Wally and Osborne

My readers know I love me some penguin news. Thanks to everyone that has commented, messaged or e-mailed me with links to the story.

Fossils of a giant prehistoric penguin have been making the headlines, a penguin with a long spear-like beak that stood about 5 feet tall. This would make it the third largest species of penguin discovered, the first being what Max was based on, which stood at nearly 6 feet tall and weighed in at 300 pounds.

Although what made this particular find newsworthy to scientists is that the remains were found in Peru, a tropical climate, way earlier in history than scientists believed that penguins had migrated to warmer weathered areas. Here’s some of the links:

Tropical giant penguin discovered [BBC]
‘Pinocchio’ penguin basked in Peru sun early on [MSNBC]
March Of The Giant Penguins [TerraDaily]

A friend recently referred me to Wowio. It’s got some cool comics and graphic novels, including several all-ages ones that I’ve been checking out. It’s an e-book store, but all the books are free to download and there is no cost to sign up. In fact if you get 10 people to sign up they give you a free ipod shuffle. So if you do sign up, please enter tyler@mindfaucet.com as referring you there and my tunes and I will soon be mobile.

[EDIT: I'm sorry but it's currently only for USA residents. I forgot to mention that. Apologies to those in other countries. Hopefully they will make it available to them too soon.]

I’m considering offering future Wally & Osborne books from this service. Be a nice way for people to get to see the extra book content that are not able to purchase the books for whatever reasons. Although, I guess it would be nice to be able to even purchase a Wally & Osborne book… yes I’m on it!

Knuts Still Cute
The orphaned polar bear that won the hearts of millions and caused some controversy as well is growing up. At 5 months he’s starting to look like a polar bear, and less like a stuffed toy. So far that hasn’t hurt his popularity too much as he’s still drawing in the crowds and setting his way to be an icon for preserving a species. CNN has a recent video at Yahoo.

Indiarctica Part 3
India is set to build their third station in Antarctica. They are going to “defy international opinion and set up a base in a planned Antarctic protected area to research the prehistoric origins of a Hindu holy river”. “The Godavari (River) would have flowed there about 130 million years ago when the continent was part of the Gondwana land-mass.” Hmm. Here’s one of the articles on it.

Arctic Seal Decides Florida Is the Perfect Place To Go To Retire & Die
Well, the arctic bearded seal, normally found near the north pole, that wandered down to a Florida canal has died. A day after being “rescued”. Scientists really don’t know why the seal ended up down there. I’m assuming the excellent country clubs. Article here.