Okay, they’re chimpanzees. But holy crap! The chimps are making their own deadly weapons. They’ve been seen making spears out of sticks and using them to hunt small mammals. This is the first known case of a non-human crafting a deadly weapon. And I’d say it’s only a matter of time before they assemble a chimp army, conquer the leaders of our great nations, and unite the people of our planet in human slavery. I say we should initiate a preemptive strike on the evil chimp would-be overlords. Will you join the “Nuke the Chimps” campaign? I assure you, we will have cool T-shirts.

After a slight bout of blogger’s block, I present to you the top 5 science stories I should have posted about these past two weeks:

5. Salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter. And watch what you do with that jelly, will you?
4. Ocean discovered deep within Earth. Or haven’t you heard? And yet, if the ocean was found on Mars, Bush would have detailed half the State Department there to set up a marina and golf course.
3. MIT student invents wall-crawling device. Next, a Harvard student will invent and put to use a wall lubricant, causing the MIT student to become injured falling from Boston’s highest building. Next, the Harvard student will follow the limping MIT student to his superhero hideout, only to cleverly capture him in an elaborate scheme that will result in his slow, yet imminent demise. Zoinks, audience, will our hero be rescued? The riveting tale will continue after these messages…
2. A new symbol for radiation danger has been developed:
   Or does it mean “get the hell out of the way when a UFO is firing lasers at you, or those soulless aliens will zap the living flesh from your body and you will be reduced to a pile of rubble with only your skull intact”?

1. And, although it’s not really science, I find myself unable to avoid commenting on Astronaut Lisa Nowak’s apparent decline into jealous stalking and lovesick insanity. I attended a panel discussion featuring Lisa Nowak and the rest of the STS-121 crew prior to my September ‘06 post, Astronauts Are Cool, and I stand by that assessment. She was cool. And funny, intelligent and collected. It was these qualities (and a nice supply of diapers) that drove her from Texas to Florida to hunt down the woman who did her wrong. Yes, Lisa Nowak was misguided and led solely by her emotions, but this is a woman who was willing to risk her life by travelling into space in the spirit of exploration. And she was equipped with only nonlethal weapons: a pellet gun, pepper spray, and a really terrible outfit. So really, she meant no harm. She just wanted to kick that love-stealing woman’s butt, astronaut style. And if a male astronaut had acted the same way, it likely wouldn’t have even made the local news.

Can you believe that, before this week, 13% of the US population hadn’t heard the phrase “global warming”? Things might be changing since those two important words have gotten a lot of coverage this week. A few days ago, we heard about the congressional hearing which gave us more details about the Bush administration’s censoring of government scientific research on climate change. (I’ll add that the phrase “climate change” has been critical to the administration’s whitewashing of the global warming crisis.) Today, we all wake up to learn that humans are “very likely” responsible for global warming. This is front page news. Wow. I’d be surprised if we hadn’t known this for years. But it’s really great that people might start to realize that, if we don’t act fast to reverse the damage we’ve done, we’ll be sacrificing the habitability of our planet - something which we should all agree is hugely important. So, thank you to everyone who worked so hard to bring attention to this critical problem. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get completely overshadowed the next time a celebrity baby is born or the release date is announced for next Harry Potter book (oh wait, that one already happened).