In addition to being the kick-ass lead singer for a kick-ass band, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson is also a certified airline pilot. He flies Boeing 757s for charter company Astraeus, and also flies his bandmates around in a custom-painted jet. And last week, when airline XL went bust stranding thousands of passengers, Dickinson flew 200 of them home. And he was on vacation!

This isn’t the first time the singer has lent a helping hand. In the summer of 2006, he flew 200 UK citizens out of Lebandon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict.

Besides being an awesome story, Dickinson’s aerial exploits afford a rare opportunity to construct a descriptive sentence using Iron Maiden song titles. S0, <ahem>, here goes:

Heaven Can Wait…it’s Aces High and no Flight of Icarus when The Trooper Bruce Dickinson flies over a Sea of Madness to rescue victims of Fallen Angel XL’s collapse. Bring Your Daughter…to the Slaughter!

Not bad for a first attempt.

As the rational world gears up to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth (February 12, 2009…mark your calendars now!), the Church of England is apologizing to the storied naturalist for gettin’ all up in his grill about evolution.

The apology, to be published on a C of E website that actually promotes Darwin’s theories, reads as follows:

200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends.

Nice to see that, in this age of Sarah Palin’s and assorted other religious nutbunnies cluttering up our public lives, at least one church has decided to live in the 21st century with the rest of us. Of course, this is all cold comfort to Darwin, because, you know, he’s totally dead. Ah, well. Better late than never.

You know things have gotten bad when the United States, king of all political dysfunction, starts pointing out the flaws in your political system.

An article published today in Slate Magazine wonders what happened to the “nice” Canada of yore. It lists a slough of factors- most notably, our unstable, CPC-led minority governments- for undermining our reputation as a nation with a high-functioning political discourse. Moreover, it’s wrecking our national character as a compassionate, socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative and environmentally conscious state.

Here’s a particularly revealing passage:

But beneath the calm exterior, Canada’s political system is in turmoil. Since 2004, a succession of unstable minority governments has led to a constant campaign frenzy, brutalizing Canada’s once-broad political consensus and producing a series of policies at odds with the country’s socially liberal, fiscally conservative identity. Canada is quietly becoming a political basket case, and this latest election may make things even worse.

Ouch. I don’t agree with everything in the article, but its telling that our political troubles are now becoming manifest for observers in other countries. And no one can recognize political dysfunction like an American. Scary to think we may be heading down the same road.

You’ve probably seen this already, but it’s just too good to leave alone:

“I need to know if she believes dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago, because she’ll have the nuclear codes.” Well put, Damon.

Thanks to a very dedicated UFO buff with an ear for catchy tunes, here’s a video of just about every (alleged) UFO photo taken between 1870 and 2008:

Now, this is either evidence of a vast alien conspiracy, or the finest collection of flying pie plates and mens’ haberdashery in Internet history. Although I will say this: at 2:10 in, there is a photo of the Millennium Falcon. The plot thickens…. Via i09.

Good Magazine has put together a nifty graphic that charts the amount of time an average citizen spends in traffic every year. It then expresses that time as the number of times you could get through War and Peace, Wagner’s Ring Cycle or the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the same period. Click here for the full size graphic.

What’s really interesting to me is that War and Peace takes so long to read/listen to as an audiobook. Only in the unholy traffic chaos of LA could you chug through Tolstoy’s tome entirely within the confines of your car. Data like this isn’t available for Toronto, so I’ll have to see how many times I can get through Lord of the Rings while driving. Pedestrians beware!

This entry is cross-posted with blogTO.

Up until this Tuesday, I knew exactly three things about Norway. 1) Vikings come from there. 2) My friend Magnus lives there. Sadly, he is not a Viking. 3) It has fjords. And presumably Fords, although that’s far less interesting from a tourism perspective.

But thanks to Theatre Smash‘s superb production of Norway.Today, I know a fourth thing about the Scandinavian nation: it is home to a 2000 feet-high cliff called the Preikestolen. Not only is it a scenic wonder, it’s also an ideal place for the histrionically-inclined to off themselves. And, as it turns out, the backdrop for a very interesting piece of theatre.

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