Sunset on Mars

Thanks to NASA for posting this pic of sunset on Mars as part of their image of the day series.

(Hat tip to Laughing Squid via Boing Boing)

Video from the BBC: Flying penguins reported in the Antarctic

This one premiered on April 1st, so the natural assumptions about its veracity apply.

It upholds the longstanding (and inspiring) tradition of grand hoaxes from the BBC.

Hexapus!

Hi, Henry.

[Image courtesy of AFP/HO/Blackpool Sealife Centre]

The Helix Nebula

[In this image provided by NASA shows a newly expanded image of the Helix nebula Friday Aug. 24, 2007 lending a festive touch to the fourth anniversary of the launch of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. This spectacular object, a dying star unraveling into space, is a favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike. Spitzer has mapped the expansive outer structure of the six-light-year-wide nebula, and probed the inner region around the central dead star to reveal what appears to be a planetary system that survived the star's chaotic death throes. Spitzer launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on August 25, 2003. (AP Photo/NASA-JPL)]

A humpback ride?

Credit: Lori Mazzuca, Kauai, Hawaii, USA

[link]

700 pounds of wild boar sausage, anyone? [update -- no thank you]

Jamison Stone, 11, holds the .50 caliber pistol he used to kill a wild hog weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail near Delta, Alabama on May 3, 2007.

If confirmed, that would be even bigger than "Hogzilla" in Georgia a few years ago.

That is one BIG feral pig.

UPDATE: I just listened to a NPR news story that really, really bugged me. It turns out that the gigantic pig pictured was no wild hog at all. He was an immense pig raised elsewhere, on a farm, purchased and then shipped to this game preserve where he was released four days prior to this hunt. The previous owners of "Fred" have come forward, first to protest that this was not a wild boar and also to note that allowing a boy to shoot the animal eight times with a pistol was neither humane nor particularly sporting.

I'm really more sickened by the episode than anything else, including any part I had in glorifying the youngster's achievement. While it's no different, in practice, than the release of farm-raised trout for anglers to catch in stocked ponds or the seeding of grouse or pheasants for hunters to shoot on other game preserves, in both cases I imagine the sportmen paying the animals more respect with quick, merciful deaths.

(AP Photo/Melynne Stone)

Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni

While trying to catch Patagonian toothfish (aka Chilean Seabass), New Zealand fisherman caught...this.

(AFP/National Science Museum/File)


450kg of giant squid. That makes it the largest squid ever landed.
Let the calamari jokes begin... While a true kraken has yet to be pulled forth, it's not hard to imagine a 30-foot long cephalopod like this absolutely terrifying Irish monks, Vikings or Maoris navigating in small coracles or dugouts.

Video of Iguazu Falls

1.5 miles across. 13 million liters per second of water moving over the falls. Unbelievable natural beauty. Yep, this one's on the lifetime visit list.