Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm thankful that I have an extra day off today. I'm thankful that the Oilers are 2-0 so far in this young NHL season, and I'm thankful for:



Most people think of squids and octopi when they think of cephalopods (and well you should since they kick ass) but I think my current favorite foothead is the cuttlefish. CBC recently showed an amazing documentary on them (on The Nature of Things) which showed their amazing variety and surprising intelligence. Did you know they have a ring of brains inside their head? More likely a ring of neural ganglia but still that's pretty cool.

.Cuttlefish. by *Andoledius on deviantART

Here's just one of many cuttlefish vids on YouTube.
To further celebrate Cephalopod Awareness Day, visit the Cephalopodcast.

These are the things that I am excited/learning about this week:
-Snmashing my car oh wait that's not one.
-the loonie hits parity with the US$. Now if only we could actually pay less for American goods. And I know it's a mixed blessing with our exports- I work for an exporting company after all.
-lobsters. Seriously, they're just so cool. But contrary to what I've heard, they don't actually mate for life. In fact the closest human analogy would be to wife beaters. Only, polygamous wife beaters. Anyways, you can learn more from Trevor Corson's Secret Life of Lobsters.
-Steve Biko. I've always loved that Peter Gabriel song, Biko, though I had no idea what he was saying. What's a biko? Turns out Biko is an anti-apartheid martyr who was killed thirty years ago this month. Maybe you've seen the biopic starring Denzel- Cry Freedom.
-Sébastien Chabal. I'm not much into rugby (though I'll cheer the All-Blacks when the chance arises, like that time in Waitomo drinking Tui beer) but when i saw this deviation portrait of a French Rugby player, I wanted to know more about him. Turns out he's a monster. An All-Black-crushing bipedal bulldozer.

You know what I'm really into right now? Marine invertebrates. They're just so cool. Did you know that sand dollars can crawl? I don't even know what a living sand dollar looks like but apparently they're all covered in spines. Why don't I live by an ocean?
One of my friends from work goes home to Newfoundland as often as he can, and uses my house as a waystation for airport access. He brought me back an issue of Downhome, a local digest, which had an interesting article on seashells. There's a type of sea urchin in Newfoundland which is locally called a Whore's Egg. Apparently its radula, or tooth, is called an Aristotle's Lantern.
And you may recall from my poem 'Pyrite Pirates' that a shark egg is also known as a mermaid's purse. Sharks, of course, are marine vertebrates, or as I like to call them, ininvertebrates.
A couple of months ago in Honolulu they pulled up this weird cephalopod that looked sort of like a squid/octopus hybrid, though the photo looks pretty squiddy to me. Judge for yourself.
Other things I'm into right now include the new KoRn, Heroes Season 1 DVD, and ScienceBlogs.

Remember when Krusty the Clown unveiled Poochy to his television viewers? He was wearing a tux and he gave the following address:
“Once in a great while we are privileged to experience a television event so extraordinary, it becomes part of our shared heritage. 1969: Man walks on the moon. 1971: Man walks on the moon, again. Then for a long time, nothing happened. Until tonight.”
Although he was talking about the history of television, I often think he was also kind of talking about the history of space exploration. In recent years, of course, lots has been happening. Nearly all of it done by NASA. Until tonight. Well, not exactly tonight. But still, Canada is getting in on the space race- we're sending a mission to Mars in 2009! The mission is called Northern Light, and it's mostly a partnership between universities and corporations- no government involvement. And the total budget is around $20 million. In terms of space exploration it's practically free.
What is free is Google Sky, the new universe portion of Earth. Earth and Sky, get it? 100 million stars! Wow. You can read about it here or just go download it from Google, I'm sure you know the way.
Speaking of exploration, NG has some pretty cool photos of a recent excursion to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Glass squids with polka-dot eyes!
All these robot explorers remind me of another Simpsons quote- when Bart and Lisa graduate from military school the principal or general or whoever runs it says in his commencement speech, "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."

