You may have heard about the Giant Squid. Big, tentacled, frequently maligned as killer of sailors and bane of Johnny Depp’s nautical misadventures (Yarrrrr, the Kraken be CGI).

But what you might not know is that there is actually something bigger than a giant squid: a COLOSSAL SQUID. These bad boys feature tentacles lined with razor sharp protrusions, and an impressive 15 metre length. Fisherman caught one of these ginormous squids off the coast of Antarctica last year, and scientists have begun the task of  poking around inside its gooey bits. And possibly making the largest calamari appetizer ever.

Today’s big revelation? The Colossal Squid has the animal kingdom’s largest eye. The monstrous peeper is 11 inches across, and has a lens the size of an orange. In other words, the squid’s eye is as big as your head. Somewhere, a Lenscrafters CEO just had a coronary.

In related news, I have just found my new Super Villain name. The Colossal Squid’s superpowers include looking slimy, being slimy, and just plain lookin’. I call trump, Dr. Octopus. Trump indeed.

*Sigh*. How’s that old saying go? Something about history repeating?

The good and tragically misguided citizens of Rome have elected Gianni Alemanno as their new Mayor. Alemanno was once a neo-fascist youth leader, and his victory parade was chock-a-block with straight-arm Nazi salutes and cries of “Duce! Duce”. ‘Duce’, you’ll recall, was the official title of Benito Mussolini, loyal ally of Hitler and coiner of the term ‘fascism’. A touching tribute, especially for a man that the citizens of Rome killed and hung on a meat hook. Also, if you say ‘Duce’ with a vague Italian accent, it sounds kind of like ‘Douche’.

And the far-right fun doesn’t stop there. Celebrating his countries dramatic shift to the right, newly re-elected Italian PM and epic slimeball Silvio Berlusconi called his compatriots “the new Falange”. The Falange was the name of the Spanish fascist party, the same one that unleashed 34 years of dictatorship on Spain. That’s certainly not something I’d like to be associated with, but it looks like Berlusconi has chosen his side.

Italy is also bringing back some good ol’ fashioned brown shirt thuggery. Umberto Bossi, Berlusconi’s closest political ally, claimed that if the Centre-Leftists didn’t go along with his political plans, “I have 300,000 men always on hand.” Oh yeah. Government by intimidation. That takes me back.

All of this raise one question: Italy, what is it you think you’re doing, exactly? You, more than (almost) everyone should know the dangers of opening the doors to these anti-democratic thugs.

Michael Geist, all around Internet good-guy, has flagged this summer as the potential release of new, updated Canadian copyright legislation. If you recall, the Harper Government tried to release some very bad, industry driven, non-consultative legislation last winter. It was all about crushing fair use and helping record companies save their doomed industry. Thanks to Geist and a groundswell of popular support, this bad news bill was canned.

But, it’s coming back. It will probably be a little watered down, but still not the best option. Watch this space for updates.

Just when I think I have my personal finances all sorted, something like this happens.

Yes, the iPhone is coming to Canada, abd only ten months late. Rogers has confirmed that is will be carrying the nifty little gadget, which we more or less new anyway since Ted’s little corp is the only one with a compatible GSM network. This means we can look forward to monopoly pricing and trademark Roger’s Craptastic™ customer service.

Which doesn’t matter. Because like any good craven Apple fanboy, I would buy the iPhone even if it were covered in poison and only played ‘Gigli’.

Sad news if you like airports, cool buildings, history, or some combination of the three: despite a campaign to save it, Tempelhof Airport failed to win a referendum to stay open.  It will close later this year to make way for a new, more central Berlin airport.

Why should you care?

Well, it’s the second oldest airport in the world (it opened in 1923) and has a spectacular building. Built by the Nazi administration (boooo…) to be the gateway of Hitler’s fabled ‘Germania’, the simple scale of the place is staggering. And it has this giant canopy that lets a plane taxi up and drop off its passengers without exposing them to the elements.

Also, it’s pretty darn historic. During the early days of the Cold War, Tempelhof was the primary airport for Western cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift. The tarmac at Tempelhof received a total of 278,228 flights delivering some 2,326,406 tonnes of supplies, keeping Berlin fed and thwarting Stalin.

