Dave Barry's 2015 Year in Review

"Was 2015 the worst year ever? Yes, yes it was."

Spoiler alert: Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.

2015 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar

2015 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar

Sublime!

December 1

A retake of one of the Hubble Space Telescope's most iconic and popular images: the Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation. This high-definition image shows the pillars as seen in visible light in late 2014, capturing the multi-colored glow of gas clouds, wispy tendrils of dark cosmic dust, and the rust-colored elephants' trunks of the nebula's famous pillars, 25 years after the earlier, more famous 1995 version. The dust and gas in the pillars is seared by intense radiation from young stars and eroded by strong winds from massive nearby stars. The tallest pillar here is about four light years in length, or about 24 trillion miles.

Christmas Eve

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Galaxies, galaxies everywhere - as far as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope can see. This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies represents a "deep" core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light years. The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes and colors. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies - the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals - thrived about 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billions years old. In vibrant contrast to the rich harvest of classic spiral and elliptical galaxies, there is a zoo of oddball galaxies littering the field. Some look like toothpicks; others are links on a bracelet. A few appear to be interacting. These oddball galaxies chronicle a period when the universe was younger and more chaotic. Order and structure were just beginning to emerge. In ground-based photographs, the patch of sky in which the galaxies reside, just one-tenth the diameter of the full Moon, is largely empty. Located in the constellation Fornax, the region is so empty that only a handful of stars within the Milky Way galaxy can be seen in the image. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between September 24, 2003 and January 15, 2004.

Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

In league with campus political correctness and the Affordable Care Act's propagandist Pajama Boy, the wizards at Harvard's Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion distributed a holiday placemat in the college's dining halls, encouraging students, whose parents pay $60,659 a year for the privilege, to go home and guide "holiday discussions on race and justice with loved ones."

Within days, under withering criticism, Harvard administrators issued an apology:

"We write to acknowledge that the placemat distributed in some of your dining halls this week failed to account for the many viewpoints that exist on our campus on some of the most complex issues we confront as a community and society today. Our goal was to provide a framework for you to engage in conversations with peers and family members as you return home for the winter break, however, it was not effectively presented and ultimately caused confusion in our community.

On behalf of the Office of Student Life and the Freshman's Dean's Office, we offer our sincere apologies for this situation.

Academic freedom is central to what Harvard College stands for. To suggest that there is only one point of view on each of these issues runs counter to our educational goals. We appreciate the feedback that we have received about this initiative. Moving forward, we will, with your continued input, support the growth and development of independent minds."

In mock response, the Harvard Republican Club issued an alternative placemat:

There was one thing I liked about Harvard's placemat, the tip about breathing!

Make the Galaxy Great Again

Forget about ObamaPhones. Trump has cufflinks, from Macy's, and says they're better than the cufflinks at Harry Winston and Tiffany's.

Heroin Addiction

On May 22, 2002, my brother died from a heroin overdose.

Since then, I've come to terms with his death that beautiful spring day, slumped over the wheel of his girlfriend's minivan, overlooking a marina of sailboats with rigging ringing against the masts. My journey of acceptance has navigated the shoals of family, faith, addiction, anxiety and depression, and especially the choices we make  . . . and their consequences.

Few in America today are untouched by opioid addiction. The nation's opioid epidemic, driven by vastly over-prescribed narcotics like Oxycodone, Hydrocodone and Fentanyl, is now known if not understood by nearly everyone.

But the recent death of Scott Weiland, member of the bands Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, in his tour bus, put heroin in sharp relief once again.

In 2005, Weiland was interviewed by Esquire writer Mike Sager for an article, The Devil Gives You the First Time for Free, where he described the rapture, and selfish deception, of heroin.

It came on Thanksgiving 1993. We went over to Jannina's parents' house. Tony lived in a room in the garage. After dinner, he's like, "I've got a couple of rigs. You wanna fix?" So naturally I was like, "Sure." He tied me off and shot me up. And then he said, "Now you've got your wings."

