re: More on those white blobs on the landers legs.
I get the impression that the bone of contention in the liquid vs ice blobs debate is the temperature of the lander legs. Higher than the soil favours liquid, same as or lower than favors ice deposition. Thats an oversimplification i know, but surely it should be fairly trivial to work out how cold the lander was under the landing site conditions?
I don't agree that if they are semi liquid blobs then liquid water is common on mars. The violent mixing of soil and ice by the phoenix's engines might be a pretty unique event of geologically quite mars.