 'The X (where X is a number) Most/Least/Best/Worst Y (where Y is a thing) Ever' over advancing the cause of scientific discovery. I'm not saying we should feel bad about that, lists are awesome, I'm just suggesting that maybe we should make Mark Zuckerberg and other unreasonably rich people finance our space program. $33 billion is way too much money for one person to spend, so I say let's help him out while at the same time helping ourselves...to his money. It's win/win.

Look, we're supposed to be living in the future, we should have moon bases and starships, not space capsules and non-hover cars. What's a couple of shakedowns compared to expanding the boundaries of human knowledge?

Oh, and this guy. NASA should rob the shit out of this guy.

Don we now our kevlar armor!

Just so you know, that semiautomatic you
bought at Cabella's is going to do jackshit
against the T-800's hyper-alloy endoskeleton.

Say here's an unsettling thought: Black Friday sales of all the usual crap we Americans usually buy each other for Christmas were down 11% from last year while gun sales were up 12%. This, according to the FBI which counts applications to something called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in order to get an idea of just how many of us are stocking up on firearms in anticipation of the Rapture or some kind of Robopocalypse. Apparently there were moments on Friday when they were averaging three checks per second. Three. Per second.

Total applications on Black Friday numbered 175,000, which sounds like a lot, but the FBI already processed 18,658,838 background checks so far this year. Oh, and that doesn't include guns sold at gun shows which, because they're on folding tables in a convention center, are technically collectibles. You know, like Beanie Babies or Pokémon cards.

I choose you, Beretta 9mm!

Incidentally, do people who hunt
know they can buy meat in stores now?

Look, I don't really understand gun culture, but isn't that kind of a messed up Christmas gift? Sure, some people hunt and for them a rifle under their Christmas tree isn't any weirder than say a pair of skis or a Vitamix (although a Vitamix won't go off accidentally while you're cleaning it). Fine, but I'm betting that not all of those 175,000 guns sold on Friday were hunting rifles. Some of them had to be of the 'git off my property,' variety. You know, the kind assholes bring to Chipotle?

"Uh, kid? You really don't
want to shake that one..."

Anyway, what I want to know is does anybody really give guns as gifts? And if so, what is their problem? Like, when you get a loved one a sweater or a toaster or something, aren't you doing so with the hope that they'll get some use out of it? What's the expectation when you give someone a handgun? That they'll get to repel a home invasion? Lead some kind of armed insurrection? I mean is there any scenario in which they get to make use of your gift that doesn't end with a SWAT team being called in?

I'm not trying to pick on gun enthusiasts and the bleak, paranoid world in which they live, but seriously, 175,000 guns in one day? I know they like to say that guns don't kill people, but really, they kind of do, so how about a gift card? Or maybe a nice scarf? Ok, a scarf killed Isadora Duncan, but the score is like scarfs: 1, guns: 79,932,123.*

Above: Why the rest of the world fears/laughs at us.

*Yes, I made that number up, but for real, it's a lot.