courtesy Nicholas Gurewitch
It's like I've suddenly developed this need to do a little round up at the end of the day. Anyhow, first there's news of the discovery of an icy extrasolar planet, 9,000 light years away and many times the size of earth, orbiting a red dwarf. This is the largest rocky extra solar planet yet discovered. Presently, it's saddled with the uwieldy title of OGLE-2005-BLG-169lb. I believe that I shall think of it as Mhri'yinr (one of the names given to the mythological "Ice Daughter" of the Kr'hregenathum Dr'eêll, an ancient Nebari text). Mhri'yinr is way catchier than OGLE-2005-BLG-169lb, but I might be biased. Spooky says we should just call it Ogle Bulg.
And then there's word that the winter of 2005-2006 has been the warmest yet recorded in Canada. But no, Virginia, there's no such thing as global warming. That's crazy talk.
Speaking of crazy talk, creationists have stumbled upon Noah's Ark. Again. This makes...what? Like the fifth ark they've found up there since the 1970s? This time its perched 4,663 meters up the northwest slope of Mt. Ararat and has been spotted in a satellite photo. I love this bit from the CNN.com article (which you should not feel compelled to read, unless you're into rolling your eyes as much as I am). I quote, It would be easy to call it merely a strange rock formation. Indeed it would. It would be very easy. Because that's exactly what it is. At least when the planet warms up a few more degrees and all the snow melts off Ararat, maybe the frelling creationists will finally shut up about Noah's Ark. Then they can do something productive, like imagine monolithic faces carved into the surface of Mars, or proclaim Iapetus a gigantic spaceship, or, barring such ambitious delusions, mayhap they'll settle for seeing the face of Jesus in the peculiar arrangement of sesame seeds on a Big Mac bun.