Blogs / Discoblog

When NASA’s Phoenix Lander touches down on Mars this weekend—presuming it survives the hot and harrowing descent to the surface—scientists hope that it finds more evidence of water. A new study in Science uses an Idaho gorge to suggest that the surface of Mars may have once been covered in huge quantities of water, though that may not be as good a portent for finding life on the Red Planet as it might sound.

While the Colorado River gradually carved the Grand Canyon over the last five or six millions years, there’s more than one way to scoop out a chasm. Short but massive deluges of water can do it, too. That’s how Michael Lamb and his team at the University of California, Berkeley think that Box Canyon in eastern Idaho was created.

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According to a story by Ed Price, the Yankees beat reporter for the New Jersey Star Ledger, bottled water has been banned from the dugouts of Major League Baseball. Gatorade—not water—is the “official sports drink” of MLB, and cannot bear to share the dugout with any other form of hydration. Price’s article, which has been heavily blogged, says that players can’t be seen drinking anything but Gatorade—not even Aquafina, the “official water” of MLB. According to White Sox clubhouse personnel, if players take bottled water to the bench, all the bottled water will be removed from the clubhouse as punishment.

This seems like an pretty bad move on Gatorade’s part, as encroaching on an athlete’s right to freedom of hydration might create a bit of a backlash. And it turns out Gatorade actually isn’t that recklessly narcissistic—Price’s article is bogus.

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