Last day of July. I'd say it just seemed like yesterday when we had the Fourth, but I was out of the country and missed the Fourth entirely. Somehow the summer lasts longer without the Fourth, since it always feels like the summer starts to wind down the morning after. Well, there's plenty of summer left, but to any kid tomorrow is a grim thing: July's the only month that doesn't have any school in it. Only a few weeks until the empty buses start to show up, new drivers learning the routes. They look hungry.

CELEB NEWS Effects of long-term weed usage become clearer to researchers:

Please update your iTunes playlists accordingly.

SCIENCE:When did humans discover they could make dinner happen easier if they smeared certain substances on sticks and poked them into nearby animals? We're learning more:

You're wondering: how long does it take for a discussion of these findings to devolve to the usual level of idiocy? Nanoseconds. "Hold on. Not so fast you commie Democrats. Carbon dating technology is just a theory as is any other technology that doesn't agree with my version of the Bible" is the first post." And so on. And so on. That's the peril of getting your science news from the HuffPo, I suppose. But where else can you go? Who else has such an enormous stable of science writers and researchers?

Kidding! The article was sourced off a LiveScience page, which also noted that we're getting hit by a solar storm today. By "we" I mean the planet. Here's a video of the weather report with ominous celestial music. It is preceded by a cat-food ad that assures you that Iames is gluten free.

The effect of these storms, we're warned, is radio outages, power outages, satellite outages, and Northern Lights. Since India already got hit by power outages - over 600 million people in a juiceless state - you wonder if they could suffer even more.

Speaking of which: pictures from the Indian outages. Lots of big pictures of things not being on. I didn't check to see if there were any comments, but I'm sure someone showed up with an axe in one hand and a grindstone in the other. This is what we're stuck with until they develop the Parallel Angry Internet, where people with poor social skills can go to troll and be trolled.

WHEW The Neighbor's website is reporting that the "Chances of Twin Cities Hosting Olympics" are "Remote." Thank heavens. At the bottom of the page was a link that said we should watch out for Flash Mobs today; turns out it was a story from last week, when a local health care provider arranged for people to be a Flash Mob at the Mall of America to promote fitness. A sponsor-spokesperson was duly quoted:

What if you you pack your lunch every day with bacon-wrapped hotdogs? The mere act of auto-packing doesn't mean a thing. As for walking meetings, I've never heard of such a thing. Sounds like a nightmare. Six people walking around the building in a clump, talking? I'd go for it if the meeting had a set distance: this meeting will last ten blocks round-trip, no more. But there would still be someone at the end who brought up One More Point for the sake of brown-nosing, or avoiding work, and the boss would either make everyone do two more walks or walk in place. Another downside: meetings would be wiped out by a bus, which doesn't happen much these days.

I'm serious: Distracted Walking. The latest peril.