Yes, everybody has seen this already, but it’s too adorable not to show again:
Natural World
What The …?
This is a very strange and unsettling story, even leaving aside the wanton cruelty:
Dead bear covered with Obama signs found at school
Oct 20th, 2008 | CULLOWHEE, N.C. — Police at Western Carolina University and wildlife officials were investigating the discovery early Monday of a dead bear cub draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs.
Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor for public relations, said Monday night that maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school’s administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear’s head, Tvedt said.
The bear had been shot in the head, Tvedt said.
Is it a message? A direct threat? Is the bear cub supposed to represent Obama? What? I can’t begin to fathom the mindset of a person who would deliberately hurt another creature to make a political point.
Bugger me, That’s A Big Storm
UPDATE:
Ike is now the size of Texas and headed straight for Galveston. This is not good.
UPDATE II:
This is not just ‘not good’: this is truly awful. “Galveston Sheriff Leaves 1,000 Inmates AND Deputies To Die To Ike” Galveston flood walls are reportedly around 5 metres high, with the storm surge predicted to carry 7 1/2 metre swells. Pity anyone in there.
The Aliens Around Us
Madonna without makeup The incredible Goblin shark, in all it’s extendible jawed glory:
I saw this on YouTube a few weeks ago while boggling at cuttlefish and I’d meant to post it, but the New Scientist’s got there first.
I For One Welcome Our 96-Armed Overlords
The permanent display at the Shima Marineland Aquarium in the town of Shima includes a 96-tentacled Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) that weighed 3.3 kilograms (about 7 lbs) and measured 90 centimeters (3 ft) long when it was captured in nearby Matoya Bay in December 1998. Before dying 5 months later, the creature laid eggs, making it the first known extra-tentacled octopus to do so in captivity. All the baby octopi hatched with the normal number of tentacles, but unfortunately they only survived a month.
[…]
Apparently there is no theory that fully explains the surplus tentacles, but they are believed to be the result of abnormal regeneration that occurred after the octopus suffered some sort of injury.