If you celebrate a gift-giving holiday this season, you're probably going to get socks from a well-meaning relative. (I'm looking forward to it! I really need socks.) And now you can do some good with your old ones, or the ones whose mates got lost in the wash and which you've been wearing as odd pairs: Donate them to help a rare weasel. A team of researchers from UC Davis' Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Program, adorably acronymed SNAMP, are trying to get good data on the rare Pacific fisher weasel. These guys are super-elusive, so to get good images, researchers …

The oil slick off the Nigeria coast is moving towards shore. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the design for a new generation of nuclear reactors. Climate change will help parasites thrive. Simple design is green design. Here is an adorable polar bear cub. That is all.

We saw some pretty insane videos of the Japanese tsunami back in March, when it happened, but this one (which is going newly viral for whatever reason, and which I hadn't seen before) is by far the insanest. This delivery driver caught the earthquake on his in-dash video, and it looks like no big deal -- some trees shake, a guy stumbles but doesn't lose his footing. And then the water starts coming in. The driver escaped, but the car kept recording, and it is absolutely staggering how quickly the situation goes from "a little water on the road" to …

Bike lawyer Josh Zisson, of Bike Safe Boston, had these cards printed up so that bikers would have immediate legal recourse if they got in an accident. The cards sport a clear graphical representation of Massachusetts' bike laws, and space to record the details of the accident, the driver's plate number and insurance information, and witnesses' contact details. If you're in Massachusetts, they're a great last-minute gift for a bike enthusiast (though we recommend not letting the recipient open this one in front of an anxious mother). They're available at bike shops all around the Boston area, or you can …

When a town hall attendee asked Rick Perry about groundwater pollution from hydrofracking, he sneered at the idea, saying that it would have had widespread press coverage if it were true: Perry: I am truly offended that the American public would be hoodwinked by stories that do not scientifically hold up. If that was true, it would be on the front page of every newspaper. It would be on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News. Everybody would be running that story.  Well, whaddya know? He's right. They would.

BP gave being green a try, guys, really! They had a solar panel business going, but they had to kick it to the curb, because they just couldn't afford it. Times are tough, you know? Heck, the company only has $20 billion to spend on oil and gas every year. They have to pinch ... well, not pennies, exactly, but $10,000 bills.* Mike Petrucci, chief executive of BP Solar, wrote to his remaining 100 staff last week, saying "the continuing global economic challenges have significantly impacted the solar industry, making it difficult to sustain long-term returns for the company." A …

Ever since America decided the best way to keep the teh-rur-ists and immigrants out was to build a fence along the southern border, environmentalists have worried about the impact of a gigantic, impenetrable fence on the local wildlife. And while we know that it's hard for most people to get their hackles up about the fate of the dune sagebrush lizard, we've got your charismatic fauna right here: adorable black bears. According to a new study, the bears near the Arizona border are actually Illegal Immigrants -- they’re more closely related to black bears in Mexico than to those living …

Oh, Whole Foods. Haven't you heard of seasonal eating? (Via Marjorie Ingall, who took this photo in New York, a city where you can buy a knish at a roadside stand but where Whole Foods apparently still doesn't know what Jews eat.)

Today marks the solstice: the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter. Things will only get better from here on out, as long as by “things” you mean “the amount of daylight available in the Northern hemisphere.” Grey wolves in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin will be taken off the endangered species list. A 40,000-barrel oil spill in Nigeria could be the area's worst in a decade. In a climate-changed world, fewer malaria parasites are infectious, which means fewer people could get malaria. (Stand by for Rush Limbaugh complaining that liberals and Al Gore just want us all …

Chanukah is all about fuel efficiency, so it seems appropriate that the town of Woodstock, N.Y., now has a solar-powered menorah. The menorah, one of the big electrical kinds that progressive towns put up next to their Christmas trees in order to be inclusive, has always spent the holiday season standing around unlit, because there's nowhere to plug it in on Woodstock's Village Green. But a local Hasidic rabbi decided that a dark public menorah was a pretty sad sight, so he designed and built a solar apparatus from spare parts. Now the area's 5,000 Jews will have an illuminated …