More New Zealand herald stuff: Lord of the Rings technology being used in hospitals. I thought maybe rings of power but actually it's more digital in nature.
Just yesterday I mentioned how promising it is that a pod of blue whales was seen so far north (for the first time in 50 years actually) and then today comes news of an oil spill that affects 60 orcas, some of whom swam through it.

Well, it's back to normal for me after a pretty slack summer. Including the next four days of work, I'll have worked only 17 of 62 days in July and August. But now I go back to my normal schedule.
So, pretty much randomly, here is a blogger from the NZ Herald (I loved that paper when i was there and Harvey linked to it today so I was browsing around) who talks about the etiquette of reading other peoples' emails. When I was in China I often found a crowd of curious onlookers brazenly reading my emails over my shoulder so I guess the issue doesn't bother me as much. Also, I am not secretly maintaining a mail-order bride on another continent.
I've been enjoying a Flickr renaissance with my new iMac, since I now have a monitor large enough to see whole photographs! Here are two of my recent favorites : a poison dart frog of the Dendrobates azureis variety (I typed that from memory so see if I was right!) and the arms of a giant pacific octopus.
Did you hear that pod of blue whales was recently spotted near the Queen Charlotte Islands? We only saw orcas when we were there a few weeks ago but maybe some day we can go back to see the world's largest animal, possibly ever. I did have the privilege of seeing the largest toothed whale, the sperm whale off Kaikoura in New Zealand:

We're back from Prince Rupert. Our trip to the Grizzly sanctuary was cancelled, unfortunately, due to a broken boat. But the rest of the trip was great fun, we saw many eagles and orcas- even some little frolicking youngster orcas. We didn't see any robots, though, since they were busy on the East coast finding new creatures such as Dumbo-eared octopi.
During our trip out to see the killer whales, we got thoroughly drenched, and, sadly, my trusty little Fujifilm FinePix may have been inadvertently sacrificed to the sea gods. It was dripping yellowish water, which in the case of electronics, is nearly always bad. There's still hope that, once it dries, I may be able to get the pictures out of it. I guess I need to make supplications to Neptune and Triton and all those guys.

Just like I said! The other day when I was paying tribute to crustaceans, and speculating as to what undiscovered species may still be out there, the scientific world announced the discovery of a bizarre white, 'furry' lobster. They found it ~1500 kms south of Easter Island, at a depth of around 2300 meters. No word on whether it has any telepathic powers. But still.
They call it the yeti crab. Not to be confused with the mighty and elusive crab yeti, that subspecies of abominable snowmen who have big chitinous claws instead of hands. And telepathic powers.

Crazy about Crustaceans!
Crustaceans are cool, don't you think? Cool in that gross, clawed alien facehugger spidery creepiness sense. When we were on our honeymoon in the Maritimes, Michelle and I had the obligatory lobster dinner. Normally I'm a big fan of seafood- my policy is, if it comes from the sea, it goes into me! But staring at a lobster that had just been boiled alive mere moments ago for your culinary pleasure is a little unnerving. Gabrielle always points out that lobsters mate for life. And, really, they weren't all that tasty when all was said and done. A lot of work for not a lot of reward. I think bears prefer salmon. Anyways, here are some crucial crustacean facts for you.
Leafing through an old National Geographic, I discovered that coconut crabs are the world's largest land crustacean. They're big. Well, about 4 kgs, so pretty big. Especially if you were out climbing a tree and came across this guy staring you in the face! Yeesh!
But ole cocy is not so big compared to the mighty Japanese Spider Crab, the biggest of all living crustaceans. Well, that we know of. These crabs grow to almost 4 meters claw to claw, and can be around 20 kilos. I'm not sure if Godzilla ever fought one, but he would probably lose if he did.
Still, I would rather come across a spider crab than one of these extinct sea scorpions!
And are they truly extinct? I doubt it. Who knows what dire clawed terrors dwell in the unexplored depths of the oceanic trenches? Bioluminescent paleolobsters of feral cunning who eat megalodons and giant squids? Probably. They are likely even telepathic.
The best story I ever read about lobsters is Homefaring, by Robert Silverberg. You should check it out. I think it won a Nebula Award. Or maybe it was the Crab Nebula Award!