This week, the planets are cosmically and comically aligned: Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and David Letterman, the Ghosts of The Tonight Show past, present and passed-over, will compete against each other in the same time slot for the first time.

What is art? What makes something good or bad, and who decides?

These are some of the underlying debates in art analysis.

We all like to think that we judge art by what we see — technique, composition, subject matter and use of color — but most of the time, the reputation of the artist plays a huge role in framing our view of a work of art.

Across the globe, plant breeders seek genetically modified plants to increase crop yield, build up disease resistance and delay crop ripening. Meanwhile, national governments and activist groups question the safety of these crops.

Greenpeace, an environmental activist group, has led numerous protests calling for a ban on G.M. corn. France and Greece have ignored possible sanctions from the E.U. by actively speaking against the cultivation of G.M. corn, papaya and eggplant.

Genetic modification involves transferring a gene of interest from one species into another. In some cases, plant breeders insert these genes into a naturally occurring bacterium and then into the target plant. The final G.M. product contains only the transported gene and not the bacterium as a whole.

Apocalyptic prophecies have spawned many science fiction movies. In the 2003 film The Core, the Earth loses its protective magnetic field when charged magma in the planet’s interior stops churning about. A mission to the center of the Earth is launched to get the magma spinning and save the planet. While these films are science fiction, some think these stories are set to come off of the screen and into reality in 2012.

The television tells me no one has any money and I believe them because they play me a particularly persuasive montage of FOR SALE signs and deserted malls and confused-looking homeless people. This is the first recession (or worse?) brought to you with FULL TEAM COVERAGE — we can watch it live, in hi-definition, every minute of every day. It’s like the Olympics but with an exponentially longer, yet untraceable tape delay. We can watch banks turn away outstretched hands, bankrupt auto executives weep in $XXXX suits, foreclosed houses overrun with tumbleweeds and bobcats and fat Midwestern-looking factory workers moving what appear to be levers.

D.P. Dough and the Ithaca Police Department are at the center of controversy this week amid allegations of racial prejudice against members of the black student community.