If you're like me, you want to binge a little during the ever-increasing Christmas holiday season, which is now 15% of the year and so is well on its way to joining Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall as actual seasons.What is the most ridiculous food you can eat that is commonly available to most of the US?  In 2010 it is Cheesecake Factory’s Bistro Shrimp Pasta with 2,730 calories, 78 g saturated fat, 919 mg sodium and 141 g carbohydrates.   Not bad if you are an NFL lineman and it's the only meal you eat that day but otherwise not great.

Art detectives took a look at the "Mona Lisa" using magnification techniques not available to Leonardo da Vinci himself and say they have found,  hidden in her pupils, tiny letters and numbers.And they were placed there by da Vinci, they say.Said Silvano Vinceti, president of Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage

When you're number one, you are always a target.  Basically, you can't win when you are the world leader in search but critics are ramping up complaints about Google's search engine placement just the same.   Google is content and specialized-search sites in hopes of boosting ad revenue and that means search ranking by 'authority' drop.   So rivals are taking it personally.   

The downfall of WikiLeaks, aside from the eccentric personality of its leader, is that it lost its way, increasingly focusing on the US and ignoring the 140 actual dictatorships in the world where dissidents are risking their lives to get information out.Former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg feels there is a place for a disclosure group not bent on attacking one country and so is launching OpenLeaks.    It will also be different in that it isn't about attention for the founder, instead being solely a platform for submitting the data.  The actual publication will be handled by others.

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson has struck down the Obama administration’s mandatory health care coverage provision - essentially forcing people to buy health insurance whether they want it or not, much like we have to pay into social security whether we want a government retirement plan or not - as unconstitutional.  But the fight isn't over, since everyone knew this would end up in the Supreme Court the minute it was signed.

Sure, this isn't science but neither is The Onion and we link to things from there also - hey, the entire concept of a Cool Links section is to link to things outside science without becoming one of the kookier supposed science blogs groups that mainly ridicule religious people and bash Republicans.

Three days before he was shot, John Lennon talked optimistically about his family and future, saying that he had "plenty of time" to accomplish some of his goals.Lennon's final interview was released to The Associated Press by Rolling Stone on Wednesday, the 30th anniversary of the musician's death. The issue using the full interview will be on magazine stands Friday. Brief excerpts of Jonathan Cott's interview with Lennon were also released for a 1980 Rolling Stone cover story days after Lennon's death but this is the first time the entire interview has been published.On his choices:

December's total lunar eclipse is the only total eclipse of the moon of this year and in the Western Hemisphere it will begin on Dec. 21 at 12:29 a.m. EST (9:29 p.m. PST on Dec. 20) as the moon begins to enter Earth's penumbral shadow.    Skywatchers won't notice any changes in the moon's appearance until about 45 minutes later when shading will become evident on the upper left portion of the moon's disk.   The 72 minutes of the total lunar eclipse will be visible from North and South America, northern and western Europe, and northeast Asia, including Korea and much of Japan. Totality will also be visible from the North Island of New Zealand and Hawaii. 

There are few instances where climate scientists attribute specific events to climate change - the only time anyone prominent did it, Al Gore when he implied Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming - made scientists cringe a little, though they scrambled to rationalize it for him.They haven't done it because science doesn't work that way.   It's fine for sociologists to portray odd correlation-causation claims as fact, like that good grades make students healthier, but physical sciences prefer to stick to the data and away from circumstantial evidence.

Own a company in Venezuela?  If you are one of the few successful companies left that hasn't been nationalized, you won't be much longer because they are getting too much rain.The recent rains have left 70,000 people homeless, mostly in the coastal area where millions live in hillside shantytowns and have had mudslides ruin homes.Wait, isn't Venezuela an OPEC nation?   And rich as all get out?  Indeed they are, so it seems odd that Chavez blames other capitalists - the ones making him rich - for rain yet doesn't spend any money to get his people out of cardboard boxes.