Here’s the latest nonsense fear cooked up by someone somewhere to keep us in a state of purposeless panic:  Supposedly, kids are now snorting nutmeg.

This is only the latest unfounded threat trundling our way. My second-favorite remains that your ringing cellphone might electrocute you.  The title of favorite false alarm goes to those “killer bees” that have been winging their way to us since the 1970’s. Those are some very slow bees.

Here’s the thing that nobody will ever email you, that you won’t see in the news — and I say this will full awareness of the recent financial struggles many people have faced — for the vast majority of people on the planet, things have never been better. Bubonic plague is just about gone; few of us have landed lieges forcing us to scrape in the muck all day; mortality during childbirth is at an all-time low; five out of six of us can get a drink of water easily; and more people have more regular access to education and information than ever before in history.

I’ll take all of that, and a lot more I could list, over misguided fears that somewhere some bored adolescent may have snorted nutmeg. And y’know what? If he did, he deserves whatever nasty little high he got. Because I can’t even stand the taste of nutmeg. I can only imagine how thrilling it is stuffed into your head.

Here’s the “alternate ending” for the forthcoming “Yogi Bear” CGI movie. Let’s just say that if this is how the movie goes, then I will be seeing it after all.

From ShalomLife.com:

For the past 30 years the most famous of Jewish symbols was prominently displayed at Tehran’s airport and, embarrassingly enough, was only discovered now.

The building, which currently houses Iran’s national airline, Iran Air, was built by Israeli engineers prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. On the roof of the building the Israeli engineers left a massive Star of David which was hidden in plain view until today. The symbol was discovered by someone through Google Maps.

Ahmadinejad is said to be furious and has already ordered its destruction. If asked nicely, I’m sure the Israeli Airforce will be happy to assist.

In our college group, my friend Joe was a legendary poker player. Legendary for being the worst poker player imaginable. In the words of my late father as he was leaving our private game one night in a suite I booked at Harrah’s Marina in Atlantic City, “Joe shouldn’t play cards.” Joe is one of my favorite people — highly amusing, witty, and full of life. But no matter how acerbic, he doesn’t have the sort of killer instinct that makes you a good poker player. (One indication:  His favorite game to call is Indian.) He’d rather enjoy the company, and if that means losing enough to stay in the game, that’s enough of a goal.

I now feel the same way about Barack Obama. Except without all that fondness I have for Joe. Joe means a lot to me, but there aren’t millions of people counting on him.

When Obama sat down, the cards were in his favor. Yes, he inherited a crisis of epic proportions — but in that seat, if you don’t inherit one of those, you’d better figure one is on your way. Obama was dealt a huge numerical advantage in both the House and the Senate, and enough sense of crisis that he was able to put in place enormous change. But Obama now strikes me as someone so charmed in so much of his life that he’s ill-equipped to handle setbacks. The GOP captured one — just one — chamber of Congress, and now he’s folding every hand. The deal on the unemployment extension — in which benefits were supplemented in exchange for both an extension of the Bush era taxcuts and a rollback in capital gains — reads like a strong hand played weakly. (For more of the poker metaphor, check out this piece on Slate, which recounts in sad detail all the ways that Obama is throwing away his chips.) From reading Obama’s expression, I’d gauge that he doesn’t like what he sees in the flop. I’ve got news for him:  The turn arrives in January with those new Republicans, and he’s going to like that card even less. A little aggression at the table would help.

Lately, zombies are getting all the attention. This holiday season, mummies are tired of being kept under wraps.

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.)