Your forehead is part of your face.

HIGH-FIVE A RANDOM STRANGER DAY: It's here! That day of grand merriment when we all spread some spontaneous joy with people we do not know! May your Saturday be filled with as many goofy high-fives as you can pull off with strangers without having them duck out of the way in fright or call the police because they thought you were going to assault them.

STW STORE SALE: Until February 7th, all STW t-shirts are 10% off IF THEY ARE RED. Which is basically all shirts, since you can make them any color you want! Use the coupon code "RED2012" when you check out.

No one ever takes the time to read the heiroglyphics on the inside of the uterus, so Fetus Morse Code it is.

HIGH-FIVE A RANDOM STRANGER DAY: Tomorrow is the day! Are you ready to high-five a stranger or two? Are you ready to share a spontaneous moment of joy with others? Have you trained an army of friends to help spread some spontaneous high-fiving joy, too? Maybe you need some inspiration to get you in the spirit of the holiday?

STW STORE SALE: Until February 7th, all STW t-shirts are 10% off IF THEY ARE RED. Which is basically all shirts, since you can make them any color you want! Use the coupon code "RED2012" when you check out.

"What am I making? Oh, a baby."

HOURLY COMIC DAY: Yesterday was Hourly Comic Day - I made the traditional short, quick STW lessons like I have in the past. If you're interested in seeing them, I split them into three batches here, here, and here.

HIGH-FIVE A RANDOM STRANGER DAY: Second of the new holidays proposed earlier this year, it comes this Saturday! Are you ready to celebrate? Will a picture of a man high-fiving a whale get you in the spirit?

STW STORE SALE: Until February 7th, all STW t-shirts are 10% off IF THEY ARE RED. Which is basically all shirts, since you can make them any color you want! Use the coupon code "RED2012" when you check out.

"Would you like anything rearranged while I'm working in here?"

STW BONE MARROW DONOR REGISTRATION DRIVE: Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who contributed in some way to the drive - either registering for the first time, trying to register, getting others to register, letting others know it was happening, etc. Based on the responses I have gotten, it seems we registered well over 250 new donors (and likely much higher than that!) as part of the drive. I can't believe how successful it was. You guys really, truly, sincerely are the best.

HOURLY COMIC DAY: Today is Hourly Comic Day, so I'll be doing my usual version of a quick lesson jotted down every hour that I am awake. I'll probably be posting them on the Tumblr feed, but will link to them tomorrow if you want to see the complete set. If you're interested in trying it out yourself, join in! It's an interesting way to stimulate your creativity.

STW STORE SALE: Until February 7th, all STW t-shirts are 10% off IF THEY ARE RED. You can use the coupon code "RED2012" when you check out.

Seriously, do you know how easy it would be to be a legitimate candidate for office these days? Candidates seemingly make outlandish statements part of their platforms so that they not only stand out but of course would also be impossible to compromise with. For example, consider the political statements I've been making on the various social networks:

"Vote for me, if elected I promise to stop devouring babies!"
"Vote for me, if elected, I promise to have brought back Firefly by the end of my second term!"
"Vote for me, I promise time machines will exist by the time you are born!"
"Vote for me, I will piss off the people you want me to piss off!"
"Vote for me, I will reduce the number of vampires in popular culture!"

The lesson here - even if one of those is entirely reasonable, throw a couple insane statements in there and it's hard to convince other people they should find ways to work with you on the good parts.

STW BONE MARROW DONOR REGISTRATION DRIVE: Today is the last day that you can register with the National Marrow Donor Program while corporate donations are covering the registration costs. While you can always donate and cover your own costs - which I thank you for, if you choose to do so - taking advantage of this opportunity while you can is something you shouldn't miss out on. They don't even need to take a blood sample, either! So please, consider signing up today. You never know if you might be able to save a life. (And once you do (or if you already have), please add your name to the list of other new registered donors? It would really help give a sense of how well the drive went. Thanks!)

The last part may sound like a joke, but in the movie based on your life, wouldn't you want to be played by the best actor out there? That's why I want to be played by Denzel Washington or Meryl Streep.

Anyway, today is Vasili Arkhipov's birthday, the first of the 12 new holidays suggested at the beginning of the year. If you have a celebration of any kind tonight, raise your glass to Vasili or any other unsung hero in your life.

And if you'd like to possibly be an unsung hero to someone else, maybe you'll consider registering with the National Marrow Donor Program before the end of the month while costs are covered? Never know if you might be able to save a life.

I'm not sure how it works, but hey, at least it's a plan. Better than wriggling around and running out of air, right?

