“Lost” tribe not so lost after all. The key word here is “uncontacted”; the government had known about isolated native tribes such as this one for decades, and partitioned off that land as an Indian preserve. The man responsible for the pictures played up the “lost natives” angle to draw attention to the problem of logging. He sure drew attention to something.

No, it wasn’t a “pregnancy pact.” The school principal who told Time Magazine that “seven or eight” of the girls had planned to get pregnant together might have meant that they had decided to band together to provide mutual support after becoming pregnant.

We already knew there was water ice on Mars. The real significance of the find is that the water ice is intact at that time of year, at a shallow level beneath the surface, widespread and easily accessible without immediately sublimating. It would be an even greater breakthrough to find liquid water at greater depths, especially if it aids in the evolution of Martian life.

A new school year is starting in the Philippines (it runs from June to March there) and I’m getting a bunch of visits from searches for “Eduardo San Juan,” no doubt due to references from error-filled textbooks. To summarize, he didn’t invent the “moon buggy,” but he did conceptualize a lunar exploration system for a NASA contractor, but the proposal didn’t push through, and it was another contractor that did the job. I should probably make a summary post to attract all those search engine hits before someone uses out-of-context quotes from earlier, less-informed entries to do a paper.