It would be a monumental shame if Tempelhof were demolished. I hope at least they will preserve some of the buildings as a museum. Lord knows, they’ve seen enough history.

This is gold. Kudos to the creator.

Via Spacing.

Well, the douchebag TTC union finally pulled the trigger and went on strike. This despite the fact that union head Bob Kinnear recommended last week’s tentative deal. Apparently, 65 per cent the TTC staff didn’t agree with his rosy assessment. Oh, and as a fun bonus, they waived their ‘48 hour notice’ pledge, leaving a bunch of people stranded. Good thing Kinnear doesn’t work in PR. Oh, wait.

I hope they get nothing more. In fact, I hope they get less than what they were offered in the original deal, and get their surly mugs legislated back to work. I think the fine men and women of the TTC need a little dose of reality. There is no way you should make more than 60K a year to drive a bus. Or a streetcar or subway, which more or less drives itself anyway. If you wanted to make more than that, you should have gone to college or university or learned a trade. Oh, and the technology for driverless subways totally exists. Just sayin’. Maybe the TTC employees should thank their lucky stars they have jobs at all.

Annoying. Looking for public support, TTC? Look somewhere else.

Hi folks. Sorry about the lack of blogging today. Work was busy, and the world was boring. A bad combo.

As a small gesture of regret, please accept this video of two guys with accents playing Blitzkrieg Bop on ukuleles:

Hey ho, let’s go! Via Boing Boing

Man, the Congo has had a run of bad luck lately, but this takes the cake.

Police in Kinshasa have arrested a number of men accused of being sorcerers. Or more specifically, sorcerers who steal penises. A number of men have come forward claiming their cash & prizes have been rendered tiny, impotent or even invisible by evil magicians. Local men, justifiably angry at having their units spirited away, have attempted to lynch several of the alleged penis-snatchers.

This is a new one on me. I’ve heard people make excuses for their endowments- or lack thereof- before. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone claim “A sorcerer took it.”

“Seriously baby…normally I’d rock your world but, you know, black magic.”

In other news, Kinshasa has formally applied to have its name changed to ‘Crazytown’.

Yes, that great maybe-existed, maybe-didn’t simultaneous example both human ingenuity and total stupidity, the Trojan Horse, got its day in the sun way back on April 24, 1184BC. Wired has a great post on how the TH, while perhaps historically dubious, has become a cultural touchstone. There’s also something in there about network security, but I kind of glossed over it.

Some lessons:

Cassandra was a Trojan prophet who warned against accepting the gift. Today, her name means a person whose warnings are ignored. Another skeptic was Laocoon, who Virgil says first uttered, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

I’m a bit dubious of the last one. I lived with a Greek roommate for a while, and his gifts were always thoughtful and of high quality, rarely containing hidden soldiers who waited until night before sacking my bedroom. I also wonder why ‘Trojan’ became a brand name for condoms. As the Horse-full-of-Greeks episode demonstrates, Trojans aren’t particularly adept at keeping anything out of anything else. I’ll leave it up to you to draw the obvious analogy.

I’m such a sucker for father/son stories. Field of Dreams still makes me weep like a little girl. But this is definitely the sweetest/saddest/sweetest again thing I’ve found on the Interwebs in weeks.

When Jack Hammond, an 88 year-old British WWII vet, moved into a retirement home some 40Km from his old ‘hood, he had trouble finding suitable pub companions. And darn it if that didn’t make him lonely. So his son, 56-yearl-old Mike Hammond, put an ad in the post office for two blokes to accompany his dad to the local twice a week, for 7 quid a go. The response was overwhelming:

He was so inundated with offers - including one from a 16-year-old - that he interviewed candidates by phone before asking a shortlist of three to join him and Jack for a trial drink. The successful pair, Trevor Pugh, 78, a retired kitchen fitter from Southampton with a military background, and Henry Rosenvinge, 58, a former doctor, will now spend several nights a week with Jack chatting about military history and current affairs.

