"If it moves like water, it may very well be water." —Oregon State planetary science professor Joe Levy discusses the "recurring slope linneae" visible on the surface of Mars in recent high-resolution photographs. Some people think the lines, which run downhill into ravines, offer proof that water exists in frozen form on the red planet's crust, and melts into flowing liquid during warmer months. Of course, with James Cameron fresh back from his trip seven miles deep into the Mariana Trench, other possibilities come to mind.

Who says wealth doesn’t trickle down? As the nation’s redundant masses tremble, Oliver-Twist-style, before the spectacle of a Democratic-run Congress deciding whether merely to reward quarter-millionaires or the full-scale kind with lavish tax cuts, they might do well to consult the sobering tale of billionaire enclosure of central California’s water supply. It’s hard to see just how the nation’s owning classes will produce additional helpings of gruel (or at least low-wage service-sector jobs) if they’re so deeply averse to spreading around something as essential to agriculture, health and sanitation as water.

This saga, retailed in dogged and gruesome detail by Alternet’s John Gibler, concerns the enterprising private [...]

President Obama has declared four counties in Tennessee Federal disaster areas after floodwaters washed through them over the weekend and into Monday. Residents who had been evacuated by the waters returned to their homes yesterday. Power in much of downtown was shut off thanks to a main circuit failing at approximately 3:15 a.m. Tuesday; it's estimated that electricity won't be restored to the area, which includes the closed-until-further-notice Hilton and the 33-story AT&T Building. Meanwhile, local residents are getting somewhat aggravated by the downplaying of the floods in the national media, especially in relation to the weekend's foiled Times Square car bomb:

News you can use! "Mere hours out of the tap would not 'age' water that comes clean out of the tap in any way that would make it unsafe to drink. But guidelines on safe storage of water for emergency use, as well as common sense, suggest covering the glass, so dust and other contaminants do not settle into it."

Today in Bad For You: "It is said to help us prevent kidney damage, lose weight and increase concentration levels. But experts now warn that drinking eight glasses of water a day is not good for you after all – and could be harmful. They say that scientific claims behind long-standing government guidelines are worse than ‘nonsense’."

Photo by Greg Riegler

Some day you will tell your children about how you used to be able to get hot water from the tap. Of course they will be too stupid to understand, because of all the lead poisoning, but the soothing tones of nostalgic reverie will at least calm them down.

Massive rainstorms in Tennessee over the weekend have caused the Cumberland River to crest at an estimated 52.5 feet and killed at least 19 people. Among the sites in Nashville that have been washed over by the floodwaters are the Grand Ole Opry, the country-music mecca that is slated to kick off its 85th-birthday celebration on May 25, the home fields for the Tennessee Titans and Nashville Predators, and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, which has lost two grand pianos and a $2.5 million organ to the rising waters. (There's also this startling image from the front page of the Tennessean.)

I've always kind of liked the moon. And have felt an instinct toward protection when friends and colleagues have attacked her in print. What did the moon ever do to us, I thought, except look pretty and give us tides to surf on and write nice faux-reggae songs about? Well, it turns out that the less credulous among us may have been right not to trust her seductive blue glow after all. The moon has been holding out on us for years, hoarding vast supplies of valuable water beneath her apparently dry, desert-like surface. Scientists started to suspect something was up recently. But now, new [...]

Sure, using the verb "to evolve" and the phrase "elite-level hydration" in the new ad campaign for Gatorade implies at least a little sophistication as far as beverage ads aired during televised sporting events go. But really, using the old Idiocracy-parodied saw about "electrolytes" and going all pickup-artist with the slogan "Water has no game" in other ads? Why not just say "Water is for total pussies (and plants)"? At the very least, that ad campaign would get tons of extra press coverage! [Via]

A water main break in the Boston area over the weekend has left some two million people without clean water until at least Wednesday. The city has ordered residents to boil any water that might be used for drinking or cooking or performing basic ablutions (although showering is allegedly OK), and bottled water is selling at a premium at some not-as-ethical shops. School's still open, though!