In the news

Because if I don't tell you this stuff, maybe nobody else will.

So, how come I haven't heard about this one from my flist yet? (Okay, technically I did, in the secrecy_news feed.) "In another sign of shifting ground in the post-election Congress, Senators Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the "Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2006," which would reinstate federal court jurisdiction over Guantanamo detainees and other suspected enemy combatants."

It's fun to see "Is Anthropogenic Climate Change a Myth?" shortly followed by "Warming oceans produce less phytoplankton".

On a completely different note, I bring you "Pubic hair particles vs. systemic abstractors in generative art." Um, thanks to delish_fractal.

From livescience: 4,000-year-old mummified doctor unearthed. We're sorry, but Dr. Qar is still waiting to hear back from your insurance company.

Via new_scientist: Bats can navigate by sensing Earth's magnetic field. This super-sense gives them something in common with naked mole rats and Siberian hamsters. Anybody else want to see a team of crime-fighting superheroes who happen to be a bat, a naked mole rat, and a Siberian hamster? Somebody needs to write that script.

According to natlgeographic, brain-eating cannibal Neandertals looked different from non-cannibal Neandertals. The article suggests this had something to do with climate, but isn't it obvious that the one group looked different because they were zombies?

According to scienceblog, water has flowed on Mars within the last seven years. New Scientist version here. But has the Martian surface ever had zombies walking on it?