h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No, that's another typo. Someone has been through the article and changed it since I posted here. It originally said something like "oppenant" instead of "opponent". The idea of "I disagree with your 30 years but I will defend to the death your right to have them" appeals though.

Yes - this one is certainly an "interesting" typo!

Rho

I had originally answered someone's question on a strange light phenomenon and then double-checked some further information in one of my books. However, I was prompted to go see what was on the internet these days and found this site:

http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/halo/halosim.htm

I haven't tried the simulation software on offer but the whole site is worth an explore because of the lovely images (many real photographs not just simulations and graphics).

I've seen a number of copies of this story around now (with slightly different images). This one seems about as good as any (short of getting the real research):
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996162

Since they seem to be prospecting for water perhaps they should get out the dowsing rods.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996178

Not fun and, content-wise, probably not anything you don't already know but moderately interesting "proof" that these people are not all lost causes or hopeless cases just because they happen to have been indoctrinated for a long time:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html
Getting more of that critical thinking in at a young age really would help though.

Hover over the big 42
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmology_faq.html

Yet more ..._@o" ..._@o"
http://reporter.leeds.ac.uk/500/s1.htm
http://www.gastropods.com/9/Shell_1079.html

The real site:
http://www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk/
The parody:
http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/

There really are a lot of violent smileys on the internet. Here are a couple more from what appears to be a French site:
http://jm.g.free.fr/smileys/smiley_acbf.gif
http://jm.g.free.fr/smileys/smiley_acaq.gif
I'm not sure what the blue bit in the second is meant to be though. Some sort of very strange physics is going on there...

ooooö ooooö ooooö
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-07/mbar-wcy072604.php

A bit old for "news" perhaps but...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,665328,00.html

Somewhat more recent:
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jul2004/nia-29.htm

This post has been removed.

I was trying to find more on some BECs:
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.402.html

when I came across this:
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2000/split/pnu502-3.htm

Well I just had to click on a link offering trilobite molecules, didn't I! I really want a live one though.

You possibly already know about ring species and the great example they provide of evolutionary branching (speciation) displayed spatially rather than just temporally. The mostly commonly given example is the Herring Gull which has interbreeding populations all the way round the north pole except for the extremes of the ring which meet in the UK as the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-Backed Gull (which do not even recognise each other as the same species to interbreed).

On another forum someone posted this about Ensatina salamanders which don't successfully interbreed at the extremes of their spatially smaller ring (smaller because they are less mobile?):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_052_05.html

Then I found a page devoted to several such species examples:
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/rings.htm

Good news and future potential:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3598710.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/896134.stm
Perhaps the grey vote is having an impact on research.

Some microbe survival stories which someone pointed out:
http://servercc.oakton.edu/~billtong/eas100/oldbacteria.htm
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/dlc-me/news/ns595ap1.html
Resistance is not futile!

More detailed analysis of the critter:
http://mbe.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/9/1637
There's an ongoing problem of exactly how fast/slow some things evolve. It's part of the ratite (flightless bird group) detailed classification dispute too.

Not so much a flying saucer as a plummeting one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3638926.stm