Senator John Kerry, Democratic Senator and failed presidential candidate, is thrilled that House Majority Leader Harry Reid managed to escape election night in America without losing to an unknown candidate from a fringe segment of the Republican Party.So thrilled, he seems to have lost his mind.   "Harry Reid isn't just Dracula, he isn't just Lazarus, he's our leader and our whole caucus is thrilled that he's unbreakable and unbeatable," he said.

Tired of hearing the same old arguments and having to try and be interesting in drafting a response?   The Twitter chatbot @AI_AGW is here to help, at least on Twitter.Every five minutes, it searches twitter for those phrases that correspond to the usual arguments about how global warming isn't happening and then replies to the twitterer with a canned response from a database.Nigel Leck is the programmer who created it.    Read Chris Mims at Technology Review for the details.  

Want to get an iPad?  You don't need to go buy one today but don't wait until 2020 - with all of the hysteria about Peak Oil no one is thinking about an issue a lot more pressing, namely the shortage of indium tin oxide, which may have only have a 10 year supply remaining.Indium is found in zinc deposits and is used to create indium tin oxide which is used to create touchscreens because it is transparent yet conducts electricity.

Asexual reproduction is common among invertebrates but rare in vertebrates, though parthenogenesis, in which an unfertilized egg develops to maturity, can occur.Now scientists have discovered a boa constrictor that reproduces by virgin birth - read it at Livescience for the details.

DNA tests confirmed Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who ruled Romania from 1965 until he and his wife Elena were captured and shot by firing squad on Christmas Day in 1989 after fleeing mass protests in Bucharest,, was buried in a grave in Bucharest, forensic experts said on Wednesday, lifting doubt over the ruler's burial place. Ceausescu's family had threatened to sue the Romanian state if the remains, exhumed on July 21, some 20 years after their deaths, had not belonged to the Ceausescus - ironically something Ceausescu would never have allowed when he was in power.

Advocates, regardless of ideology, tend to overlook junk science they like and focus their skepticisms on data that reinforces their beliefs.   Nothing typifies that better than claims that eating meat is implicated in global warming to any great extent.   No surprise, in 2006 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization repeated spurious claims that eating meat was responsible for more CO2 emissions than the entire worldwide transportation sector.

What happens after death?   If you visit the British Museum this weekend, you'll see a dark, terrifying underworld populated by vigilant baboons, an Ibis god called Thoth and crocodile-headed devourers who threaten to eat the damned.

Do mummies have a right to privacy?   David Dobbs tackles the issue of ancient remains - it's certainly topical in California, where the culturally untouchable native American demographic insists even remains 10,000 years old belong to their tribe, a progressive fissure that puts an icy chill on science, but also relevant in other cultures.

There was a rally last weekend and if you were on the Internet, you knew about it.   It was held by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, who felt that the various Tea Party rallies warranted a progressive response (oddly, the many 'spontaneous' MoveOn.org rallies of 2004 and 2006 were simply democracy in action, they felt) and so it happened.  Over 200,000 people showed up, they claim.

Remember when Tipper Gore wanted to have labeling for adult lyrics in music?  Frank Zappa and others protested this was a Constitutional violation and that it was the responsibility of parents to decide what kids listen to - yes, pop musicians were against Democrats and actually expected that parents should listen to everything their child might access in advance of them accessing it and... well, it was a silly argument.    Record labels made no different in music sales but it at least gave parents an idea what not to buy for their kids, even if they couldn't keep children from obtaining it themselves.