I Can't Believe It

Close up photography actually makes these creapy-crawley creatures look kinda pretty:


19 Amazing Caterpillar Transformations

Two Good Ideas

Tennessee General Assembly Becomes First State Legislature to Condemn BDS

...and...

Canada Becomes First Country To Require For Every New Regulation, One Of Equal Burden Being Removed

It's A Planet Eat Planet...

...world out there:

Astronomers witness supermassive black hole eat its own galaxy's star-forming gas

Study suggests that Jupiter destroyed early planets

Meanwhile, this is super cool:

Good Stuff

Steyn countersues Mann for 10 millon (sic) dollars

Michael Mann Faces Bankruptcy as his Courtroom Climate Capers Collapse

Climatology Sees One Of The Greatest Scientific Reversals Of All Time – The Rise And Fall Of The Hockey Stick Charts

Super Cool

Viking fortress discovered

"Archaeologists in Denmark have found a ring-shaped Viking fortress on the island of Zealand, around 50km south of Copenhagen. It is the fifth circular fortress to be unearthed, and the first in more than 60 years.

Lasse Sonne, a Viking historian at the University of Copenhagen, said: "Although there were Vikings in other countries, these circular fortresses are unique to Denmark. Many have given up hope that there were many of them left."

Like previously discovered ring fortresses, the Vallo Borgring is thought to date back to the late 10th century and the reign of Harald Bluetooth, the King who christianised Denmark and Norway.

Some historians contend the fortresses were constructed by his son Sweyn Forkbeard, the first Danish King of England, as a military training camp or barracks from which to launch his invasions of England.

Forkbeard seized London in 1013 and was declared King of England."

Viking 'ring fortress' discovered in Denmark

"Historians believe distinctive geometric fortresses may have been built by Sweyn Forkbeard as a military training camp from which to launch his invasion of England"

ARRRRGH!

And even more super cool:

Greece unearths two Caryatids at massive Alexander-era tomb

"Greek archaeologists have unearthed two beautiful Caryatids during the ongoing excavation at the massive Alexander the Great era tomb in the ancient city of Amphipolis in northern Greece, the culture ministry announced on Sunday.

The two statues of female figures which are similar to the Caryatids known worldwide from the Acropolis temples in Athens were found on Saturday.

They were made of marble from the nearby island of Thassos and support expectations of experts that the newly discovered burial site at Amphipolis, at a distance of about 550 km north of the Greek capital, was of a high ranking official at the hierarchy of the Macedonian kingdom in the fourth century B.C.

Over the past month, since Greek archaeologists first unveiled the entrance of the tomb, the largest ever discovered in Greece, they have managed to discover two spectacular three-meter-high sphinxes, a sculpted 5 meter high lion, a mosaic and other exquisite findings."

[---]

"Most Greek archaeologists have ruled out the possibility that the tomb could be that of Alexander the Great himself as he is believed to have been buried in Egypt in 323 B.C.

However, Alexander's Persian wife, Roxana, and his son, Alexander IV, were banished to Amphipolis and murdered there in around 310 B.C. and other important figures of the time could be buried at the site."

Stunning Alexander-era statues found guarding ancient tomb in Amphipolis, Greece

"The two female figures in long-sleeved tunics were found standing guard at the opening to the mysterious Alexander The Great-era tomb near Amphipolis in the Macedonia region of northern Greece, archaeologists said.

"The left arm of one and the right arm of the other are raised in a symbolic gesture to refuse entry to the tomb," a statement from the Culture Ministry said.

Speculation is mounting that the tomb, which dates from Alexander's lifetime (356-323BC), may be untouched, with its treasures intact.

Previous evacuations of Macedonian tombs have uncovered amazing troves of gold jewellery and sculptures."

[---]

"Theories abound about who could be buried in the tumulus tomb, ranging from Alexander's Bactrian wife Roxane, to his mother Olympias or one of his generals.

Experts say the chances of Alexander himself being buried there are small, however.

After his death at 32 in Babylon, the most celebrated conqueror of the ancient world is believed to have been buried in Alexandria, the Egyptian city he founded - although no grave has ever been found there."

Cool!

Three hours worth. It`s pouring rain outside and has been all month. Nothing else to do but watch cool stuff like this.

Way Cool!!

HO! HO! HO!!

I'm Baaaaack...

...and I'm thinking it's good to be Canadian:

Foreigners buy up Canadian bonds

I guess Laurier had it wrong, by a century.

Related: That's one way to choose a leader.

Not related: Just thought I should warn you. Watch out for rabid roos. Especially if you're a politician.

Kinda related: Water Trapped For 1.5 Billion Years Could Hold Ancient Life

Well, it is Canadian.

Who Says...

...Canadians can't be innovative?

