Where do you find the most interesting science stories ?  All over the Internet, as well as in books and magazines.  The point of this blog is simply to bring some of the most amazing, interesting and significant science stories to your attention. They share these qualities to different degrees and proportions.  I'll try to post a few of these frequently.  Here, for instance, is the first -- simply amazing !  The quote comes from a selection in "The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010," edited by Freeman Dyson.  The article, which originally appeared in National Geographic, is called, "Still Blue."

"The blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, is the largest creature  ever to live.  Linnaeus derived the genus name from the Latin balaena, "whale," and the Greek pteron, "fin" or "wing."  His species name, musculus, is the diminutive of the Latin mus, "mouse" -- apparently a Linnaean joke.  The "little mouse whale" can grow to 200 tons and 100 feet long.  A single little mouse whale weighs as much as the entire National Football League.  Just as an elephant might pick up a little mouse in its trunk, so the elephant, in its turn, might be taken up by a blue whale and carried along on the colossal tongue.  Had Jonah been injected intravenously, instead of swallowed, he would have swum the arterial vessels of this whale, boosted along every ten seconds or so by the slow, godlike pulse."

Yes, the information here isn't earth-shaking.  But to the curious, and may just give a little pleasure.