The latest in a growing list of reasons? He partied with Hunter S. Thompson:

In his introduction to “Ancient Gonzo Wisdom,” a collection of Thompson interviews due out in July, Hitchens, who covered a summit between Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush, says he was denied a double gin at a cocktail party at the top of the slopes because it would be twice as strong at such a high altitude. So he hightailed it to Aspen’s Owl Farm, where he met Thompson, who was just getting up. “Refreshments of all sorts were available without any references to health-impact considerations, as were numerous stimulants and analgesics,” the razor-tongued “God Is Not Great” author recalls. “At some point, towards the advent of the rosy-colored dawn, it seemed important to go outside, set up some bottles and cans, and blast them into shards with high-velocity rifles. This may also have had something to do with reminding the Aspen sheriff’s department to keep its distance.”

Undoubtedly, HST is way cooler (and crazier) than Hitch. But Christopher gets full points for cool-by-association here.

Ray Lam, a provincial NDP candidate in British Columbia, withdrew yesterday after several slightly off-colour photos of him were gleaned from his Facebook profile and injected into the public domain.

Really, Ray? You couldn’t see this one coming?

He claims he thought the photos were protected behind some kind of mythical privacy setting that occludes your most embarrassing snaps from public consumption. But anyone who has spent anytime on Facebook knows that if you’ve got embarrassing pictures, and somebody wants those pictures, there are any number of ways to access them. Particularly if you’re using Facebook as a campaigning tool.

Now, the photos aren’t particularly offensive. In fact, they’re pretty vanilla. But they’re the perfect kind of thing for an older, ostensibly more mature candidate to make their opponent look like a silly kid who has no business in public office. And – Surprise! – that’s exactly what Liberal Mary McNeil did.

With all that in mind, I’m forced to conclude Mr. Lam is a bit of a dummy. When embarking on a political campaign, a prudent first step is to run a mental inventory of all your public profiles, identify potential liabilities, and delete them. And if Mr. Lam couldn’t make that leap himself, the NDP presumably has a few people whose entire job is to figure this stuff out. But nobody did. So now one man’s political career is over, and a political party looks stupid. All because there are people who still don’t understand that, if it’s on the Internet, it’s basically a public document. Welcome to the 21st century, folks.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The BC NDP did have this disaster as a candidate once, too.

And by cleaning, I mean a few modifications to ye olde Nunc Scio.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been a bit erratic on the blogging front as of late. Turns out, I’ve developed a bad case of blogger fatigue, a grave disorder I have only now invented. Symptoms include listlessness, uninspired content, and a general antipathy towards the Internets.

To address this illness, I’m making a few small changes to the site. The first is that I’m killing the Linker. I know a quite a few of you out there enjoyed this feature, but it has grown a little unsustainable over the past few weeks. I started doing the Linker as a way to ensure I always had something to post, even on days when I couldn’t manage to churn out one of my trademark examples of wit and insight*. But, it had an unfortunate side effect. The Linker takes a significant amount of time to assemble, and it started to eat into my longer, original posts. And, it meant I had to spend an ungodly amount of time with Google Reader.

So, farewell sweet Linker. We hardly knew ye. Of course, if you’re super angry about this change, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

Other changes will be rolled out in the coming weeks. But in the meantime, please keep reading. I’ll be better, I promise.

*Studies have demonstrated that, if fact, neither of these things exist on Nunc Scio in any appreciable quantity.

World

• Behold the grim spectre of garlic terrorism.
• 62 years ago today, a ship blew up in Texas City, Texas. It was a really, really bad scene.
• First Puppy Bo already has a book deal.
• Man bites snake (that was trying to eat him). Now that’s a headline.

Media

• The Canadian government has hired two former White House press secretaries to hype Canada in American media.

Science & Tech

• You know those creepy bugs with a zillion legs that hide in your sink and then run away at the speed of light scaring the living crap out of you? Here’s an article about them!

Pop Culture

• John Madden, coach, broadcaster and constant companion through numerous iterations of video game football, is retiring.

Canada

• 1/10 of Canadians are drinking 1/2 the booze. High fives!

Pop Culture

• WANT: The AK-47 made entirely out of bacon.
• Also WANT: Carbon-fibre bike helmet.
• Two new novels will be set in the world of Romero’s …of The Dead movies.
• NASA will name the new treadmill on the International Space Station after Stephen Colbert.
• We Didn’t Start the Flamewar is pretty awesome.
• Michael Chabon is re-writing the screenplay for John Carter of Mars. Cooool.

Drummer, composer, audioblogger and friend to Nunc Scio Joshua Van Tassel just released his latest EP, Nighttimer. Like everything this guy produces, it’s pretty freakin’ good.  Here’s a sample:

Now, because JVT labours under the misapprehension that people actually read my blog, he sent me a pre-release copy of Nighttimer to review. As the name implies, this is the kind of music that really resonates at 3AM when you’re trying to sober up or write something halfway meaningful. I enjoyed his first album a lot too, but there’s a new confidence here coupled with a mad scientist’s flair for sonic experimentation. It’s definitely worth a few of your dollars and a lot of your time.

If you’d like to download the album, go here.  And, be sure to browse through JVT’s excellent blog. He does neat things with sounds.

Rocket sleds!

So. Very. Awesome.