SpaceAdmiral notes a new study making the claim that rocks have been evolving throughout Earth's history. "'Mineral evolution is obviously different from Darwinian evolution — minerals don't mutate, reproduce or compete like living organisms,' said Hazen in a statement announcing the study's findings. 'But we found both the variety and relative abundances of minerals have changed dramatically over more than 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. For at least 2.5 billion years, and possibly since the emergence of life, Earth's mineralogy has evolved in parallel with biology,' Hazen added. 'One implication of this finding is that remote observations of the mineralogy of other moons and planets may provide crucial evidence for biological influences beyond Earth.'"

Pagan prisoners in England have won the right to keep twigs in their cells to use as wands. The new policy regarding pagans was announced by Justice Reform Minister Maria Eagle who said, "Prison service policy is to enable prisoners of different faith traditions, including paganism, to practice their religion. Religious artifacts are allowed for relevant faiths within the constraints of good order and discipline. The religious artifacts for pagan prisoners include a flexible twig for a wand." Now that wands have been allowed, it can only be a matter of time before inmates have access to rods, staves and miscellaneous magic items.

An anonymous reader writes "Krugle, a software search company, had some time on its hands — it compared frequency of mentions in open source code of presidential candidates, Beelzebub and yes, Britney Spears." I wish they'd link to a nice long list of the other terms this revealed — there are probably a lot of subtler funny references and asides.