The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn’t find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

“I’m used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it’s something I just didn’t believe,” he said. “But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It’s a zero year. There’s zero production. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

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Remember that meteor that streaked across Canada a coupla weeks ago? They’ve found it:

On Nov. 27, planetary scientist Dr. Alan Hildebrand from the University of Calgary and graduate student Ellen Milley brought reporters to a site where they have found numerous meteorite fragments from the bolide that streaked across the sky in Western Canada on Nov. 20. The area where the meteroite fragments were found is called Buzzard Coulee, about 40 kilometers from the town of Lloydminster, on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. There, around a frozen pond, numerous small rocks and pebbles could be seen that the scientists said were from the meteorite. No large chunks were spotted, however, reporters said.

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Christina Romer, future chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, has three arms. That’s why she’s awesome!

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Oh, look, it’s Megaman!

No biggie, till somebody tells you it was sketched using somebody’s mentrual fucking fluid. Which means we’re saying it’s totally cool.

Venus (upper left), Jupiter (upper right), and the moon align tonight, Dec. 1, to form some sort of a “smiley.”

An event similar to this one will take place about four decades from now. So this is about all that we can get in our lifetime. Cheers.

{Image: Pant0mime}

These ladies offer pretty exciting questions about how the Internet works. And it’s magical! Look, nice tits!

CNET editor Dong Ngo was in Vietnam and what more fruitful way to spend the time than hitting cell phone shops and asking folks how they do the whole unlocking the iPhone magick.

Hanoi shops are well-known for successfully unlocking iPhones and iPhone 3G — even the “impossible to lock” 2.2 software update for the iPhone 3G. Unlocking unlockable shit is their idea of white-knuckle fun. And this is the delicate way they do it.

All rollercoaster souvenir pictures, all WTF.

More here.

Diddy’s peddling his own new product, a perfume called “I Am King.” Watch him in his douchebagiest video appearance.