Bad Moon Rising

Megan Barnett wonders what is going on with the recent wave of "mind-bogglingly stupid crimes." In just the last week, we have had the case of the lawyer who was trying to rip off hedge funds, a hedge fund that appears to have been nothing but a giant Ponzi scheme, and of course the governor of Illinois.

So what's up? Years ago, people would have blamed the full moon. There is indeed a full moon tonight, and it is a whopper.

The full moon tonight will be the biggest and brightest seen in 15 years.

That's because the moon does not orbit the Earth in a perfect circle, but in a slightly elliptical route. Today, the moon is making this month's pass of the earth at its closest distance.

"It's only every few years that a full moon happens to coincide with the part of the Moon's orbit when its closest to the Earth," said Marek Kukula, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Britain told the BBC.

Since ancient times, the full moon has been associated with fertility, madness, lust, disease, and crime. Science has debunked these ideas as myth, but does anyone have a better explanation for the alleged crimes of Bernie Madoff?