A World War II B-24 Bomber has been found intact in the sea near Palau. The search was conducted to bring "closure" to the families of the crew.

How cool is this: Gamera origami. I only wish there were instructions.

Giant squid news is so sparse these days, I have to rely on little items like this: guy wins science grant, decides he will use it on giant squid: "Dr Ritchie plans to use the grant to carry out a feasibility study on the mysterious giant squid (Architeuthis dux) to determine how many there are and where they come from."
Thank you Dr. Ritchie, thank you.

Thanks to Giant Monster Movies, I've noticed this book: Giant Robot Warriors. It's one more thing to add to the list of stuff I want to buy.

I've been regularly adding new blogs over on the right, so be sure to keep checking it out. There's plenty of good stuff. The latest addition is Giant Monster Movies, which I should have added a long time ago.

I picked up the latest issue of The Believer. They have a really interesting article called "Yukio Mishima and the Dream of the Holy Explosion." Mishima was a Japanese author who created a personal mini-army called the Shield Society. He used this group to take over a military academy, make a speech stating that Japan needed to become the military power it once was, and then committed ritual suicide. The article looks at Mishima's actions in relation to suicide bombers and how the two motivations are related.
And if this part of Mishima's life interests you, check out "Mishima -- A Life in Four Chapters." It's a film by Paul Schrader, the guy who wrote "Taxi Driver." It's not a perfect film, but it's very good.

dead fish comics has their paypal link up. Go buy their comic.

The Alarm, a UK band that had a hit in 1983, tried a novel approach to hitting the charts again. They hired a group of teens to play the band and renamed themselves The Poppyfields. Sure enough, the single "45RPM" hit the charts at No. 28. But now that the jig is up, will the single continue to climb the charts?

Piranha turns up on a barge -- in the Thames river.

Planet X found: "The largest object to be discovered in the Solar System since Pluto was found in 1930 was spotted by a sky survey on Tuesday." It's a big object in the Kuiper Belt.

I think I'm the very last person on the Internet to get around to mentioning this, but Kevin Smith is making a new film version of "The Green Hornet." Sounds like it could be very cool.

This pdf document is about the first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard. Here's the opening:

"On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass façade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an ‘Attempted Rape Flight’ that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard."

There's pictures too! Isn't science great?

Scientists say they have discovered a black hole tearing apart a star.

A new species has been discovered: the hairy water flea.

The photo in this article is considered by some to be one of the best UFO photos ever taken. I don't know, it doesn't look like all that much to me. And there's no perspective, nothing in the foreground to put it in context. And it looks blurry.
Besides, it was taken with a digital camera. With all the things that can be manipulated in digital photography, I'm surprised anyone trusts them at all.

I don't know why the Washington Post did this story: Ike and the Alien Ambassadors, but it is fun. Here's an excerpt:

"Fifty years ago tomorrow -- on Feb. 20, 1954 -- President Dwight Eisenhower interrupted his vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., to make a secret nocturnal trip to a nearby Air Force base to meet two extraterrestrial aliens.
"Or maybe not. Maybe Ike just went to the dentist. There's some dispute about this.
"The Ike-met-with-ETs theory is advanced by Michael Salla, a former American University professor who now runs the Peace Ambassador Program at AU's Center for Global Peace."

Salla says he peiced his theory together with research on the Internet. Because we all know information on the Internet is infallible.
One of the most interesting things in this article is that the Eisenhower Library has a UFO specialist because they got so many calls about this issue. I want that job.

Greg Costikyan, of game blog Games * Design * Art * Culture, is bringing back the Paranoia role playing game as "Paranoia XP." I never played the original, but it has a cult following and looked hilarious. Back in the days when I played Dungeons & Dragons, I would read "Dragon" magazine and they'd occasionally have supplements for "Paranoia." They were some of the funniest things I'd ever read.
In Paranoia, an insane computer controlled the world. Each character had to please the computer to stay alive while trying to get ahead by killing other characters. It was really twisted.
It's games like this that make me want to role-play again.

According to Monster Zero News, Toy Vault is going to release two new Godzilla-related plush toys: Smog Monster and Angilas.
The smog monster looks way too furry. Whatever, it's still cool. And I still haven't picked up the Godzilla and Mothra plush dolls. I gotta get on that!

McSweeney's is running The August Van Zorn Prize for the Weird Short Story. Here's a sample:
"McSweeney's is pleased to announce that a prize of $3,000 will be awarded to the short story that most faithfully and disturbingly embodies the tradition of the weird short story as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe and his literary descendants, among them August Van Zorn. "
Now, I had never heard of August Van Zorn. Luckily, Michael Chabon fills us in at his Web site. But now, with a search on the Internet, I find that Van Zorn is a pseudonym that Chabon uses for some short stories. Apparently, Van Zorn was also a character in "Wonder Boys."
I hope this doesn't mean the contest is some kind of joke. The McSweeney's link also mentions a follow up to the Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales.
(Link found thanks to Maud Newton.)

la gringa's L E F T . C O A S T . D E M E N T I A posted about Star Wars vs. Star Trek fans. It also has some interesting things to say about the 501st Legion of Stormtroopers (that links to the New England chapter, but la gringa was talking about the 501st in general.) I know certain people who would be interested in hearing what's been said.