OK. Say you’re Friedrich Wilhelm I, and your super good buddy Tsar Peter the Great has a birthday coming up. So what do you get him? Maybe an impossibly ornate room made totally out of amber, which in 1716 is 10 times more expensive than gold? Sure! Why the hell not.

Here’s another one. Say you’re a megalomaniacal, homicidal psychopath who has risen to power in post WWI Germany, conquered Europe, and totally stripped it of all its art and culture including the Amber Room. Where do you hide it? Maybe in a tiny, economically depressed German village near the Czech border called Deutschkatharinenberg?  Read the rest of this entry »

First off, let me apologize for the lack of blogging on Nunc Scio in the last couple days…I’ve been busily completing a few projects over at blogTO. The latest is a little history of some pretty monumental Toronto fires- The Battle of York (1813), University College (1890), The Great Fire  of Toronto (1904) and the S.S. Noronic (1949).

You can check the full post out here. And as always, let me know what you think.

Photo: Cleanup after the Great Toronto Fire. Courtesy of the Archives of Ontario.

I’ve got another theatre review up over on blogTO, this time about Royal Porcupine Production’s No Exit. Not the best show, but interesting enough to check out.

Anyway, let me know what you think of the review of you get a chance.

If you’re a higher primate with a pulse, you probably saw Sarah Silverman’s hilarious “I’m F*cking Matt Damon” on Jimmy Kimmel Live, basically the funniest ‘and now you’re a cuckold’ video in the history of television (if you’re wondering, there are four others).

Not to be outdone, Jimmy has produced a ribald riposte titled (and not suprisingly for the post-Good Will Hunting generation) “I’m F*cking Ben Affleck”:

So who wins? I’ve got to think Jimmy has the edge right now, simply because his video has like 30 times the celebrities. So good.

Good morning! And what better way to start your day than with a little censorship of the Interwebs? It’s better than coffee and easier to digest than a breakfast pattie.

Pakistan, notable for its longstanding love-affair with military dictatorship and blowing up opposition leaders, has barred its citizens from accessing YouTube, aka the most efficient time-waster in the history of human communications. Apparently, the site hosts several videos ‘offensive to Islam’. Pakistan joins Brazil, China, Iran, Morocco, Myanmar (also known as Burma), Syria and Thailand as nations who hate video sharing.

Look, I’m sure YouTube has dozens of videos that offend Islam. It also has millions of videos offensive to just about everything else on Earth. Offending people is the spiritual genius of YouTube, and its nothing if not an equal opportunity offender. And if we start blocking access and removing content on the basis of offensiveness, then YouTube will be NoTube in about 43 seconds.

Also funny: the Pakistani attempt to block YouTube also made the site inaccessible for millions of users around the world. I’m sorry you have no sense of humor, Pakistan, but please don’t ruin it for the rest of us.

UPDATE [02/26/08] YouTube takes down one video, and now they’re friends again.

How’s that old saying go? Something about already being dead, but too stupid to lie down?

Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, Al Gore spoiler and George Bush enabler has announced that yes, he will indeed be seeking the presidency in 2008.

Somewhere in the distance, cue the sound of a single mournful trombone. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a US Air Force accountant, congratulations- your head just exploded.

A B-2 Spirit bomber has reportedly crashed at a US airbase in Guam. The good news is that the pilots are both OK. The bad news is that a B-2 bomber is, at least from a taxpayer perspective, the last thing you want to crash. Ever.

Why? Mostly due to the $1.2 billion pricetag. That’s a whole lot of universal healthcare burning out there on the tarmac. Danger Room does a good job of putting this in perspective:

…there were 21 B-2s. Now there are 20 — a roughly 5-percent reduction in an instant. In terms of airframes, that’s the equivalent of 30 F-15s crashing at the same time, or 60 F-16s, or 6 F-22s. In terms of money, that’s equivalent to 20 F-15s, 24 F-16s or 10 F-22s.

Zoinks!

Crashing a billion dollar aircraft will certainly put any company into debt. Perhaps the military is asking for a cash advance from the government to fund another one of these money eaters. Certainly a payday loan wouldn’t cover the cost! Payday loans may help the average consumer, but it wouldn’t cover hefty military debt.

photo credit: Irish Typepad