I finished watching Miami Vice Season 2 on DVD (one of my all-time favorite shows) a few days ago and was reminded of the episode “Trust Fund Pirates” by this CNN story.
Fans of Vice will recall Richard Belzer’s (Law & Order) character was a pirate radio station operator who conducted his illegal broadcasts from out in the ocean near Miami.
As if plucked from George Lucas’s latest ‘Star Wars‘ films, a ‘no-confidence’ vote has toppled our Canadian government.
Unfortunately, we don’t really seem to have any solid options in our other political parties. Politics…bah, humbug!
Because I’m a bit of a science geek, and because they have that ‘cool’ mythic element to them, news regarding Giant Squids excite me. Well, on September 27th, word spread that a live one had been photographed underwater!
Photograph courtesy T. Kubodera and K. Mori.
Photograph courtesy T. Kubodera and K. Mori.
The Japanese scientists estimated the animal to be an astounding 25 feet long but the longest giant squid on record measured 59 feet (18 meters), including its two elongated tentacles. Along with photos of the exciting discovery, National Geographic posted the story:
“The scientists say they snapped more than 500 images of the massive cephalopod before it broke free after snagging itself on a hook. They also recovered one of the giant squid’s two longest tentacles, which severed during its struggle.
The photo sequence, taken off Japan’s Ogasawara Islands in September 2004, shows the squid homing in on the baited line and enveloping it in “a ball of tentacles.”
Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum in Tokyo and Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association report their observations this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“Architeuthis appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongated feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey,” the researchers write.
They add that the squid was found feeding at depths where no light penetrates even during the day.”
Check out the link for the full story and more on the history of the Giant Squid!
This post seems like a fitting one to share one of my all-time favorite poster images. It was created by the great Disney Imagineers and can be seen in the book Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making the Magic Real.
Image courtesy of Walt Disney Imagineering.
If anybody knows where I can get a large-scale poster of the above image, please contact me. I think I see the Nautilus now!
Some science news for you today:
In the marine archaeology field, researchers recently raised a cannon from an underwater site near North Carolina, hoping the artifact will prove the sunken wreckage it came from was once the flagship of the notorious pirate Blackbeard.
CNN.com features this report on a new planet found in the Milky Way.
Australian palaeontologists have discovered the fossils of what they believe to be a new species of long-necked dinosaur near Queensland.
Meanwhile at the American Museum of Natural History, the first ever fossil of a sleeping non-avian dinosaur has been described by Drs. Mark Norrel and Xu Xing.
Over in East Africa, a new species of Monkey has been discovered. Known as the Highland Mangabey, it was identified by two independent research teams working in separate locations in southern Tanzania.
Keep on learning about the wonderful world in which we live!
Blackbeard’s flag image from Wikipedia.
Congratulations goes out to our good friend, Dr. Philip Currie, one of the world’s leading Palaeontologists. Starting October 1, Dr. Currie will become a professor with the University of Alberta’s Palaeontology program, here in Edmonton.
Along with his many accolades, Currie was recently chosen as one of three Canadians to receive the 2004 Michael Smith Award for outstanding achievement in the promotion of science in Canada. The award was presented by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada on November 22 of 2004.
While this is great news for the University of Alberta and Edmonton, it is sad news for the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller. The world-class museum and research institute loses not only another world-renowned expert, but also an engaging representative of the facility.
We wish Dr. Currie the best of luck in his new role!
You can read the story in the Edmonton Journal here.
Photo courtesy of Time Magazine.
Update: CBC also has a report on Currie’s new position and how it could lead to more dinosaur finds. You can read more at this link.
Not quite Minority Report, The Time Machine, or Back to the Future but certainly intriguing. Check out this link.
More on the project can be found here.
For the skeptics, this article, with one of the project members dismisses the prediction notions.
As suggested by some, if the ‘device’ can’t provide any usable information before the events, is it really capable of predicting the future? Perhaps the whole thing is nothing more than humans looking for a correlation between the results and real-world events?
Here’s a link to a fantastic news story about a pod of dolphins protecting New Zealand lifeguards from a 10-foot Great White Shark.
After a nice surprise birthday gathering, I decided to rent Disney’s Atlantis: Milo’s Return last night. Later, as I was browsing the web, I just happened to notice this article about yet another possible site of the Lost Continent of Atlantis.
Many explorers, scholars, and scientists have claimed to know the resting place of the fabled city - first described by the ancient philosopher, Plato - however, no definitive proof has been presented. From speculated locations such as The Azores, Iceland, The Bahamas, Ireland, Cuba, and recently, the island of Cyprus, perhaps no other ‘myth’ has stirred the imaginations of people around the world. I’m fascinated by the whole Atlantis mythlogy and any new theory or discovery peaks my interest.
If you type ‘Atlantis’ into an Internet search engine, you come up with an incredible number of results. So trying to get information that seems plausible can be challenging and leave you a little bit ‘lost’ yourself. If you find that happening, then perhaps a vacation at the Atlantis Resort is what you need?
So a baseball team with a $128 Million US payroll beat one with a $186 Million US bankroll. What a swell planet. 
At least they broke an 86-year-old ‘curse.’
An underground metropolis complete with its own ‘Police Chief in charge of Subterranean Paris.’ Sounds like a perfect setting for a movie.
Thanks to Dean for these links. I bet you didn’t know Sunfish could grow this large!
Monster washes up near Farewell Spit
More photos of an Ocean Sunfish
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