Now, IANAG (I am not a geologist) but I’m going to have to write about this one. A story I saw this morning about some bright fellas in Iceland that are drilling down into an active volcano. The goal is geothermal power of course, as most of Iceland is already run this way today. I guess the thought is that more is better, hotter is more, deeper is hotter, so deeper is better. So, they will drill down more than 4 times deeper from where they currently extract 240 degree steam from in order to get even hotter temperatures.

I don’t know much about this process, but I’m thinking that if magma can kill you (and it can) and the rocks are all that stand between you and the magma (and they are), is it wise to drill down through these rocks (it isn’t) and thusly create a magma superhighway directly to your homes? I mean isn’t that the exact definition of a volcano? Magma shooting to the surface through cracks and/or incredibly unwise man-made magma chutes? Jeez Louise.

Let’s just hope they have this all figured out, and their insurance policies cover this sort of thing.

In what must mean the untimely death of at least a few of Nature’s henchmen and minions, scientists have discovered Nature’s Huge Secret Poorly Camouflaged Hideout, a la James Bond evil villain. Yep, it took a little over what, 10 000 years to find the cave from which Nature mounts her ceaseless assault upon mankind. Turns out we ought to be a little embarassed about it, since it’s big enough to, oh, fly a couple of helicopters into it and make them look like mosquitoes. How the heck could we have missed it?

Anyway, that slight embarrassment aside, I’m certain that we have Nature on the ropes now, fellas. Now that we have found the main hideout, it’s only a matter of time before we can finally bring Nature’s tyrannical reign on this planet to a final, fiery, and satisfyingly cataclysmic end. Extra extra deathy.

Toads that evolve longer legs move faster, and jump farther than short-legged ones. I think I speak for the majority of the non-scientific community when I say: Duh!

Ok, not to disparage the work of scientists everywhere, but come on guys. Long-legged poisonous toads are extra deathy, but not quite as deathy as the ones that have evolved flamethrower tongues. Thank goodness we have press releases like this to keep us safe. Or at least the residents of Australia, where the toads live.

Scientists have “successfully” created a robot that is controlled by slime, and I don’t mean the low-life, villainous types, I mean the lichen mossy mouldy variety. Now, whether or not it is a good idea to put organic, human-hating lifeforms at the controls of powerful mechanical exoskeletons is certainly better debated in the form of a Hollywood blockbuster rather than a simple blog, but one thing is for sure, this thing will soon break out of the lab and kill us all.

I mean, did they have to pick a slime with these characteristics?

Physarum polycephalum is a large single-celled organism that responds to food sources, such as bacteria and fungi (and humans), by moving towards and engulfing it. It also moves away from light and favours humid, moist places to inhabit.

I mean come on people, this is the most evil-natured mould they could find, isn’t it? It lives in the dark and swallows things whole. They couldn’t have made a daisy-controlled robot or some other cute and friendly plant. It’s a nightmare, and now it walks.

Nice job, fellas.

I think octopi are neat. I think they are so neat, they scare the living crap out of me. We have already talked about some of the more interesting octopus discoveries here in the last three years or so. They are fascinating creatures, and we will all probably die screaming something like “Why didn’t we ever think 8 arms could do that….”.

So, I present the latest breaking octopus news with great relish. I guess some of the Cousteau types were playing around with their high-tech underwater robot toy when a giant octopus shows them who’s boss and gives them the old one-two-three and then the four-five-six, followed by a stunning seven-eight. The sub was lucky to get away intact with only a series of severe hickeys.

Oh man, those scientists got so tentacle-smacked, it was an underwater come-uppance of invertebrate proportions. Sweet.

Ethanol IS a better product than petroleum based fuels. However, it doesn’t do so well in cold weather. That’s why the ethanol fuel you see here is mixed with regular gas at an 85:15 ratio (ethanol to fuel)…at least I think that’s the ratio. Still good, but not perfect. In fact, a local Ottawa company (Iogen) is working on perfecting the whole Canadian ethanol thing.