Newsday.com : Paywall Ain't Working

The internet is a very powerful tool for education and for research.  At a click of a mouse button I can escape my parochial world-view and embark on a fascinating journey of discovery that knows no boundaries.  Except for paywalls.

In theory, the payment of a fee to view web content will generate revenues for web sites such as those set up by the news media.  In practice, that theory is badly flawed.  There are no news-story reporting police: anyone can report news.  Well, in any country that has any pretentions of being a democracy.

Post Glacial Eustatic Sea Level Rise

Was The Danube The Location Of The Noah's Ark Flood? asks a scientificblogging.com news item.

Was it the location of Noah's flood? 
Doubtful, but it was the location of a flood, just one of many from human prehistory.

Planet Earth's Vanishing Act

Dr Frank Drake said the phasing out of analogue transmissions from television,
radio and radar was making our planet electronically invisible from outer
space.

"I was watching the image on my display, and it just sort of vanished.", said a spokesmonster from Tau Ceti.  "Well, I wrote WOW! in the log and hypermailed my colleagues.  We thought that maybe the human race had finally wiped itself out, but no such luck!  No, they seem to have decided to do something about all of that pollution they were throwing out into the cosmos.  You know: electromagnetic radiation." 

Scientific Clogging

A recent story about NASA's water recycling system is clogging Google search results.  Apparently, excess calcium in astro-urine is clogging the International Space Station's recycling system.

Engineers trouble-shooting a problem with the station's $250 million water recycling system, which processes urine into clean water for drinking, believe the cause is a high concentration of calcium in the astronauts' urine, which clogs the system.
...
"We've learned a lot more about urine than we ever needed or wanted to know -- some of us anyway," said station flight director David Korth.