There are once-in-a-lifetime events and once-in-a-century ones as well. The meteor that exploded over the Chelyabinsk region in Russia was that second one; it has been confirmed as the largest such explosion in the last hundred years.

The new estimates of its size make it the largest reported meteor since the one that hit Tunguska, Siberia in 1908. Researchers say it was about 55 feet in diameter, was composed of ordinary chondrites, like most meteors, and weighed around 10,000 tons. When it disintegrated, it unleashed nearly 500 kilotons of energy, more than 30 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. 

So far, researchers have collected 53 fragments, the largest of which was 7 millimeters. 

Dartmoor is a moorland in south Devon, England and human remains and Bronze Age artifacts discovered there have been called "one of the most significant findings of at least the last 100 years" by a team of researchers.

They found cremated human bones, wrapped in a type of animal hide, as well as what appear to be intricately designed jewelry and textiles. They were discovered within a granite tomb-like casing known as a cist, are made from materials not discovered in Britain at the time and hint at trading links between the area and the continent farther back then archaeologists had previously known.

How often do meteorites and objects from space hit us?  

Actually, pretty often, we just don't have cameras and detection equipment everywhere, so when a sonic boom-inducing event like in the Ural mountains of Russia occurs, it is big news.  It blew out windows and injured hundreds.

The scariest part; the Chelyabinsk region a thousand miles east of Moscow is home to not just factories and homes, but also a nuclear power plant and the Mayak atomic waste storage and treatment center.

The billions of dollars that the food industry won't have to spend on pointless GMO labels isn't simply money saved for consumers- we are actually lucky they aren't spending billions on top of the billions they will already have to spend on pointless labels that could be required by the Obama administration under its health care reform provisions. Because it will all be passed through to us so someone, somewhere can get something for free.

The farewell letter written by departing Secretary of Energy Steven Chu will be remembered as one of the most thorough, detailed and outspoken ever crafted by a departing Cabinet member.

It's his actual tenure running America's energy policy we wish we could forget. In his parting 3,781- word term paper he takes credit for the Bush administration's ARPA-E (that's the energy version of DARPA) yet doesn't mention the things he actually should take credit for, like steering American energy research into an expensive morass of feel-good fallacies and solar activism while refusing to stand up to his boss on anti-science policies designed to make energy across the board more expensive for poor people.

When Congress passed the newest farm bill extension at the beginning of this month, they cut $22 million being paid under the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program, along with several other subsidies to organic farmers. 

That means you and I and everyone else no longer have to pay so organic farmers can put that sticker on organic food.  After all, if traditional food was going to have to suck it up and put GMO warning labels on food, and the $29 billion organic industry thought that was a great idea, it doesn't seem right taxpayers should have to bankroll stickers for anyone else.

Making a coffee beer has always been tough but not for obvious reasons - it isn't like people don't enjoy foam, cappuccino has been around forever. Lipids in coffee just don't seem to make a lot of sense, though.

But without coffee and beer, science would grind to a halt - a $140 billion a year industry would be paralyzed - so it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to put them together.

Loowit Brewing and Torque Coffee Roasters in Vancouver have been working on just such a coffee stout that they introduced at the "Drink This!" artisan beverage festival. Torque co-owner Ryan Palmer also created a coffee pale ale beer with Mt. Tabor Brewing's owner Eric Surface. A stout is a natural fit to get going on coffee-beer hybrid.

If you are part of the $29 billion organic food masses, you can breathe a sigh of relief about the latest Salmonella recall - this one is not in your stores. I'm so relieved I am putting up a link about it.

Stallings Head Cheese Co., Inc., of Houston is recalling 4,700 pounds of hog head cheese that may be contaminated with Salmonella, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.

Hog head cheese? You betcha. Hog head cheese is a gelatinous mixture of meat from a hog's head. It's popular in Cajun cuisine. Hey, don't make fun.  People in California eat salad and I don't understand that either.

Psychiatrist Dr. Eric Hollander says the hygiene hypothesis -  the idea that by eliminating some harmful organisms we are weakening our immune systems - may be a reason to study the use of ingesting the eggs of parasitic worms to treat autism.

He gets to jump on a few hot button cultural topics that way, autism and a medical idea that has caught on with the usual anti-science hippies and the more normal crowd who got sold the idea that anti-bacterial soaps were necessary if they care about kids.

The kicker is that the psychiatrist got the idea when he noticed one of his patients’ behavior improve while self-medicating with Trichuris suis ova (TSO), the eggs of a whipworm. That passes for a journal paper in the social sciences.