BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Beaked whales - into the abyss

Another in the series of awe inspiring acts of the evolutionary process.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7641537.stm ---Clicks are generated when a structure just below the blowhole known as "monkey's lips" smacks together.That generates a wave radiating spherically outwards, which is transformed into a directionally forward-focussed plane wave as it passes through a fat "melon" - an acoustic lens.So the sound - too high-pitched for a human to hear - shoots out in front of the whale, and if it hits food, such as a squid, a portion is reflected.The reflection was thought to travel to the whale's ears, via its lower jawbone. But the scan suggested a more important route is under the bone.Top of head for transmitting, bottom of head for receiving; a neat system.The sound reception part appears to be very complex, involving fat bodies that focus sound and air sacs that reflect it."Air sacs are perfect acoustic mirrors," says Ted Cranford."The whales need to be able to isolate their ears from each other in order to maintain their directional sense, and one of the best ways to do that is through air sacs."

NASA - NASA Mars Lander Sees Falling Snow, Soil Data Suggest Liquid Past

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080929.html --- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds. Spacecraft soil experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth. A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.

Dan Quayle was too smart for his time huh?

[via /.]

Field poll: Prop. 4 parental notification on teen abortions - San Jose Mercury News

How would you vote ? Would it not be better to counsel them into getting their parents involved instead of mandating it. Somehow I tend to think that mandating it might push them to termination through unsafe methods which is something we MOST definitely want to avoid.
Also interesting the effect that the largest minority group is having on the law of the land.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10562363?nclick_check=1 --- Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo sees a significant factor at play this year. "If there's a shift going on, it's coming from the Latino voters," DiCamillo said. "Because this is a presidential election, Latino voters will constitute a larger proportion of the turnout than was true two years ago." Latino voters, who are overwhelmingly Catholic, are expected to be 17 percent of the electorate in November. They appear to be favoring the measure 62 percent to 31 percent — a 31-point margin. In 2006, the margin among Latinos was 22 percentage points, DiCamillo said. The initiative would require parental notification, not consent. When a girl younger than 18 asks a doctor for an abortion, the doctor

Questions for Doris Lessing - A Literary Light - Interview - NYTimes.com

Nice short interview with Doris Lessing :)

[NYT]--- At the age of 88, you're newly bedecked with a Nobel Prize and have a new book, "Alfred & Emily," whose title refers to your parents, British colonists who raised you in Rhodesia. Here, you tell their story twice — first as a novella in which you dream up happy lives for them and then as a memoir based on the sad facts. It strikes me as a tender book. It's not a question of tenderness. It's a question of justice. I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.

timepass: fairy tale

The Programmer and the Elves: a Fairy Tale

Quiz : Does this remind you of another fairy tale (try to guess before you click) 

The tragedy of commons

Its a long and laborious read. But the basic idea of the "commons" and "mutual coercion"  are interesting. It gives a handle to some of these concepts that all of us are aware of at some level.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/162/3859/1243

about the author [wiki]:

Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was a leading and controversial ecologist from Dallas, Texas, who was most known for his 1968 paper, The Tragedy of the Commons. He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Ecology, which states "You cannot do only one thing", and used the ubiquitous phrase "Nice guys finish last" to sum up the "selfish gene" concept of life and evolution.^[1]

<snip> The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.

2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of 1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another. . . . But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. </snip>

The Glories of Change - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute

Hmmm I dont know how many would agree with this POV. I guess you would read through to the end of the article only if you don't have too much money in the market :)

http://mises.org/story/3109 --- The events on Wall Street, the collapse of Lehman and the selling off of Merrill, are magnificent and inspiring events. What we see here are examples of sweeping and fundamental change taking place, a huge upheaval that affects the whole of society, and toward the better, since what we have going on here is a massive reallocation of resources away from failing uses toward more productive uses.

[about the author]

timepass: illustrated short story - "all but one"

It will take you max 5 mins to read this short story. And I think its very likely most people will relate to the emotion in this story.
Even though its a common emotion, its a special feeling.

http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/5408800.html

[source: reddit]