It’s almost Thanksgiving here the US. Before you tuck into your stuffing, pumpkin pie, and cranberry sauce, save a little room for a big helping of science. Here are a few of our favorite Thanksgiving science stories from around the Internet, detailing the research behind fattening turkeys, giving thanks, post-holiday shopping, and more: (more…)

He may be smiling, but it’s no laughing matter: he’s got the man-flu the game is on.

Either British women are, uh, kind of slow, or English guys are more persuasive than we realized. According to Reuters, a survey found that one in five British ladies believe that “man-flu” is real, a condition which leaves afflicted gentlemen laid up  on the couch watching sports. If I had known this could work, I would have caught this fictional bug long ago. This silly survey of 2,000 British adults found that many believed in a surprising amount of myths and old wive’s tales—although perhaps the “man-flu” would be better described as an “old husband’s tale.”

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• Coyotes are what they eat: Feeding pups soft food changes their bones and muscle structures, making it more difficult for them to chomp on harder stuff later in life. That bites.

• About one-quarter of the food in the U.S. is wasted each year–and 16 percent of our energy goes toward food production. The result? We waste more energy in the food we throw out than is available via offshore drilling.

• If you get bored this weekend (and have $8,000 to spare), fret not. You can always build and launch your very own satellite.

• Run DMC: Listening to music in which the tempo matches a runner’s stride increases athletes’ endurance by about 15 percent.

• Cow-dung toothpaste, a deer penis, and guinea pigs: just a few of the bizarre items travelers have been caught attempting to smuggle through JFK International Airport. No wonder it takes so long to go through customs.

We’re copying DISCOVER’s other bloggers and calling out to commenters. Here we give you, Discoblog readers, a chance to speak your minds.

Ed Yong on Note Exactly Rocket Science, Carl Zimmer on The Loom,  Razib Khan on Gene Expression, Daniel Holz at Cosmic Variance, and Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum on The Intersection want to know who you are, what your background is and what you do…

If you want to shout back with more about you and how you found our little piece of the interwebs, that’s great. Or, feel free to answer to any of these questions:

1) What animal would you never want to be?

2) You can have one superpower, but is has to be based on an iPhone app. What would you choose and why?

3) Name one science acronym that you find questionable.

4) You discover a subatomic particle, new species, or near earth object. You have to name it after a science fiction character or living scientist. What did you find and what did you name it?

Also feel free to just tell us how we’re doing, topics you’re most interested in, or favorite stories from Discoblog past.

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Image: flickr/a2gemma

• Worst science headline of the week? Switching a gene in adult mice easily transforms females into males. Yeah, it’s a little more complicated than that.

• Exposed! Martian moons Phobos and Deimos have been caught on camera together for the very first time.

• Want to track your data consumption? There’s an app for that.

• Not sure what to get that Sri Lankan farmer in your life this holiday season? Send them a package of poo… seriously.

• Australian family lives in an electric motor-powered rotating house that guarantees a different view every time they wake up.

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• Avast ye matey! Indian Ocean pirates arrr trouble for lily-livered climate researchers. OK jokes aside, Somali pirates are such a serious threat that the scientists studying Indian Ocean conditions need an armed escort to carry out their work.

• Nonja the Orangutan can update her own Facebook page. Apparently, she’s also a fan of the camera-phone-too-close-to-the-face profile pic.

• The Iron Curtain not only isolated Eastern Europe, it also kept alien bird species from colonizing it.

• Nepal’s cabinet met today to discuss climate change’s effect on the Himalayas—5,242 meters high at the base of Mount Everest.

• Finally, it’s Friday. Time to kick back, crack open a few space beers, and enjoy the weekend.

• Gardak! To learn about children and language, Dad speaks to son only in Klingon for first three years of the child’s life.

• In Soviet Russia, blog writes you! Maksim Suraev, a Russian cosmonaut, joins the blogosphere with a healthy dose of cold war humor about life on the International Space Station.

• In a case of Project Mayhem gone terribly bad, Peru police say a gang drained the fat from their murder victims and sold it on the black market for use in cosmetics.

• Wisconsin looks to become the first state to recognize an official state microbe. Of course the bacterium, Lactococcus lactis, ferments the state’s $18 billion per year cheese industry.

• An Italian art collector found a mummified tooth, thumb, and finger of Galileo Galilei that have been missing since 1905, according to Florence’s History of Science museum.

• Today is Friday the 13th—again. It’s the third and final time that Friday falls on the 13th this year. Yep, three times a year is rare, happening only once every 11 years.

• Paraskavedekatriaphobia got you down? You’re in good company at least. FDR, Henry Ford, and Napoleon all avoided doing anything important on Friday the 13th.

• Avoiding travel or business on Friday the 13th are just two examples of how superstitious people can get over the number 13.

• Speaking of triskaidekaphobia, it’s just one in a long list of bizarre phobias that may or may not actually exist.

• So is Friday the 13th actually dangerous? Some scientists are actually trying to answer this question.One group found that females are more likely to die in car crashes on Friday the 13th, but the study was later debunked.

• Where’s my fur coat? Hairless bear in Germany is the saddest thing you’ll see today.

• “Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination” opens at the California Museum of Science. On display is a giant Darth Vader mask made of old electronics. All lesser nerds tremble in its presence.

• I did what last night? Woman has a terrible case of the morning afters—transient global amnesia to be exact—that can be triggered by sex.

• Will learning foreign languages be irrelevant one day? Space-age glasses that translate foreign languages are under development.

• If the hairless bear weirded you out, then put a smile on your face with these cute little narcoleptic meerkats that fall asleep while standing up.