Newt Gingrich won last night’s South Carolina primary, adding yet another surprise to the funhouse ride that will determine whom the Republicans will pit against President Obama.

So now the circus heads to Florida, and it's all so much uglier for Romney, who also learned this weekend that maybe he didn't actually win/tie in Iowa. And, now, well, the very excellently wealthy candidate is finally going to release his tax returns. On Tuesday. (Which sounds familiar.)

And, hey, if the carnival-like atmosphere
of the Republican debates isn’t enough for you, that congregation of very flexible people in colored spandex known as Cirque Du Soleil will be coming to town.

Rain, rain, go away! The previous week’s heavy rains and snow are still causing sporadic flooding around the state—and there's more to come.

Speaking of flooding, activist group MoveOn.org has been deluging the Obama administration with petitions in the hopes that the pesident will open a full investigation into the role major banks played in the housing crisis that kickstarted the current recession.

Joe Paterno is dead? No he isn't. Stupid internet. Wait! No, seriously, Joe Paterno is dead. The college sports icon lived long enough to ensure that every single one of his obituaries contains the words "sex-abuse scandal."

“Those jobs aren’t coming back.” That was Steve Jobs' answer when Barack Obama asked what it would take to produce iPhones (or any similar gadget) in the United States. Seriously, why would Apple pay a living wage to obese, entitled American hillbillies who demand consecutive weekend days off and eight-hour workdays when, instead, Apple can wake up 8,000 Chinese workers living in a dormitory, at midnight, and march them out on zero-notice 12-hour shifts to assemble those very same consumer electronics?

"We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions."

You know how Pakistan complains about all those drone strikes by the U.S. military? That's a fair amount of theater. Secretly, it's soldiers have been cooperating with the program.

A bull with its horns set ablaze fatally gored a man in Spain.

Twenty-first century Homo sapiens arer getting a glimpse of the world they're leaving behind. The NASA Earth Observatory has completed a six-year project that provides the best-ever snapshot of today’s existing forests. So as deforestation continues apace in the coming decades, we'll be able to look back some day and know for certain just how bad things have gotten.

NASA visualization of forest cover in U.S.
  • Image from NASA.
  • NASA visualization of forest cover in U.S.