Pugh will pocket the money to supplement his pension, but won’t charge expenses. Rosenvinge is working Pro Bono:

“He has a lot of stories and we are both from Lancashire so we have a lot we can argue about. I’m looking to come once a week for a couple of hours but we will be careful - we know what our limits are with alcohol.”

Hammond’s son will continue taking his dad to the pub twice a week.

At first pass, this is a weird story. Nobody wants to have ‘paid friends’. But its a sad truth that as people age in our society, they can get increasingly isolated and alone. Fortunately, Jack Hammond has a son that cares enough to do something about it, even if his solution is a little unorthodox. And in the end, he may have found his father some new buddies.  I’m not exactly sure why, but I find this story oddly touching. As Kurt Vonnegut once said, we were put on this earth to fart around. And nobody wants to do that alone.

So, somebody, for some reason, has put out a Blog Cuss-O-Meter, which ostensibly measure the amount of profanity on your site. In the interest of science, I ran Nunc Scio through, and came back with a 7.1 per cent, or ‘medium’, cuss rating. Aren’t I nice.

Created by OnePlusYou

Kinda makes me think I should drop a few more F-Bombs around here. But then I get all giddy.

Oh man, there is so much awesome in this story I had to lie down for an hour before I could write it.

Awesome thing #1: Man from Holyhead, Wales drinks a 10 litre box of wine.

Awesome thing #2: Man takes garbage bag, cuts a hole in it, puts it on.

Awesome thing #3: Man hurdles garden fence, repeatedly screams “DARTH VADER”, and assaults two teenagers with a metal crutch

Awesome thing #4: One of the teens recently started a local Jedi Church in Holyhead.

Awesome thing #5: The two had been filming a ‘lightsaber battle’ in the backyard immediately before the attack.

Awesome thing #6: Man claims he has no memory of the event, and only realized he had dressed up like Darth Vader and attacked two kids when he read about it in the paper.

So what have we learned? Boxes of wine and Star Wars don’t mix. Crutch trumps lightsaber. And the two assaulted teens are TOTALLY virgins. Thanks to AB for the link.

The piddling human lifespan affords mankind a unique sense of security. Since we’re only around for about 80 years or so, its hard to comprehend the churning death-box of chaos that is the universe.

Take our Solar System. Seems pretty static: everything is out there, just doing laps with comforting regularity of a ninth grade gym class.

Or so it would seem.

Turns out, Ol’ Lady Gravity is constantly at work, making subtle changes as the planets exert little tugs on each other. A lot of little tugs eventually add up to some spectacular changes, like Earth colliding with Mars or Mercury. D’oh.

Such a collision would be a game-ender:

In the case of a smash-up with Mars, for example, “all life gets extinguished immediately, and Earth glows at the temperature of a red giant star for about 1000 years”, says Gregory Laughlin, a co-author of one of the studies at the University of California in Santa Cruz, US.

The good news is that this probably won’t happen for at least 40 million years. Which is bound to irritate the Sun, which was all set to burn Earth to a cinder in 5 billion years. Stupid uppity and/or drunken planets.

Phoenix residents think they may have been visited by UFOs Monday night. The four mystery lights hovered over the city for 15 minutes before disappearing. And, there’s video:

It’s a lot harder to be an alien visitor these days. Back in the 1950s, a UFO could appear over any mid-sized city, do some flips, blow up some cattle and leave. If anyone saw them, the aliens could rest assured that any witness would be dismissed as a maniac, a communist, or Ed Wood.

Now, every podunk in America has a video camera in their pocket, making visits difficult and necessitating clever disguises, like some groucho glasses or a funny hat.

I call this the ‘Mike Skinner Phenomenon’, which the Streets frontman brilliantly elucidates in the song ‘When You Wasn’t Famous‘:

Right see the thing that’s got it all f*cked up now is camera-phones.
How the hell am I supposed to be able to do a line in front of complete strangers
When I know they’ve all got cameras?

Of course, for that to work, you need to replace “do a line” with “visit Earth” and “Complete Strangers” with “Hapless Earthlings”.

Of course, they could just be sky lanterns. But that’s not nearly as cool.

UPDATE: It looks like yes, they were balloons. Or maybe that’s what the aliens want you to believe.