Anna Sale here on the day shift.

This ash cloud story continues to have us talking around here. We talked this morning about the impact on the economy and global shipping, but we're also interested in how this transportation disruption has affected the way we understand the world. For starters, is this changing the way we perceive distance and time? We're also looking back in history at other times Mother Nature reared her head and caused large-scale disruptions to the normal course of civilization.

Also tomorrow, from our Transportation Nation project, we've got a story working about the turning political fortunes of large-scale high-speed rail projects in California and Florida. After celebrating the receipt of big federal grants, these states are struggling to get their plans started and fiscal hawks are starting to worry about the big price tags.

We're also following the news today of the deaths of two top Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq, and watching how Citi's $4.4 billion earnings and the fraud charges against Goldman Sachs are affecting the financial regulation debate in Washington. 

Finally, we'll talk about something tomorrow that we can't say on the radio: curse words. We're hearing them from the mouth of an 11-year-old girl in a box office smash and from the Vice President of the United States. It's made us wonder if cursing is becoming more acceptable. Tomorrow, we'll speak to a linguist and a psychology professor to look at why we curse and if it would be less offensive if we did it more. We're starting the conversation early online: What should we do about cursing? Does using curse words more take away their power? Let us know what you think. Try to keep it clean!