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New research published in the magazine NeuroImage would seem to confirm what women have long suspected: Men do have trouble hearing women.

Apparently female voices are more complex and melodic than male voices and the brain uses the areas normally associated with music to process them. The processing required for a male voice is much simpler.

It was also noted that the “voices” heard in hallucinations are almost always male, which, if you were going to be sarcastic, might lead to you to hazard a opinion about the dominance of male gods, but I would never do that.

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Good news from Alabama: they have taken action on the eminent domain issue that resulted from the recent Supreme Court decision. The new legislation protects property owners from governments taking their property for private purposes.

The governor, Bob Reilly, is a Christian Republican, but he actually read the New Testament and has tried to improve the lot of the less fortunate in his state. For his efforts he will probably lose in the Republican primary to former chief justice Roy “Moses” Moore who will descend from his mountain to oppose Reilly.

If you have the bandwidth, Mark Fiore has an interesting cartoon on the issue.

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In the first week of August we have exceeded the average rainfall for the entire month. This weather pattern started at the end of July and we seem to be stuck with it, which has made the kids who had to back to school last week feel better.

After the first few days the lawn erupted with corpse-white mushrooms. As things continued a green mold began appearing on the mushrooms and now the black blotching of mildew is appearing on the mold.

Frankly the look and smell reminds me more of my grandmother’s basement in upstate New York that the Gulf Coast of Florida. Hurricanes, sharks, rip currents, and now the mold monster – I can’t wait to see the newest Visit Florida commercial.

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A British team with a Super Scorpio remote-controlled submersible has manage to cut the Russian AS-28 Priz-class submersible free and the vehicle has risen to the surface at 03:26GMT, Sunday [22:26CDT, Saturday].

The Priz, literally “prize”, vehicles are used for submarine rescue work and are designed for depths of 1000 meters, the problem is that there are very few of the vehicles in the Russian Navy and the vehicle was trapped at 190 meters, below the safe level for other methods to be used.

Based on the reports, the AS-28 became entangled in a fishing net that was entangled with a military communications and detection system anchored to the bottom. The Super Scorpio had to cut the cables to free up the vehicle for ascent. An earlier Russian attempt to raise the vessel using cables also became enmeshed in the antennae of the communications system.

The various reports on how long the crew could survive were the result of having the figures for the vehicle under the normal conditions of three crewmembers, but actually having seven members on board for a training mission.

The US also flew two Super Scorpios and deep diving teams to Kamchatka, but arrived after the British team. The Japanese sent several vessels, but they can’t be in the area until Monday at the earliest.

This MSNBC report has the outline of information. I held up because there have been so many faulty reports coming out on this, and most events from Russia.

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