OUR UNIVERSE ON 9DECEMBER2013

1.  I yesterday reported on the Honolulu Marathon.  A few more tidbits:

• Around 22,115 finished, all alive.  In these past 41 years, 33 year old Grant Hirohata-Goto in 2003 has been the only fatality.
• The oldest finishers were 86-year old Bill Albrecht in 9:28:22 and 85-year-old Haruko Asayama in 10:05:51.
• Jerold Chun and Gary Dill completed their 41st straight Honolulu Marathon.

• The winner was Gilbert Chepkony in 2:18:47, but Masazumi Soejima in a wheelchair finished with a time of 1:31:44 (the world record is 1:18:27 set at the Boston Marathon in 2004--here are Soejima and Wakako Tsuchida, when they won the Boston wheelchair divisions  in 2011)).  I couldn't find a world record for the marathon on a bike, but this should be less than half an hour because Fracesco Russo took an hour on a German track to travel 57 miles.

2.  Be careful about Thailand, as the government is losing control.

3.  The government of Ukraine is also in trouble, as 200,000 demonstrated in Kiev yesterday and hammered down the statue of Lenin.  They are unhappy with President Viktor Yanukovych's possible secret deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Guess who is leader of the opposition Udar party?  Vitaly Klitschko, heavyweight boxing champ.

4.  Okay, is it now safe to again eat eggs or not?  Well, doctors turned out to be wrong.  The medical profession was confused.  They thought that eggs, high in cholesterol, were, thus, bad for you.  But recent research indicated that most of the cholesterol in your body was MADE BY YOUR LIVER, not absorbed from the food you eat.  Now, like an apple, doctors advocate an EGG A DAY.

  But, ah, life is not so simple.  The Gates Foundation and Silicon Valley investors are funding an effort to displace eggs in your diet because chickens are kept in inhumane conditions and the whole industry wastes energy and adds to global climate warming.  Thus, start-ups are becoming a cottage industry providing cookies, mayonnaise and other commodities with the absence of eggs.  So if you drive a plug-in EV, surely, you won't want to have that egg for breakfast tomorrow.

5.  Further in space, did Comet Ison survive?  NASA has been awfully quiet, but here is a clip that suggests Ison is alive and well.  In any case, I wouldn't count on a celestial spectacular for Christmas.

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