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Stealing Candy From Your Kids? It's A Halloween Tradition

By Mark Memmott
Published October 31, 2013 at 12:04 PM EDT
The Witch Head nebula, a spooky image from NASA. But is it scarier that more than half of adults think about the best way to eat candy corn?
NASA.gov
The Witch Head nebula, a spooky image from NASA. But is it scarier that more than half of adults think about the best way to eat candy corn?

We've rounded up some Halloween-related news. Think of this as our treat bag:

-- Bad Moms And Dads. "Eighty-one percent of parents surveyed say that they take candy from their children's Halloween candy haul for their own enjoyment (with 26 percent admitting that they sneak treats after the children go to bed or school)." National Confectioners Association

-- But The Kids Will Do All Right. "Almost every child in the USA will have candy on Halloween." USA Today

-- Cyrus, Heisenberg & KimYe. This year's "au courant costumes," include nearly naked Myley Cyrus, very scary Heisenberg (Walter White) fromBreaking Bad and that trendy couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. New York Magazine

-- But Not Stein, Franzen & Slothrop. Want to make everyone guess who you are? Try "implausible literary costumers no one will recognize." Maybe: Gertrude Stein, Jonathan Franzen or Tyrone Slothrop from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.Vice.com

-- 53 Percent Of Americans Are Weird. Adults actually have opinions about how to eat candy corn. "Forty-seven percent think it's popping the whole piece at once, followed by forty three percent who believe starting with the narrow white end is best. Only ten percent prefer to start with the wider yellow end." National Confectioners Association

-- There's A Witch Head Up There. NASA is using Halloween to show off another photo from way "out there." As the agency writes:

"A witch appears to be screaming out into space in this new image from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The infrared portrait shows the Witch Head nebula, named after its resemblance to the profile of a wicked witch. Astronomers say the billowy clouds of the nebula, where baby stars are brewing, are being lit up by massive stars. Dust in the cloud is being hit with starlight, causing it to glow with infrared light, which was picked up by WISE's detectors.

"The Witch Head nebula is estimated to be hundreds of light-years away in the Orion constellation, just off the famous hunter's knee."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
See stories by Mark Memmott