Canadian glow-in-the-dark toilet seat fights the dark

That would come in really handy for those middle-of-the-night dashes to the loo.

Dippers - Doing What Dippers Always Do

Whine. Whine. Whine.

'Lack of civility' closes website

"The provincial NDP decries what its president calls a “lack of civility displayed by Sask. Party activists,” while the executive director of the party of Premier Brad Wall’s government called the situation “laughable.”

In a statement, Cory Oxelgren, president of the NDP, said the party launched a website Tuesday on which it invited comments directed to Wall about the government’s proposed labour law changes. The timing corresponded with the launch of the NDP caucus’s “consultation tour” on the same issue, but was a separate effort."

[---]

"Many of the comments indicated support for Wall and the Sask. Party, which appeared ironic on Twitter under the NDP heading, which was later changed to “SKLabour Review.” Some were negative regarding the NDP and organized labour in general.

In other words, the comments were politically incorrect.

Dippers. They can dish it out, but they can't take it. I would suggest they pick up their marbles and run on over to CBC's website where they're sure to receive a warm welcome from their comrades, sisters and brothers.

Seriously, give your heads a shake folks. You shut the website down because you didn't like the way Saskatchewanites were responding to your fishing expedition.

Makes me think (hope) we really are done with the Dippers in this province. It's looking more and more like that's so. The bullies always retreat when you stand up to them. The proletariat is fighting back. We have stood up and we're roaring. And they're fwightened.

And Speaking of...

...coinage.  This is super cool:

Canada's newest coin glows in the dark

That should come in real handy when we're looking underneath the cushions hoping to find a handful of change.

Holy Cow!!

"Canada's sexiest male MP" just got hitched!!

Too bad, Condi. You snooze, you lose.

Man, That Would Be Fun

....I know, because my siblings and I did it once.  Except in our case the mud hole was provided by mother nature.

Cool!

Harvard, Google map literary trends, seek God

"The word "God" peaked in usage in the world's books about 1830. "Women" overtook "men" in print after 1985. Sigmund Freud has gotten more ink during the past 60 years than Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein.

Researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., teamed up with Google Inc. to survey 5.2 million digitized books -- about four per cent of all the volumes published in any language -- to analyze language patterns and quantify cultural trends from 1800 to 2000."

[---]

"Google, which has digitized 12 per cent of the 130 million books published worldwide, unveiled an online tool that enables users to track the frequency of words and phrases."

[---]

"About 72 per cent of the database's text is in English, followed by French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Russian and Hebrew."

[---]

"Studying word frequency, the researchers found that "men" was present in books almost nine times as often as "women" during the first half of the 19th century. The gap narrowed until 1985, when both words were used evenly, and by 1994 "women" appeared about 4.3 times for every 10,000 words, while "men" lagged behind at 3.3, according to the data."

[---]

"Members of the clergy produced a greater percentage of what was written in the early 1800s than later, Aiden said. That may help explain why "God" peaked around 1830, when it represented 12.5 of every 10,000 words, he said. By 2000, its prevalence had dropped to 2.6 times.

'God' is not dead, but needs a new publicist," the authors wrote.

Year by year before 1950, the fame of Darwin, the 19th- century evolutionary biologist, was greater on average than that of the psychoanalyst Freud, the physicist Einstein or 17th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei. Freud then took the lead."

I wonder if the words "me, me, me" followed soon after?

And this is interesting:

"The research team, which included staff members from the publishers of Encyclopaedia Britannica and The American Heritage Dictionary, concluded that the English language absorbs about 8,500 new words each year. From 1950 to 2000, the lexicon grew more than 70 per cent. Dictionaries don't account for the extent of this growth and fail to include an estimated 52 per cent of the language, the authors wrote."

I wonder if "the lexicon" will now shrink, what with our language police and all.

And speaking of the evolution of language, here's a trend that I couldn't care less about:

Languages Are Vanishing. So What?

The sooner we all speak to each other, the better off this old world will be. And it looks like it's going to be English. The language of technology and commerce will win, as usual.

More here.

Do you remember when techie people were predicting the demise of books? Somewhat snottily, I might add.

Well. It ain't happening.

"If you doubt the staying power of books, try this: Put the words "read books" and "use computers" into Google's new database, and you'll find that books come out well ahead."

My personal habits aside, I'm glad to hear that.

PS: I remember reading several years ago that English was the most common language spoken on the earth, either as a first or second language and was the most common language being learned by non-English folks the world over, too. The reason being, people understand it's the ticket to economic prosperity. And that's just the way the cookie has crumbled. It has nothing to do with it being superior in any way. It's just an accident of history. In fact, I've been told it's one of the more difficult languages to learn, being that it has a vastly greater number of words than any other language, in part because it has absorbed so many words from other languages. Thanks go to the British Empire.