Here’s a Nunc Scio hat-tip to Star Trek actor George Takei and his partner, Brad Altman, for being the first gay couple to receive their marriage license in West Hollywood. Here’s a video of the pair (at about 2:40, complete with shirtless Sulu sword action):

On Monday, California became the second state in the USA to allow gay marriage. Good news for fans of personal liberty, and, as it turns out, Star Trek. Good work, Mr. Sulu. I wish you all the best.

It’s a good time to be a paleontologist in Utah.

Scientists there have uncovered a treasure-trove of fossilized trees and dinos. From National Geographic:

n just three weeks of work on federal land near Hanksville, Utah, paleontologists say they unearthed at least two meat-eating dinosaurs, a probable Stegosaurus, and four sauropods—long necked, long-tailed plant-eaters that could reach 130 feet (40 meters) long, making them the largest animals ever to have walked the Earth.

“So far [the paleontologists] have found not only scattered bones but partial and complete skeletons. It’s really amazing,” said Scott Foss, a paleontologist in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) Salt Lake City office.

It’s pretty rare to find these kinds of ‘big sexy dinosaurs’ (no fooling- that’s what paleontologists call them), particularly as intact skeletons. It may be a recession everywhere else, but it’s boom-time for the dino crowd.

Here’s a button on sale at the Texas state Republican convention:

Oh, Obama…deliver us from these racist twits. Via TPM.

If you’re like me, you appreciate web browsers that work. You know, do exactly what they’re supposed to do, quickly and with an attractive interface. One that doesn’t take up huge amounts of space and integrate itself into every aspect of your OS. One that runs on a Mac.

This is why I love Firefox. And today, joy of joys, the fine folks at Mozilla are releasing an all new version of the little browser that could. Wired has a list of reasons why you should download Firefox 3, but here’s my own, slightly shorter, version:

1. It’s awesome.
2. The folks at Mozilla’s Toronto office are also awesome, and deserve your support.
3. Mozilla is trying to set a world record for the most downloads in a single day, and it’s always fun to set a world record. My own attempt- most casual swears in a single hour- met with limited success and an obscenity suit.

So in conclusion: download Firefox 3. It’s a good thing.

UPDATE: And my blog on Firefox 3 = the new hotness.

A new University of Washington study puts the dangers of online free expression in stark relief. Since 2003, 64 bloggers have been arrested. And in 2007, three times as many bloggers were arrested in 2006. Not surprisingly, China, Iran and Egypt were the worst offenders.

We’re a  bunch of lucky skunks that we live in places where we can post pretty damn much anything we want on our blogs and websites. True, I choose to squander that right by posting about BSG girls and being sucked into the vacuum of space, but it’s nice to know I can’t be thrown into jail for what I write about. But today’s report reminds us all of our responsibility to bloggers all over the world: to lobby and agitate endlessly on behalf of those who have been imprisoned for their words.

Seek, and ye shall find. Or so they say. But when you’re looking for a 228-year-old warship in a 19,500 square-kilometre lake, that’s a whole lot of seeking and not a lot of finding.

But thanks to a few intrepid shipwreck enthusiasts, the HMS Ontario has finally been found. The 22 gun, 84ft vessel was the largest British warship on the Great Lakes during the American Revolution up until it sank in a gale taking 130 men to a watery grave. The final resting place of the Ontario has long been one of the Lake Ontario’s most enduring mysteries.

The ship was located using side-scan sonar, with the final ID coming from a ROV. It’s lying in about 500ft of water in remarkably good condition. The fresh, cold and low-oxygen waters of Lake Ontario are apparently dynamite ship-preservers.

So there you go. A little piece of history salvaged from the deep. Thanks to GM for the link.

Israeli researchers have succeeded in growing a two millennium-old date palm seed, making it the world’s oldest germinated pip. The seed was found in the ruins of the Masada, the desert fortress where Jewish rebels offed themselves rather than face Roman capture in 70 AD.

The new plant gives scientists a chance to study differences between the ancient date palm and its modern descendants. Interestingly, it grows better in fresh water while modern palms prefer brackish aquatic environs. This is because, back in the day, date palms grew at relatively clear desert oases, whereas now they grow very close to the salty goodness of the Dead Sea.

Cool. It’s like time travel, but in convenient seed form.