I suspect this week will be light on posts. I am feeling a bit desperate about my lack of paid work, so I will be concentrating on sending out applications today. On Thursday I will be in Washington, DC for a Tweetup at NASA Headquarters, which I am very much looking forward to. So, here are some other interesting and important links for you to peruse.

• Scientists have found a variety of microbial life at the bottom of (ironically) the Dead Sea, around freshwater springs at the sea’s floor. Since the Dead Sea has incredibly high salt concentration, most life forms can’t survive, but as usual, there are extremophiles that have adapted to that environment.
• While there is no lack of “big science” projects, in this era of economic instability and anti-science attitudes, many endeavors struggle to survive. As a result we’re losing a generation of potential scientists, and public science literacy is suffering, says Joe Hanson.
• With the recent OPERA neutrino result, physicists have wrestled with the notion of massive particles that might move faster than light. But what about the result from a few years back, showing photons moving faster than the speed of light? Greg Gbur explains how this phenomenon works and why no energy or information are carried, preserving causality.
• Brian Switek releases his own kraken of science rage on the credulous peddlers of the “Triassic giant squid” story going around. Although he is obviously writing about paleontology, the PR and journalistic sins he catalogs are committed across a variety of disciplines.