First Sign of Chocolate in Ancient U.S. Found

http://www.livescience.com/history/090202-earliest-chocolate.html

The residues, found on pottery shards excavated from a large pueblo (called Pueblo Bonito) in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, suggest the practice of drinking chocolate had traveled from what is now Mexico to the American Southwest by about 1,000 years ago.

Now, researchers think a similar ritual may have taken place in villages in Chaco Canyon. Patricia Crown of the University of New Mexico and Jeffrey Hurst of the Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition found traces of theobromine, which is in the Theobroma cacao plant that bears beans from which chocolate is made, on the shards. (The Hershey Center was established by the Hershey Company in 2006.)

Since the cacao plant is tropical and can't be grown in New Mexico and other places in the United States, the researchers think the chocolate beans came from Mesoamerica, with the closest source being about 1,240 miles (2,000 km) away from the Chaco site.

Natural disasters doomed early civilization

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090119/ap_on_sc/sci_ancient_calamity/print

They found that a massive earthquake, or series of quakes, struck the seismically active region, collapsing walls and floors and launching landslides from barren mountain ranges surrounding the valley.
In addition, layers of silt indicate massive flooding followed.
Then came El Nino, a periodic change in the winds and currents in the Pacific Ocean, which brought heavy rains that damaged irrigation systems and washed debris into the streams and down to the ocean, where the sand and silt settled into a large ridge, sealing off the previously rich coastal bays.

Paper Details Sites on Mars With Plumes Of Methane

Paper Details Sites on Mars With Plumes Of Methane

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/science/space/16mars.html?ref=us

When the presence of methane was reported in 2004 by three teams of scientists, the findings generated surprise and skepticism because only a few explanations seemed to be plausible.

One was geothermal chemical reactions involving water and heat in volcanoes or underground hot springs. But evidence for recent volcanism on Mars is scarce. Also, volcanoes would be expected to spew other gases like sulfur dioxide, and those are not plentiful in the planet’s atmosphere.

A second possibility is biological. On Earth, a class of bacteria known as methanogens breathes out methane as a waste product.

77 Quirks: Adding Character to Starships in the Far Future

77 Quirks: Adding Character to Starships in the Far Future

http://www.estarcion.com/kaleja/77quirks.html

This is a method for randomly adding "character" to a particular starship or ship class. As with most such things, it should be used with a large grain of salt, and the referee should feel free to ignore or alter anything that doesn’t work well. The phrase "referee's discretion" gets bandied about quite a bit. Either ship-class-based or individual-ship-based Quirks, or both, can be used.

Holdfast Tables

About 8 random generators, including tavern, magic item, NPC, etc.
http://www.holdfast.org/tools.htm

World's oldest marijuana stash

World's oldest marijuana stash totally busted

Two pounds of still-green weed found in a 2,700-year-old Gobi Desert grave

Stash for the afterlife: A photograph of a stash of cannabis found in the 2,700-year-old grave of a man in the Gobi Desert. Scientists are unsure if the marijuana was grown for more spiritual or medical purposes,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28034925/?gt1=43001

Odd Comet Possibly from Another Star System

Odd Comet Possibly from Another Star System

... and also some discussion of "normal" comets.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/081202-odd-comet.html