Watch the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are at apple.com

I don’t know who VideoFun09 is, but I can’t wait for more of this:

The discovery of fossilised remains belonging to the world’s largest snake has been reported in Nature journal.

Titanoboa was 13m (42ft) long – about the length of a bus – and lived in the rainforest of north-east Colombia 58-60 million years ago.

The snake was so wide it would have reached up to a person’s hips, say researchers, who have estimated that it weighed more than a tonne.

Green anacondas – the world’s heaviest snakes – reach a mere 250kg (550lbs).

Reticulated pythons – the world’s longest snakes – can reach up to 10m (32ft).

What was lost tens of millions of years ago is now found.

A fossil animal locked in Lebanese limestone has been shown to be an extremely precious discovery – a snake with two legs.

Scientists have only a handful of specimens that illustrate the evolutionary narrative that goes from ancient lizard to limbless modern serpent.

A portion of the vertebral column is missing; and in the process of preservation, the “tail” has become detached and positioned near the head.

But it is the unmistakable leg bones – fibula, tibia and femur – that catch the eye. The stumpy hind-limb is only 2cm (0.8in) long, and was presumably utterly useless to the animal in life.

“We can even see ankle bones,” … resident palaeontologist Paul Tafforeau said.

Scientists have found what is thought to be the first example of a two-headed reptile in the fossil record.

The abnormal animal, belonging to a group of aquatic reptiles, was unearthed in northeastern China and dates to the time of the dinosaurs.

The animal’s spinal column divided in two at the point where the neck emerges from the body. This formed two long necks that ended in two skulls.

Let’s play a game. Try to wrap your mind around this news brief from the BBC:
Number of alien worlds quantified

Intelligent civilisations are out there and there could be thousands of them, according to an Edinburgh scientist.
The discovery of more than 330 planets outside our solar system in recent years has helped refine the number of life forms that are likely to exist.
The current research estimates that there are at least 361 intelligent civilisations in our Galaxy and possibly as many as 38,000.
The work is reported in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

As the full article reports, this research is based on some creative mathematics and not a little guesswork. Still, the Milky Way Galaxy in which we live, is estimated to be 100,000 light years in diameter (587,460,168,233,670,000.00 Miles). That’s pretty big, so I take the given calculation (“at least 361″) to be correct.

361 other species/cultures/societies/planets that are either near-to, equal-to, or exceeding human capacity in all areas. Intelligence, stupidity, strength, caring, malice, technology, art, wisdom; an endless list of qualities.

How do you suppose we measure up? Not well, likely. Here’s two other science articles released the same day as the one above:

1. How to control a herd of Humans
2. How your brain is hard-wired for God

We’re each born stupid; many do not improve much after birth. Our biological deck is stacked against us in so many ways. Don’t believe me? Check this list of cognitive biases, it might be easier to count the number you haven’t honestly fallen prey to.

When someone you know is behaving embarrassingly, you can pretend you don’t know who they are (“…yeah, I know, what a jerk. I think he’s drunk…”). But what happens when “aliens” actually make contact with us? Then it’s a species thing.

Well none of this has stopped us from counting the stars, and dreaming of distant planets and their potential inhabitants. Humans have a rich history (& future to come) of thinking big – here’s hoping we don’t all kill each other before the enlightenment.

If you really want to test the limits of your imagination, go for a grand tour of mind expanding thought on wikipedia. Here’s some suggested reading:

1. Climate engineering
2. Dyson sphere
3. Planetary engineering
4. Banaue Rice Terraces
5. Atlantropa
6. Stellar engine
7. Alderson disk
8. Spacecraft engineering
9. Virgin_Earth Challenge
10. Star lifting
11. Hollow earth
12. Stellar engineering
13. Lagrange point
14. Terraforming
15. Abiogenesis
16. Trans Global Highway
17. X-Seed 4000
18. Kardashev scale
19. Fog bow
20. Moonbow
21. Sun dog
22. Flat Earth Society
23. Turtles all the way down
24. Carl Sagan
25. Vertical farming
26. Megastructures
27. Expanding Earth theory
28. Spaceship Moon Theory
29. Futurology
30. Outer Space Treaty
31. Weather control
32. Autonomous building
33. Permaculture
34. Orbital
35. Artificial world
36. Asteroid deflection strategies
37. Asteroid mining
38. Stanford torus

Great tip I heard from Ramit of I Will Teach You to be Rich: You can download Suze Orman‘s new book for free, via Oprah‘s site. Please thank him by visiting one of his advertisers.

The following is a story I read in a book of zen many years ago, but came to mind unexpectedly this morning.

Short zen parables can be quite unusual and they are often wildly entertaining, in part because they are supposed to have a moral to the story, though it is usually impossible for a western mind to deduce what the lesson is.

(Disclaimer, this paraphrased tale is estimated, debased & devolved by a few years in my brain)

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