Slate (yeah, not the first place I look for science news, but hey) unearths the sad truth about beaches that aren’t going to be beaches much longer:

[Jim] Titus, the Environmental Protection Agency’s resident expert on sea-level rise, first happened on Maryland’s disappearing beaches 15 years ago while looking for a place to windsurf. “Having the name ‘beach,’ ” he [...]

So, you’d think this’d be bigger news, but I heard about it on the Geeky Gadgets blog. (That’s its actual name.) DARPA, the military research organization lost one of its very fast, very experimental planes:

The maiden flight of DARPA’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (or HTV-2) ended with the loss of the hypersonic glider after just 9 minutes.

The [...]

Click to embiggen

This is the Florida Everglades, the widest, slowest river in the world. Anything that grows in South Florida does so because of fresh water from here – from cypress trees to sod farms to subdivisions. It’s the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles both live (crocodiles are the ones with pointy noses [...]

Fittingly enough, I posted that put-sugar-in-my-Coke song on the anniversary of New Coke’s introduction.

Funny.

SONG: “Mexican Coke” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain,” Princeton University, 22 Mar 2010, as used in the post Corn syrup not so sweet.

ABSTRACT: I confess. Our household was recently overrun with Mountain Dew Throwback, [...]

New Scientist reopens that old, old scandal between we modern humans and our sexy, sexy Neanderthal cousins:

Instead, a team led by Jeffrey Long, at the University of New Mexico, found evidence that some of the [genetic] markers looked far too old to have come from humans. Inbreeding with other ancient species is the likeliest explanation. “It means [...]

What, you think that Christmas cracker in Iceland was something? This was last week’s real eruption:

This prominence is 500,000 miles long. That’s a stream of plasma 62 and a half times longer than the Earth’s diameter. Volcano, shmolcano.

Captured by NASA’s STEREO system (the two spacecraft of the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory).

New York Times has yet another report on new breakthroughs in using psychedelic drugs to heal:

“All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating,” he recalled. “Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone.”

Today, more than a year later, [...]

BBC reports they’re delicious! And oh yeah, you may already have tasted them:

A genetic analysis of meat found in Los Angeles showed that it was identical to meat from a sei whale being sold in Japan in 2007. This species is said by environmentalists to be in danger of extinction.

Criminal proceedings have started against the Los Angeles restaurant caught [...]