Guardian:

A few months before he died, Carl Sagan recorded a message of hope to would-be Mars explorers, telling them: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars is, I'm glad you're there. And I wish I was with you."

On Monday, 17 years after the pioneering astronomer set out his hopeful vision of the future in 1996, a company from the Netherlands is proposing to turn Sagan's dreams of reaching Mars into reality. The company, Mars One, plans to send four astronauts on a trip to the Red Planet to set up a human colony in 2023. But there are a couple of serious snags.

Firstly, when on Mars their bodies will have to adapt to surface gravity that is 38% of that on Earth. It is thought that this would cause such a total physiological change in their bone density, muscle strength and circulation that voyagers would no longer be able to survive in Earth's conditions. Secondly, and directly related to the first, they will have to say goodbye to all their family and friends, as the deal doesn't include a return ticket.

...Nevertheless, the project has already had 10,000 applicants, according to the company's medical director, Norbert Kraft. When the official search is launched on Monday at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, they expect tens of thousands more hopefuls to put their names forward.

But the Mars One website states: "While a cosmonaut on board the Mir was able to walk upon return to Earth after 13 months in a weightless environment, after a prolonged stay on Mars the human body will not be able to adjust to the higher gravity of Earth upon return.

"There is a point in time after which the human body will have adjusted to the 38% gravitation field of Mars, and be incapable of returning to the Earth's much stronger gravity. This is due to the total physiological change in the human body, which includes reduction in bone density, muscle strength, and circulatory system capacity."

• 19 May 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover, NASA

These days I find everything about Tom Cruise to be so incredibly annoying that I cannot value a film in which he appears. Even though Tom is popular with older folks (like Goldy), I suspect I am not alone in this sentiment. Maybe it's the whole Scientology thing, or maybe it's just that the man simply seethes with insecurity. I really love post-apocalyptic movies, but because Tom Cruise is in it, I can't get excited about Oblivion. Naturally, this bit of musing facilitates the need for a scientifically and legally binding Slog Poll™.

But here is the problem:

Whatever choices women make at work and in life, those choices are easier if they delay child-bearing. Having a kid while you are a still a teenager can seriously curtail your options. Which is why it is good news that American teen-pregnancy rates are at historic lows! The rate of teen pregnancy has been falling since 1991 and dropped again dramatically in the last four years.
So, I must ask, why in the world, as the crisis is abating and fewer teens are facing the challenges of early child-rearing would the city of New York spend $400,000 on a campaign to publicly shame teen parents? That’s why this week’s letter goes to the man who signed off on that campaign.

A government report released on Wednesday shows pregnancy rates among women in their early 20s falling nearly 18 percent from 1990 to 2008. But pregnancies among older women rose far more dramatically: rates for women ages 40 to 44 went up nearly 65 percent. There were just 11.4 pregnancies per 1,000 women in that age group in 1990, compared with 18.8 in 2008.

ABC:

The Brockton, Mass., boy, born Luie Rivera Jr., refers to himself as a "Coke Boy," rides (without a seat belt) in a Ferrari and slaps a woman's bottom, in a raunchy music video that is stirring controversy as it goes viral. The video has also triggered an emergency investigation by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families after local police filed a complaint against the boy's father, Luis Rivera, alleging child abuse or neglect.
The family's attorney denies any wrongdoing by father or son and calls the investigation "racially motivated."
"White child actors are depicted in far more serious scenes, including violence and sexual content, and they get awards," Boston attorney Joseph Krowski, Jr. told ABCNews.com. "A young Hispanic male who raps - he gets an investigation."

KOMO has the story:

SEATTLE — An employee at a Seattle private school has been placed on administrative leave after allegedly hitting two students with his belt during a before-school program last Wednesday.

According to the Seattle Police Department's report for the incident, two St. Therese School students were roughhousing, throwing pencils and ignoring the morning program supervisor's requests to knock it off.

The supervisor, who was filling in for the regular morning program staff member, took off his belt and hit both students in the buttocks, according to the report.

