Politics is not the art of the possible.

Today's soundtrack: The Pace of Which by Benjamin Dauer.

It's time for IBM's 5 in 5 - five innovations that will change our lives in the next five years. This time they present them in terms of the five senses. Computers will have a sense of smell? C'mon, man.

Milton Glaser (graphic designer) shares 10 things he's learned. In describing one of those things, doubt is better than certainty, Glaser includes this nugget: "Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

Astronomy/space geeks (you know who you are): the most awesome space images of 2012.

Animation of the week: Ornithophobia.

First try to guess what artist painted this. Then click the link. Don't worry - it's not one of those things painted by an elephant.

When Brian Eno's album Lux debuted last year he used four online events in which the album was streamed and listeners uploaded photos to capture light at four times of the day: sunrise, day, sunset, night. Day of Light is a video compilation of the results.

Anyone who's being treated for cholesterol issues needs to read this article about new studies that show that meds to increase HDL have no effect compared to drugs that reduce LDL. Discuss with your physician - I will be doing so with mine.

Science proves Billy Crystal was right - men and women can't just be friends.

Census Dotmap - one dot for every person in the 2010 U.S. and 2011 Canada census.

Where have you been all my life? The Museum of Clean. In Idaho of all places. (Not that Idaho's dirty or anything.)

I'm not even a fan of ping pong but this video of the best table tennis shots of 2012 is amazing.

Take 8 minutes and watch this video compilation of the view from a firefighter's helmet cam. (Sorry about the Eminem soundtrack.)

Use Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks to map household income by neighborhood for the entire U.S. DFW is shown above.

Disneyland everyday for a year?

lolz

From the "Now It's Just Silly to be Posting Christmas Stuff This Late" Department, you should bookmark Crapping Paper for next year. It's wrapping paper that spoils the surprise, and you can generate your own.

Alma Alloro, Further Abstracts 1

As the frequent reader (if any such person exists) knows, I have this thing for confluences of special interests. For example, I enjoy animation and military history. This leads to interesting things like animated propaganda films (many by Disney) during WWII. Here are just a few:

• Walt Disney Treasures - On the Front Lines
• The Golden Age of Cartoons: Cartoons for Victory!
• More Cartoons for Victory! (video preview here)

Cold War junkies: here's more nuclear apocalypse film fun: Panic in the Year Zero (1962).

See how the screwball does screw. source (Geez, what's with all the animated GIFs this week?)

Are you a visual thinker? Check out these mathematical proofs without words. Or videos about numbers from Numberphile.

What word or phrase annoys you the most? According to the annual Marist poll of annoying words, 19% of adults can't stand "you know" and 11% can't stand "just saying" making we wonder where my favorite "you know what I sayin'" ranks. Click thru to find the #1 most annoying word.

Best title of a science paper this week: An In-Depth Analysis of a Piece of Shit (study of hookworms from the Neglected Tropical Diseases journal).

If you have time to fish you're doing it wrong. -OR- I wonder what he's using for bait? source

Remember a couple weeks ago the bit about ancient humans all being lactose intolerant while today only about two-thirds remain lactose intolerant? Well, science was asked to investigate and their answer was IDK.

Everything's bigger in Texas including screens in NFL stadiums. The one in Cowboys Stadium is 160 feet wide but the Houston Texans plan to exceed that by another 67 feet - 227 feet total.

Robert Irwin, NIAGARA, 2011 (Dan Flavin isn't the only one working with fluorescent lights.)

BookRX will suggest reading material based on your Twitter feed. It gave me some very interesting suggestions except for Freshwater Fishing Tips & Techniques. Freebook Sifter helps you find free e-books on Amazon.com.

Visual.ly provides a free tool for making an infographic of your Twitter persona. I'd show you mine but it was pretty damn depressing.

This is an amazing story - a German fighter pilot escorted a badly damaged B-17 out of enemy airspace during WWII.

Great photographs of a restored B-17G.

Where did the word supercalifragilisticexpealidocious come from? Would you believe my alma mater, Syracuse University?

OK, science. Enough already. Atoms can't cool below absolute zero.

Where do objects go to die? And what about all the European bunkers from WWII?

Lot's of art reading to catch up on and all of it free.

• 65 modern art books from The Guggenheim (one standout for me is Aspects of Postwar Painting in America from 1976)
• 370 titles from The Met

One last tune for you - the Guitar Circle of Europe covers King Crimson's Red.

I was looking at this while listening to Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. Groovy.

Time to make music. The Wobbulator. (How can you not want to play with something called The Wobbulator? It's meant to recreate the sounds of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop.) Note: You may need to use Chrome.

Time to dance. Polydance.

It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. ~John Kenneth Galbraith