Science Saturday: Great balls of snot!

I so dig these underwater houses made of mucous.

Scientists have discovered giant sinking mucus "houses" that double the amount of food on the sea floor.

The mucus houses, or "sinkers," are produced by tadpole-like animals not much bigger than your index finger. As sinkers drop to the sea floor, small sea critters and other food particles get stuck to the mucus and end up on the bottom of the ocean.

And I spy a NCLB lesson in this: traditional means of exploration never would have detected these very cool things. I still don't see how we can trust that standardized tests will truly measure all aspects of an excellent education.