News Briefs 04-12-2009

Life's a beach (for Turner this week, at least)

• Hawass officially explores 'non-existent' Giza underworld.
• Sand-trapped Rover illuminates Martian water cycle.
• Shaded relief Google Map of Mars.
• The benefits of body-swapping.
• Inventor’s terminal cancer courtesy of Verichip?
• Was a US Swine Flu spray plane shot down in China?
• Did William Blake know the Kabbalah?
• Close to God? (American) believers' estimates of God's beliefs are more egocentric than their estimates of other people's beliefs (abstract / pdf ).
• The dangers of thinking that science is the only form of knowledge.
• Why we shouldn't release all we know about the cosmos (all at once).
• The days of the robotic-sounding mechanical larynx are numbered. A new artificial larynx uses a palatometer to turn tongue movements into synthesised speech.
• Voices are major when we're happy, minor when we're sad. I'm feeling chromatic today.
• Are Blue Whales getting sad, or are they adapting to our noisy seas? Worldwide tonal dive in whale songs baffles scientists.
• Marijuana, sleep and dreams. The Poem of Hashish.
• 5 Things the corporate media don't want you to know about Cannabis.
• Coolest exoplanet yet.
• Scientific community unfair to Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Imperial College London dissertation asserts.
• China: secret pilot UFO file released.
• Steampunk exhibition at the world's oldest museum.
• Antarctica served as climatic refuge in Earth's greatest extinction event.
• Urban pioneers: the first 10 cities of the world.

Quote of the Day:

A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

William Blake