Now that everybody has changed their Facebook avatars back from cartoon characters, how great has the upswing in child abuse been?

I guess comics really aren’t for kids any more.

There was a time when Batman looked like this:

This is more like what you’ll find now:

This isn’t a new trend. Even Wolverine looked a little… milder… in his debut.

Now he’s more likely to look like one of the vicious, battered bums in the backdrop of a Bukowski novel:

But even with all the changes that any character will go through over the course of almost 70 years, I’m still surprised to find what a downer Archie has become. I hated high school, so I couldn’t relate to the character at all, no matter how great a time he seemed to be having with Moose and Jughead and those fetching girls of his. But now even Archie is a victim of the recession, battling joblessness in what Slate calls “a middle-class hell.” Here’s their take on it, and here are some representative graphics. Looks interesting — if you can handle it.

So evidently, Charles Manson can field cellphone calls from inside his prison cell, behind acres of concrete and steel. Meanwhile, my wife could stand on a cell tower with her cellphone in her hand, and all the incoming calls would still drop directly to voicemail. Explain, please.

NASA has announced that they’ve found new life. As Gizmodo puts it, “[the] life form—called GFAJ-1— doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. It’s capable of using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes.

“NASA is saying that this is ‘life as we do not know it.’ The reason is that all life on Earth is made of six components: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.”

My first thought on reading this is that I’ve seen this new life, and it was in a river in New Jersey. (I’m from New Jersey, so I get to say that.) But then I read further and learned that scientists then found a very similar life form on Earth that uses arsenic rather than phosphorous for its molecular building blocks. Where did they find it? Mono Lake, California. Make of that what you will.

My final thought is:  I’m surprised that they’re surprised. Haven’t any of them seen “The Andromeda Strain”? My father and two older brothers took me to see that when I was nine,  and to this day I’m as thrilled about that movie as I was then. The “Strain” of the title is an alien biological infestation that, wait for it, lacks ways we recognize to create DNA, RNA, proteins and amino acids. In other words, it’s “impossible” life that’s similar to what we just found. And which all of we science fiction fans have been expecting for 40 years.

It’s the Hot Guys and Baby Animals calendar.

(For my family, it would be Hot Guns with Dead Animals.)

Here’s a primer in how to invest wisely, from someone who no longer has any stake in the outcome. (Thanks to Joe Stafford for letting me know about this.)

#1 in the list:  A Klingon Christmas Carol.

(Although I have friends I suspect will be there.)

“Yes, I know he can be annoying to you. All right, really annoying. But some day when you’re both older, you’re going to be good friends. Really. He’s even going to stand for you in your wedding. You’ll see. You might not believe it, but Aunt Lorie? She was really mean to me. Really mean. And she was older than me, and bigger, and mean. See how well we get along now? So you need to overlook what he does sometimes. No, I haven’t forgotten her meanness, but still, we get along. So some day you and your little brother will be good friends. You’ll see. Really. But in the meantime, while the escalating pitch of your voice yelling at him is having no impact on him, it is doing something else:  It’s driving me crazy. So please stop.”

I just woke up my 19-year-old, who’s been home from college for Thanksgiving.

“Aren’t you leaving at noon?” I said. (It’s 10:30.)

His reply:  “Ostensibly.”