Each year, when the last flight of the summer field season departs the U.S. research station at the South Pole, the remaining staff gather to watch The Thing.

The next flight won’t arrive for eight months.

The president’s deficit panel says the best way to cut the deficit is to curb increases in Social Security, cut defense spending and do away with a bunch of tax breaks currently in effect. That loud mooing sound is “When hell freezes over, pal!” in Sacred Cow.

Up in Alaska, they’re trying to decide whether write-in votes for Morkowski, Murkrowski, or Mascousci should count for Susan Murkowski. See, your second-grade teacher told you spelling would be important later in life.

A woman may have been fired for being “too sexy”.  We’re just glad people can’t be fired for being “not nearly sexy, like, at all.”

A drive-thru sex shop has opened in Alabama.  Pretty much everything is super-sized.

A girls’ soccer team has acted inappropriately in one of the first signs that soccer may finally be moving up to par with football.

Alcoholic energy drinks are being banned because folks who drink them are apparently too dumb to know you could get the same effect by alternating beers and cups of coffee.

Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert were the big winners in last night’s County Music Association Tribute to Plastic Surgery and Pitch Correction.

Hillary Clinton was kinda funny during a radio interview. On purpose.

Protesting at funerals may be banned.  May?  Might?  Could be?  Seriously?

Annalee Newitz of io9 asked six prestigious scientists to provide examples of realistic works of science fiction. Dave Goldberg, a physicist at Drexel, argued that the first Terminator movie provided the most reasonable presentation of time travel:

The entire thing is a completely self-consistent time loop, from John Conner’s parentage and survivalist training, to the picture of Sarah Conner that finds its way to Kyle Reese. No grandfather paradoxes at all, but there are information paradoxes.

Other science fiction works that receive favorable reviews include 2001, Firefly, and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Link | Image: Orion Pictures