One of the world’s largest mammals washed ashore in California. I can’t tell from this if it was dead or alive.

SAN FRANCISCO – A 70-foot, female blue whale that officials believe was struck by a ship has washed ashore on the Northern California coast in what scientists are calling a rare occurrence.
The whale was first [...]

from [Boing Boing]:

Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers – all should be [...]

Here is something that is just beyond bizarre, pretty cool, interesting, and sounds good…not to menti9on it’s just a little bit on the creepy side too. There are a million videos like this out there and it blows my mind every time something like this comes along and makes me feel creepy and good at [...]

MOUNTAIN VIEW — Hundreds of people hunkered down in tents and sleeping bags on a chilly Bay Area evening Thursday to watch a NASA spacecraft punch a hole in the moon.

The crowd, expected to grow into the thousands by the time a Centaur rocket plows into a south pole crater that hasn’t seen sunlight in [...]

Waterford Township police say 35-year-old Aimee Louise Sword used the internet to track down a teenage son she gave up for adoption years earlier and had sex with him.
Sword surrendered on April 24 and is charged with third-degree criminal sexual assault.
Police and prosecutors tell the Oakland Press that Sword put her son up for adoption [...]

A sad sign of the decline of the United States is that Philadelphia, the city where Ben Franklin did so much of his revolutionary work, like starting public libraries, will be closing its public libraries because of a lack of funds.
All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business [...]

* 11 September 2009 by Paul Marks
* Magazine issue 2725. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* For similar stories, visit the Energy and Fuels Topic Guide
PREDICTING how rumours and epidemics percolate through populations, or how traffic jams spread through city streets, [...]

MARK MacKINNON
HYANGSAN, NORTH KOREA — From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail Last updated on Thursday, Sep. 10, 2009 05:34PM EDT
In a country where citizens are subjected to ceaseless propaganda telling them that they live in a socialist paradise, it’s the silence that tells the other side of the story.
You can stand in the middle of some [...]

sterlingda writes to tell us that scientists have built a mouse-levitating superconducting magnet, working on behalf of NASA to study variable levels of gravity. The group hopes to ascertain what physiological impacts prolonged exposure to microgravity might have. “Repeated levitation tests showed the mice, even when not sedated, could quickly acclimate to levitation inside [...]