A once-a-year treat that's a perfect excuse for buying an extra dozen donuts.

• 1 dozen plain fastnachts, unglazed
• 3 large eggs or 3/4 cups Egg Beaters (y'know, to reduce cholesterol)
• 2 cups milk
• 2/3 cup sugar (white or brown -- I make a mix because I can't decide)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 stick butter (1/4 cup)
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon

Start by pre-heating your oven to 350° Fahrenheit and eating a fastnacht. The fastnacht (sometimes fasnacht, faschnact, or even kinkling) is a type of donut made from potato dough and deep fried. There's some variation in the recipe, depending on whether your chef is Swiss, German, Polish, or Pennsylvania Dutch. I'm familiar only with the Pennsylvania Dutch variety. They are very yummy, but they're only available one day each year -- Fat Tuesday.
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No, it's not the action of a neutronium-clad doomsday machine, nor a huge, sperical space station terrorizing the galaxy. Rather, a humble, but sometimes raucus group of astronomers in Prague decided yesterday to downgrade Pluto's status leaving our Solar System with only eight planets.
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My fellow Psidonians, it is with deep sadness that I view the recent developments over at Ichiban.org and the devastating effects of the recent change of government. Although Sysop Ichiban and I have had our differences in the past, we both understood the need for unhindered discourse.
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A milestone marks an important passage. Used originally by the Romans along the Appian Way, each stone was placed at a location determined when a wheel four feet in diameter had rotated four hundred times. The actual mechanism used, an early odometer, was originally invented by Archimedes, although the exact engineering of the mechanism was forgotten and only recently duplicated. Not even Leonardo da Vinci was successful in recreating it.
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When I wrote Clash Over Cassini, 2004 felt very far away. But the years have slipped past in a relentless march. Now, at last, Cassini-Huygens has arrived at Saturn. And I'm pleased to add another successful nuclear-powered space mission with no plutonium-related injuries or deaths to the list of such peaceful uses. Not that real-world experience will calm the speculative fears of anti-nuclear activists.
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I thought it might be nice to have a spot to talk about all the stuff going on on the small screen with one of my favorite comic book characters.

Boy have these writers thrown away the source material! I can't really rant about that though, since the current comic book writers have thrown out the source material, retrieved it, modified it, thrown it away again numerous times, etc. The character continues to be compelling.
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