When she called me, frantic, she hadn’t yet been there three hours. “Someone broke into my car!” She’d arrived to LGA without incident, much like every other weekly trip, gotten her rental car, and gone to the Brooklyn store, the busiest in the country. Because her company recommends leaving everything not absolutely needed in the store behind in the car while working, the miscreants got away with a nice pile of loot: computer, camera, phone, iPod, wallet and its contents.

And, lip gloss! Bastards!

So, there she stood, in another state, not planning to leave for another two days, without money, identification, or personal belongings aside from a suitcase of clothes. I overnighted her some cash, her passport, a phone charger, and a book, which made her home away from home a little more homey, homes. Luckily, there were acquaintances there too who took her out for meals and paid for her hotel room, into which she had not yet checked which she hadn’t yet checked into, an understandably difficult task without money or personal identification.

Anyway, here’s the weird part. Yesterday, she received a package. In it was her purse, mostly intact; her phone, now inert; her wallet, complete with credit cards and lacking only the $12 cash it once kept; glass shards from the ruptured car window; and the lip gloss! Also occupying the package were a pointed steel file, presumably used for window-breakage-innage, and a random Hispanic dude’s ID card, in Spanish and with his fingerprint on the back. So weird.

This brings up a lot of questions: Who would steal a purse, only to send it back with the unusable contents? Who would do this, and include the weapon of choice? Who would also throw in someone’s ID card just for good measure? If this were a gesture of good Samaritanism, who would send this package in the absence of an accompanying note of explanation?

The most likely scenario we can see is this: Dude (or dudette) breaks into car, steals stuff. Goes through stuff, picks out most valuable and/or least girly stuff, and discards other stuff. Feels bad, considers sending back discarded stuff. Thinks twice about this consideration, realizing it may implicate him (or her) as the thief. Being a thief, and presumably having broken into many cars in Brooklyn, decides to include previous victim’s ID card to hinder self-implication while still maintaining degree of human decency, figuring the pre-fingerprinted evidence is perfect fodder for accomplishing this.

So, that’s where we stand right now. We’re considering sending the steel file to the NY police for fingerprinting, as that would easily rule out the Hispanic dude from having done it, and possibly link the two cases, if the Hispanic dude were in fact robbed, to the same miscreant. On the other hand, we’re considering not sending the steel file to the NY police, since they probably don’t give a shit.

In light of the fact that I am expecting a new addition to the family any day now in the form of a MacBook Pro, adding an additional heaping serving of awesome to my life, this is one of the cooler things I’ve seen recently. However, to the designers, I say: Good luck getting anyone in Chicago to use that thing. It’s tantamount to going up to a would-be thief and handing him/her $2000 in cash (plus a $239(!) warranty extension for a year of phone support and three years of mechanical coverage in case the cash breaks). And then pulling down your pants so he/she can rape you and then stab you. Then they’d send out a bunch of safety emails informing the University community that the police are looking into it.

Okay, maybe not all that, but the cash thing holds true. If I lived in a more benign place, like say Gary or Detroit for instance, I’d definitely be buying this.

Holy crap, this kid is screwed for life. How is this not child abuse? His name is literally synonymous with “worst president ever.” They might as well have named him Iamagoddamnliar Neeway.

The collective ignorance of basic principles of science is, at times, astounding to me. Things that we all learned at some point during grade school and middle school and high school, over and over again, somehow still escape some of us. Perhaps the best example in recent news is the categorical dismissal of evolution by three Republican presidential future also-rans candidates. Each of these men, of course, are somehow alarmingly eligible to become arguably the most powerful person in the world. James Holsinger, the man President Bush (who himself only recently accepted global warming as an actual, scientifically-founded phenomenon) recently selected to become the next Surgeon General of the United States, truly believes in his heart of hearts that homosexuality is a curable disease. Oh yes, lest I forget, he is also a doctor, a convenient ancillary credential for one to have when being appointed Surgeon General, in addition to one’s theological credentials and beliefs.

A survey conducted recently found that over a quarter of us aren’t aware that the Earth in fact revolves around the sun; of the nearly 75% who actually learned something in grade school on that topic, only about 7 in 10 believe that the Earth takes one year to accomplish this, with “one day” and “don’t know” being the next most popular answers in that order. (Excellent commentary can be found here, as well as accompanying disbelief.)

It goes on. 48% of Americans aren’t aware that electrons are smaller than atoms, 50% flatly reject evolution, and 33% believe that astrology is either “sort of scientific” or “very scientific.” Now, to be fair, 56% of the test subjects had never taken a college-level science course, and 69% never took physics in high school (seriously?), but still. Come on now. The fricking Earth revolves around the fricking sun, people.

Worst, six people in the study reported that they primarily get their science news from the government. Yikes!

Certainly a good deal of congratulations needs to go out to the folks at PLoS, which has published its 500th article in PLoS ONE—all free, all openly accessible. This is, of course, not to mention the six other topical journals under the aegis ægis of PLoS—again, all free, all openly accessible.

What a concept: making knowledge free. Here’s hoping the Natures and the Sciences and the Cells, and all the rest of them too, begin to head that direction sooner than later.

Also, here’s realizing that that will probably never, ever happen, at least not in my lifetime. There’s way too much money to be made.