That's the kind of schooling you get when you hire Pootie Tang...

As soon as I heard the news, I recalled this tune:

NYT...

On Saturday, more than 15,000 students are expected to file into classrooms to take a grueling 95-question test for admission to New York City’s elite public high schools. (The exam on Sunday, for about 14,000 students, was postponed until Nov. 18 because of Hurricane Sandy.)

No one will be surprised if Asian students, who make up 14 percent of the city’s public school students, once again win most of the seats, and if black and Hispanic students win few. Last school year, of the 14,415 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools that require a test for admissions, 8,549 were Asian.

If you're looking for something soothing to occupy your eyes whilst noshing on a sandwich or whatever, I suggest you check out explore.org's indoor puppy room, where right now, a mama Great Dane is on the cusp of giving birth.

At the moment there's not a ton of activity going on—just a lot of heavy breathing, poor ol' gal—but even that is weirdly hypnotic. And while you wait for her to pop, you can watch this wild brown bear stare at a river.

Nature! It's just like us!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: The motherfucking bear disappeared. Still, trees are pretty, I guess.

• explore.org
• Bears!

Curtsies to Kimberly.

I'm beginning to understand the Republican party platform—every life is sacred until it gets old enough to piss you off*:

A man running as a Republican for State Representative in Arkansas published a book in which he endorses the death penalty for rebellious children and much, much more.

In his book “God’s Law: The Only Political Solution,” published in April, former Arkansas Department of Human Services attorney Charlie Fuqua explains that he supports killing wayward kids because that’s what a Bronze Age tribe did in his favorite religious text.

“The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline,” he wrote, according to an excerpt published by The Arkansas Times. “Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21.”

What type of behavior would warrant putting a child to death? Let's turn to Deuteronomy 21:18-21!

18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

If this truly were the law of the land, real estate values around rock quarries would skyrocket.

*Or ovulate.

NBC:

Authorities have suspended a Delaware day care's license after three employees there allegedly encouraged a pair of toddlers to fight one another.

Cell phone video taken in March appears to show two three-year-olds fighting the Hands of Our Future Daycare in Dover, Del., while three female workers cheer them on, according to Dover Police.

“It’s sobering to remember that the majority of our children, before they enter kindergarten … are in programs where people are paid really low wages, maybe $15,000 to $20,000 a year,” says Whitebook, who directs the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California at Berkeley...

Whitebook starts the interview by confirming that, yes, child care workers are typically paid less than parking lot attendants.

Not only that:

Here at the New America Foundation, Phillip Longman and David Gray have made a similar point. Their 2008 paper, A Family-Based Social Contract, includes a chart showing average salaries of various workers. (See the graph on page 11.) The data, based on information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that animal trainers make $5,000 more per years than preschool teachers.

As the former mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, once said: "Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people."

Scientific American:

The study looked at women in Finland. The women’s microbial makeup changed dramatically between the first and third trimesters. The array of microbes in the gut went from looking normal in the first three months of a pregnancy to resembling what’s found in patients suffering from metabolic disease in the last three.

A distressing look at the state of kids these days:

So little is expected of kids that even adolescents may not know how to operate the many labor-saving devices their homes are filled with. Their incompetence begets exasperation, which results in still less being asked of them (which leaves them more time for video games). Referring to the Los Angeles families, Ochs and Izquierdo wrote, “Many parents remarked that it takes more effort to get children to collaborate than to do the tasks themselves"...

Today’s parents are not just “helicopter parents,” a former school principal complains to Marano. “They are a jet-powered turbo attack model.” Other educators gripe about “snowplow parents,” who try to clear every obstacle from their children’s paths. The products of all this hovering, meanwhile, worry that they may not be able to manage college in the absence of household help. According to research conducted by sociologists at Boston College, today’s incoming freshmen are less likely to be concerned about the rigors of higher education than “about how they will handle the logistics of everyday life.”

Or maybe that should be parents these days?

"Everyone laughed at me and made fun of me. So I went up to my tent and started crying."

One word: BULLY. And/or: BRACES.