In reverse order of importance:
Millions of people smoked marijuana last week, and some of them had their pictures taken while doing it. One of them was named Justin Bieber.
THE NHL IS BACK. Or something.
The United States is having its worst flu season in a decade or so. So stay inside and drink some orange juice.
NOAA declared that 2012 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States. Well, mostly.
Boeing had several issues with some of its fancy new 787 planes, prompting a federal investigation or something, but they’re allegedly not any worse than the issues it had with its new 777 planes a couple decades ago before all the kinks got ironed out.
Google’s Eric Schmidt went over to North Korea to try to convince their open-minded totalitarian dictator to let his people use the Internet, which is a great place to learn about how terrible totalitarian dictatorships are. Yeah, good luck with that. Seriously, though – good luck with that.
Obama nominated a diverse array of old white males to fill some cabinet positions. Republicans attacked John Brennan for being soft on terrorism (which is retarded), Chuck Hagel for being soft on Iran (which is confusing), and Jack Lew for being soft on crony capitalist crap (which might actually be true).
The White House cleverly answered a petition about the Death Star that cleverly tricked me into learning about all sorts of cool long-term NASA projects like a new better-than-Hubble telescope and a probe that will try to explore the surface of the sun.
Venezuelan not-quite-dictator Hugo Chavez is either totally dying of cancer because he chose the terrible socialist Cuba for his health care, or totally not at all dying and about to come back and rule some more.
Aaron Swartz, 26-year-old Internet activist who helped invent RSS and Reddit, among other things, committed suicide last week. An investigation into some of his, er, unappreciated activities may or may not have had something or other to do with it all.
Parts of Mali have been taken over by Islamic militants, and France has now stormed in to help its former colony. Countdown to the United States getting involved in three, two, one.
HUMANS HAVE FILMED A LIVING GIANT SQUID FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. THE WORLD IS AWESOME. BEING ALIVE NOW IS AWESOME.