SPACE.com has an excellent review of celestial highlights for 2007.  Take a look for all the wondrous astronomy events we have to look forward to this year.

Paperback Writer offers up The Devil’s Publishing Dictionary Part II: N Through Z.  Replete with humor regarding the publishing industry, it’s definitely worth a look.

PZ’s Friday Cephalopod is a stunning photo of a giant octopus swimming alongside a human diver.  The scale is phenomenal.  If you click on the picture, you’re taken to a larger version of it that provides an even better view.

The 51st Skeptics’ Circle is now online.  Head on over for your fill of critical thinking and rational examination.

Environment: Bears on Thin Ice: “An adult polar bear needs, on average, four to five pounds of seal blubber a day to survive, and it earns every ounce of it: crouching for hours in the Arctic cold alongside an opening in the ice, waiting for a seal to surface for a breath. Although bears may spend part of the year on land, sea ice is their essential habitat; biologists have warned that Ursus maritimus could be the first large mammal to fall victim to global warming, which is rapidly shrinking the polar ice cap.”

Orphaned Bear Cub Not Hibernating: “By all accounts, the little black bear spotted near Juneau should be snug in its den, curled up beside its mother and sleeping away the harsh Alaska winter. Instead, the orphaned cub on Douglas Island is wide awake and scrounging for anything to eat dog food, bird seed, dead crows. [. . .] Now humans have stepped in where Mother Nature has failed. A live trap was set Thursday at the beachfront home owned by Greenbank and Gary Rosenberger to try and catch the fuzzball. The plan is to move the cub to a remote location off the island where it will be introduced to a denning box made of wood and filled with a straw bed.”  I hope the plan works.  This poor bear is on its own, probably approaching starvation with rapid abandon, and in desperate need of help.