Links for July 1st through July 4th

This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on July 4, 2009). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.

Sometime between July 1st and July 4th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Giant Squid Caught in West Seattle: "A Puget Sound resident reeled in what is believed to be a Humboldt Squid Friday in West Seattle. Rodney Sarkees estimates the squid was roughly 8 feet long, and roughly 80 pounds. It took two people to lift. Sarkees released the squid back into the water after catching it. Fish & Wildlife later captured and relocated the squid. Officials told Sarkees it was a Humboldt Squid – the largest they'd seen in the area." Okay, yeah, I don't think I'll be swimming in the Puget Sound at any point in the foreseeable future.
  • Keep Khan Out of Star Trek 12: "I had been meaning to write this 'keep Khan out of Star Trek 2 (or 12, rather)' blog post for a while now — but honestly I thought Orci and Kurtzman were just kidding about including him. The script for the next Trek, at this point, consists of a few Gorn cartoons on a cocktail napkin, and they're barely batting ideas around. So it's easy for them to hint at all sorts of fan-favorite stuff…. Why not? Anything's possible at this point, and it doesn't do any harm to answer 'maybe' to every question. And of course, if the fans get particularly thrilled about one of these trial balloons, then that tells them something. But now, it sounds as though the Fringe co-creators may actually be considering resurrecting Khan, who's still sleeping in his little suspended-animation capsule in their revamped timeline. So just in case they're really serious about this, here's a list of reasons why a new Khan would be a terrible, epically bad idea."
  • Water Seeping Through Howard Hanson Dam Is Picking Up Speed: Oh, my — I'm glad we live on the third floor of our apartment building! "The speed at which water is seeping through a flank of the Howard Hanson Dam has, by one key measure, increased since January, and the people who operate the dam don't know why. Nobody's saying there will be large-scale floods for the first time since the dam was built, but the weakness in the dam abutment — the side of the valley against which the dam was built — means the Corps of Engineers may have to severely restrict how much stormwater the dam can hold back for the next several winters. And that could mean more water flowing through the valley below, raising the risk of flooding for the cities of Kent, Renton, Tukwila and Auburn."
  • The Blue and the Green: "You see embedded spirals, right, of green, pinkish-orange, and blue? Incredibly, the green and the blue spirals are the same color. At first I thought Richard was pulling our collective legs, being a trickster of high magnitude. So I loaded the image in Photoshop and examined the two spirals. Like I said, incredible! For pedantry sake, the RGB colors in both spirals are 0, 255, 150. So they are mostly green with a solid splash of blue."
  • The Puppet Show: Creepy-cool: photos of children to make them look like puppets, dolls, or ventriloquists dummies, depending on your interpretation.