I remember just lying back on his mattress, and there was something barely on his TV, which was right by his bed but had bad reception, just static and snow. Complete warmth went all the way through my body. I was consumed. Like in Siddhartha, when they say there's that feeling of a golden light. There's that moment when he's sitting there, and there's this feeling of warmth, a golden light that just goes through his entire body. I can't remember exactly how they describe it, but there's this feeling in Buddhism where they say there's a golden glow that goes from your fingers all the way through every appendage and into the pit of your stomach. And that's what if felt like to me, slamming dope for the first time. Like I'd reached enlightenment. Like a drop of water rejoining the ocean. I was home.

All my life, I had never felt right in my own skin. I always felt that wherever I went . . . I don't know, I always felt very uncomfortable. Like I didn't belong. Like I could never belong. Like every room I walked into was an unwelcome room.

After doing dope for the first time, I knew that no matter what happened, from that day forward, I could be okay in every situation. Heroin made me feel safe. It was like the womb. I felt completely sure of myself. It took away all the fears. It did that socially; it distanced me from other people, made me feel less vulnerable. And it did that for me musically, allowing me to sort of go for it, you know, to dare to succeed. And it gave me a certain amount of objectivity. You don't have any more connection to the heart, to the body, to anything real. You kind of cease to exist. All that exists is the need.

Like my brother, Weiland rehabbed several times, but never beat the deceit and ultimate cost of his addiction. His wife, Mary Forsberg Weiland, and their two children are now left behind to try and make sense of it all. Last week she sent a letter to Rolling Stone magazine, with a poignant plea: Don't Glorify this Tragedy.

Many of these artists have children. Children with tears in their eyes, experiencing panic because their cries go unheard. You might ask, "How were we to know?" We read that he loved spending time with his children and that he'd been drug-free for years!" In reality, what you didn't want to acknowledge was a paranoid man who couldn't remember his own lyrics and who was only photographed with his children a handful of times in 15 years of fatherhood. When writing a book years ago, it pained me to sometimes gloss over so much grief and struggle, but I did what I thought was best for Noah and Lucy. I knew they would one day see and feel everything that I'd been trying to shield them from, and that they'd eventually be brave enough to say, "That mess was our father. We loved him, but a deep-rooted mix of love and disappointment made up the majority of our relationship with him."

Noah and Lucy never sought perfection from their dad. They just kept hoping for a little effort. If you're a parent not giving your best effort, all anyone asks is that you try just a little harder and don't give up. Progress, not perfection, is what your children are praying for. Our hope for Scott has died, but there is still hope for others. Let's choose to make this the first time we don't glorify this tragedy with talk of rock and roll and the demons that, by the way, don't have to come with it. Skip the depressing t-shirt with 1967-2015 on it - use the money to take a kid to the ballgame or out for ice cream.

Let's hope.

A Charlie Brown Christmas

I grew up in the 50s and 60s in a New York City suburb in Connecticut. We had a dachshund named Snoopy, I collected Peanuts books, most years a Peanuts calendar hung above my desk, my bed was covered by a Peanuts bedspread, and I saw the stage production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in the East Village in 1967.

And most Christmases since 1965 I've tuned into the animated TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Then I came upon 14 Blockheaded Facts about a Charlie Brown Christmas on mental_floss. Schulz thought the animation was crude and hated the jazz score, but wisely nixed the laugh track. After a screening before its first broadcast in 1965, CBS said it was slow and lacking in energy.

Good grief!

While walking to my car last Sunday night after the New York Rangers game at Madison Square Garden, I walked by Macy's storefront at Herald Square on Broadway. Guess what's still in fashion and the theme for their holiday windows? That's right. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

December 7, 1941

How 200 People Covered the Pearl Harbor Attacks for TIME

Martha's Vineyard Magazine - They Were There

Volvo Trucks and a 4-Year-Old Girl

As a former Volvo owner, well done. As a marketer, brilliant.