- There's still time to register with the National Marrow Donor Program while costs are covered.

- A reminder: the "High-Five" homework is due this Thursday.

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PAST HOMEWORK: The assignment was "In less than 200 words, explain why someone is an unsung hero to you." Most of the responses were heart-warming, some were amusing, and in my opinion, the best answer came from Steven in Burnsville, MN:

(to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic")

Bill Beery was a rifleman in 1943, He was a banker in his twenties, just a man like you and me. With a wife and baby, still he had to join the infantry, And he headed off to war.

For three months he served in combat and he did his very best. Eighty-seven days of hell he struggled on without a rest. In the Battle of the Bulge he took a bullet in the chest And they sent him home from war.

When he got his discharge papers, he went home to see his wife. He spent a month recuperating from the bloodshed and the strife. Then he went right back to banking, taking up his former life, When we met he was 94.

We talked one summer day about his memories and fears, While he told his story he broke down in unexpected tears. The memories had bridged a gap of many busy years, Back to 1944.

He isn’t in the songs of praise that anybody sings, He just says that in the war “we did some necessary things.” But if you ask me he’s a hero, rising high on glorious wings. Now he is unsung no more!

Well done, Steven, and thank you to everyone who sent in an answer. Enjoy reading through them.

See, if you had your Zombie-to-Human language translation book with you, you'd clearly see that "Braaaaaiiiins" is just zombinese for "Just trying to do my civic duty, ma'am." Adult, polite, and responsible. How nice!

Major thanks to everyone who signed up with the National Marrow Donor Program yesterday - if you didn't, please do so before January is up! It's a great opportunity to do so while corporate donations are covering the cost, and you never know if you'll be able to help save a life.

The 'unsung hero' homework will be posted tomorrow.

Demons barge their way past anyone waiting on the body donation list, including science. So uncouth.

A REQUEST FROM DANTE: So hopefully many of you are registered as organ donors, and hopefully you have given/have been able to give blood, too. But there is a good chance that you are not registered to be bone marrow donors - which, fortunately, you can change today.

Bone marrow donors are always needed in response to blood diseases like leukemia. Unfortunately, it's not a simple case of matching blood types, but needing to find a much more exact match between donor and recipient - which is an even larger problem when the number of people on donor registration lists never encompasses enough people to have matches for everyone. The other problem is that it's not cheap to register donors, either - conducting the analysis so you can properly be added to the lists can cost as much as $100 - so there aren't always many registration drives that you can take part in.

My Eagle project, back when I was a Boy Scout, was to organize a bone marrow donor registration drive, partly inspired by a Scout in our troop who had died unable to find a match. I've been trying to figure out how to use STW to organize a new drive for a while now - a little hard when you can't all just come down to a local building we're having it at! - a nice idea but certainly with difficulties before we even get to the costs.

BUT - and this is good news - the National Marrow Donor Program is actually having all costs covered until the end of January. Even better, you can sign up online - it takes less than ten minutes to fill out the forms, you'll be mailed a cheek-swabbing kit which you mail back - and bam, you're done and registered, and it was free. So I'd like to ask you, please, if you can, register to be a donor before the month is over. You may never end up being a match for someone - but every person who gets registered helps cut down on the possibility that someone won't be able to find a match.

I only just found out about the costs being covered during January the other day - otherwise I would have been pushing this for a while now. If you're between 18 and 60, please consider my request and become registered as a potential donor. It's a great opportunity to do something easy, and you might end up saving a life someday. Thanks, kids.

Shouting in at your fetus, "Don't worry, we'll bail you out soon enough!", is far more fun than you'd think. Especially in public.

Kids! I will be in Boston the week of February 27th! If you are part of a Boston-based college that would like to set up/host a STW-talk, please contact me and let me know. (For the record, saying "Come to ____!" is not actually a helpful means of setting things up.)

Now, I'm no astronomer, just a simple chemical engineer who helps create low friction fluids and surfaces. But you didn't really want to see me looking down the barrel of a bottle of "LUBE", now, did you?

But yes, please do remember to support science, either in the classroom or in the voting booth. And if you represent a funding agency interested in supporting a young scientist's desire to create new medical lubricants and better fire-fighting equipment, well, I'm listening . . .

RSS users! Look! After almost four years of STW, and after a number of people's attempts to help during that time frame, I've finally figured out the proper coding to embed links and paragraphs in the RSS! Huzzah! Hopefully this will make it more enjoyable for you to follow and support the comic. You'll still need to go to the Archive page to see the extra 'File under' joke that is posted there, but everything else should be similar to the site. Enjoy!