Goodbye mother, goodbye father. The terms “mother” and “father” are to be scrapped in official documents under legislation expected to be passed in France next month. The government plans to change section 144 of the Civil Code that enshrines French law on marriage from “The man and woman can not marry before the age of 18” to “The marriage may be contracted by two people of opposite s-x or the same s-x. No one can contract before 18 years. ” In addition, all items referring to married persons, like mother and father, will be rewritten so that the terms “man” and “woman” are replaced by “spouse”.

A simpler explanation. Page one of the SMH this morning has an elaborate beat-up on the way we golden oldies are hoarding $100 and $50 notes as a way of rorting the welfare system. I have another explanation for the increase in the quantity of such notes in circulation: why would you put your money into a bank account that often pays no interest but levies fees? Mattresses make no charges.

Note: Richard Farmer receives no pension or pensioner benefits and finds a home for any rare spare notes in his internet betting accounts.

So you think your city has traffic jams. Now this is a traffic jam. Friday evenings in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, and, reports the BBC, all the tailbacks in and out of the city extend for a total of 180 kilometres on average. According to local traffic engineers, on a really bad day they reach as long as 295 kilometres.

Arctic Sea ice: What, why, and what next? There’s an extensive attempt to answer those question on the Scientific American website that explains why it should concern even those of us living thousands of kilometres away. Just one sample example to ponder:

The reality of changes to the Arctic has far outstripped most predictions. Only a few years ago, in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the bulk of models showed the Arctic ice cap surviving in summer until well past 2100. Now it’s not clear that the ice will survive in summer past 2020. The level of sea ice we saw this September, in 2012, wasn’t expected by the mean of IPCC models until 2065. The melting Arctic has outpaced the predictions of almost everyone — everyone except the few who were called alarmists.

How men can live longer. A note on some recent research published in the September 25 issue of Current Biology how men might extend their lifespans.

The gender of the researchers is not stated in the journal.

News and views noted along the way: