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)