NO NUDE
IS GOOD NUDE

Lest you think that the Iraq war, the economy and high gas prices are the only subjects on the political agenda, consider the plank that Robert Hurt, a delegate to the Texas Republican Party’s platform committee, wanted included in the Texas GOP’s platform:

“You don’t have nude art on your front porch. You possibly don’t have nude art in your living rooms. So why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?”

The Dallas Morning News reports that Mr. Hurt asked the committee to adopt a resolution calling for the removal of “nude women, sculptured women” from public places in the nation’s capital. We’d be more amused if former Attorney General John Ashcroft of Missouri hadn’t spent $8,000 on drapes for two nude statues in the Justice Department’s Great Hall.

SCIENCE
MARCHES ON: PT. 1

Thanks to NASA’s Phoenix Mars lander, one of mankind’s greatest fears now has been assuaged: What happens if we run out of room on Earth to grow asparagus?

Sam Kounaves, lead investigator for “wet chemistry” experiments on the Phoenix program, reports that the Phoenix analysis of Martian soil samples shows the kind of alkalinity and salts that could be used to cultivate some vegetables. Mars explorers could scoop up a bunch and use it “to grow asparagus very well,” Mr. Kounaves reports.

Possible new NASA slogan: “Not just Tang and Velcro: Asparagus, too!”

SCIENCE
MARCHES ON: PT. 2

You’ve heard those radio commercials urging you to “Name a star after someone you love.” Not good enough for your sweetie? How about naming a sea worm after him or her?

A San Diego man named James Goodhartz has paid $5,000 to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography for the right to name a newly discovered genus of Belizian featherworm the “goodhartzorum.” He has no children and, at 55, thinks it’s his shot at immortality.

It’s part of a new name-that-species program designed to raise money for the institute. Only about 1.8 million of the estimated 30 million animals, plants and microbes on Earth have received official names, so there’s plenty of room for growth.

Up for grabs, according to the Associated Press, a sea slug ($15,000), a pair of bone-feeding worms ($25,000) and a rare hydrothermal vent worm ($50,000).
Next Valentine’s Day, try this line: “If you really loved me, you’d name a hydrothermal vent worm after me.”