Don’t forget: Lifewalk is tomorrow morning! Charge your HTs, pack your snacks and chairs, and set your alarm clocks.

If you’re looking for something to do on the air, there are a few contests and operating events going on: The Italian QRP Club’s Quarterly Marathon is in progress, and the California QSO Party and Straight Key Century Club QSO Party are both available.

In news from the world of ham radio:

The ARRL reports that after repeated warnings, a ham who habitually interfered with a local repeater has been assessed a big fine.

There has been some controversy in the past about reciprocal amateur radio licensing between the U.S. and Australia, but the Wireless Institute of Australia reports that Australia is once again issuing visitors’ licenses to U.S. radio amateurs who visit the land down under.

And if you’d like to bid on something odd, like a special ARRL Handbook issued to soldiers in WW II, the ARRL would like to give you the opportunity: the bidding in the latest ARRL online auction will start on October 17th.

In news from the world of science:

Time travel actually rather scares me: the past was, mostly, a pretty nasty place. There was lots of torture…but surprisingly, archeologists have found very few torture victims. Now, the first skeleton of a person “broken on the wheel” has been studied and described.

And you can’t really trust that the past existed. Or at least, someday you won’t be able to. Scientists have developed a technique for teaching new skills implanting false memories into birds.

Infrared photography has been used to read the back sides of fire-damaged scrolls charred by the eruption of Vesuvius. The quest to read the charred scrolls from Pompeii and Herculaneum has been a fascinating one stretching for more than two centuries!

And while the small hole created is not likely to start a volcano, scientists have worked out a new plan to get the self-hammering nail on the INSIGHT lander to, well, hammer itself in.