Neptune day! Lyme disease! Solar dearth! Towel robots! Leg transplants! Runaway elephants! Owl vision! Ocean heat! And the utter failure of the US space program continues! It's your Tuesday Science Watch, where we watch science—extra-terrifically!

  • Do you know what today is? It's the day on which Neptune has finally completed one full orbit of the sun, since its discovery in 1846. One orbit in 164 years. Laziest planet ever! Get a job, hippie planet! The Republican party has already come out against Neptune and its woeful work ethic.
  • You'll probably be getting lyme disease this summer.
  • Despite the fact that our world will die if we don't put up more solar panels, and the fact that it will save us all thousands of dollars on energy costs, nobody in New York is bothering to put up any solar panels. It's not our thing, you know? Maybe it's more of an Ohio thing, ha.
  • Robots folding towels: the final frontier. Meanwhile where are the sex robots we were promised? (Oh, uh... Brian wanted to know.)
  • And meanwhile again, the hated Spaniards have conducted the first double leg transplant. Need a couple of solid legs sewn on you, loyal American? Sorry, go beg General Franco, why don't you? This nation is taking a "siesta"—straight to the bottom of the barrel!
  • Runaway elephants nabbed at Berlin bus stop! Hahahahaha! And educationally speaking, elephants are made of science.
  • Scientists now say that owls see in stereovision, much like humans do. Likewise, non-polluting humans "give a hoot," much like owls do. Nature's symmetry is really beautiful.
  • Where is all of the ocean's missing heat? Is it underwater? Is it in space? No, it's inside the C&C Music Factory.
  • US astronauts have made their final spacewalk of the space shuttle era. Still no aliens. Christ, what a fiasco.

[Photo: AP]