Two favorites of mine are The Sombrero,

And Starry Night,

because it’s impossible to look at these galaxies without hearing the whisper of the stories their inhabitants could tell.  My thanks to Funny Emails for the article.

More of the big guys still undiscovered in the ocean, but little chance of the Loch Ness turning up, or so they say.

A report on ten new species, though a little long on propaganda and a little short on information about the individual species.  Eight and four are my favorites.

And this one on Scottish folklore.

So what’s the connection?  If you followed the links you might be noticing that there’s something of an A=B, B=C, so A=C thing going on with the link being newly discovered species and the Loch Ness monster.

Well, nice try.

The connection is world building, of course!  Specifically, a world were the inhabitants of the ocean have just as much ecological, sociological and cultural significance as those found on land.  The world will probably also incorporate my Mer, Meru peoples, of which Keela’s story is a part.  ‘Twil be fun.

Of course, even with binoculars, it still looked more like a tiny splat of pea soup than a comet, or maybe a place where someone had smudged the erasor of their pencil across the night sky.  But I enjoyed imagining it as a hurtling ball of ice with a thick tail spread behind.

We located Comet Holmes using an interactive sky chart at Sky and Telescope.  I’m sure the folks over there have better viewing equipment than our small potatoes binoculars, but they couldn’t have gotten a bigger thrill.

Many of you can go take a look for yourselves.  Or, if your not so into shivering at fuzzy blobs and your brother-in-law permanently borrowing your telescope, you can go to Amazing Space and learn all kinds of comet legends and trivia while sitting snug inside.

These receptionist robots look like giant Lego guys from Mars.  I can’t decide if they’re freaky or fun, but since I’m not taking any trips to Japan this year, I can wait to decide until the purple or pink version comes out.

This article on the secret eye of your cell phone I picked up at LiveScience.com.  The fashion application of this puts me in mind of the Disco Light shirts I mentioned on a previous blog.

I part of my brain keeps trying to come up with something really subversive that could be done with this, but apparently I’m either too tired or too thirties.  Any criminal masterminds out there want to jump in here?

My other find tonight, this floridian coral castle, is much weirder.  It’s got a story (or two, or three,) written all over it.  I’m thinking the next trip south just got a little longer.

For example, it’s not uncommon for children who need glasses to be unaware of their need.  In my own case, my siblings and I were capable of turning anything into a competition, so we’d test ourselves for the sharpest eyes by reading stuff across the room.  One day mom and dad overheard, and noticed that I wasn’t able to read stuff that I maybe should have been able too.

The power of suggestion being what it is, I then went out and discovered that there were lots of things I couldn’t read really well, and in fact insisted that glasses were a necessity in spite of my low prescription.

But what if an entire people were missing one of their senses?  How would they know it was missing, with nothing to compare themselves too?  I suspect they would get by just fine, adapting their suroundings, perhaps domesticating an animal that was able to assist, just as people use watch- and drug-dogs.

In fact, if one person in the group was able to use the dormant sense, the rest of the group would probably be skeptical.  Might even consider them crazy.  And of course, there’s the full-circle fruition of this train of thought.  What if this hypothetical people were us?

Makes for some interesting story ideas, doesn’t it?