"Someone shouted "OH SHIT, it's coming back!"

The dog then grabbed a can in its jaws and bit down hard, puncturing the can and shaking it like a baby -- which sent streams of malt liquor shooting out of the holes around its fangs and straight down the monster's throat. It spat the mostly-empty can out into the street, covered in drool and malt liquor and wagged its tail, happily burping.

The man picked himself up and yelled "motherfucker, what did I JUST TELL YOU," and grabbed the dog by its neck and belly, clean-and-jerked it and threw the thing like a soccer ball as far as he could. It hit the pavement and skidded, snarling and growling and ran straight for him, knocked him down again and grabbed another can.

This cycle had been iterating for a little while.

Although mating has never been observed in giant squid, it is thought that what happens is that the male injects his sperm packages into the female's arms. The process is likely to be a fairly violent affair as the female is probably not that keen on being injected. This is a problem for the amorous male as females are normally a third bigger than they are.

But males get round their inferior size by being endowed with a particularly long penis, which means they can inject the female without having to get too close to her chomping beak. The male's sexual organ is actually a bit like a high-pressure fire hose and is normally nearly as long as his body - excluding legs and head.

But having such a big penis does have one drawback: it seems that co-ordinating eight legs, two feeding tentacles and a huge penis, whilst fending off an irate female, is a bit too much to ask, and one of the two males stranded on the Spanish coast had accidentally injected himself with sperm packages in the legs and body. And this does not seem to have been an isolated incident since two of the eight males that had stranded in the north-east Atlantic before had also accidentally inseminated themselves.

It is also possible that the sperm packages had come from other males that they had 'bumped' into, in the dark depths of the ocean. However, the sperm packages ended up in the squid - it is just another part of the mysterious lives of these creatures of the deep sea.

Also, spiders.

Many spiders exhibit sexual dimorphism as well, typically with the female much larger than the male. In spiders of the genus Tidarren, this trend is carried to an extreme, with males that may be 1% of the female's size. Here's a photo of one of these little guys clinging to his girlfriend's underside, copulating frantically (there is cause for hurry, since she might decide to eat him). [...]

Shortly after the adult molt, male T. sisyphoides trap one in a bit of spider silk and twist it off. Voluntarily. A kind of willing hemipenectomy. One has to cringe at the thought, but I suppose I can sympathize -- if I had a pair of penises the size of volleyballs and weighing 10 pounds each attached to my cheeks, I might want to get rid of one, too.

So, yesterday was Groundhog Day and so we watched Groundhog Day. And since, the last time I searched, I did not come across an obsessive timeline of the sort that I have come to expect from the interwebs in re the likes of Back to the Future and Terminator, this time I took notes on how many days had actually passed.

These are the days actually seen in the movie:

(  --More--(19%)  )

Now, beyond the days we actually see, much time is implied:

(  --More--(61%)  )

So.

Based on evidence presented in the movie, he re-lived February 2 for at least four years.

The Wikipedia entry says ^{[citation needed]} that "director Ramis has stated Phil repeats the day for about 10 years, noting that it would take that long to become as proficient on the piano as Connors does from daily lessons, though the original script had February 2 repeating for ten thousand years."

Which answer, you know, I found insufficient.

Update: We now have as authoritative an answer as we're likely to get: Danny Rubin, the guy who wrote Groundhog Day, wrote on his blog that he had no intended time-frame in mind in his script, but that he meant for it to be "more than one lifetime". The studio hated that, and said, "that's too long, make it two weeks". Harold Ramis, the director, tried to make the time-frame ambiguous, but had in his mind "ten years".

Incidentally, this year the rat saw its shadow.

The web site hosting the stills has apparently already flipped over and started waving its legs in the air, but:

Green Porno is a series of very short films conceived, written, co-directed by and featuring Isabella Rossellini about the sex life of bugs, insects and various creatures. The films are a comical but insightful study of the curious ways certain bugs "make love". "Green" echoes the ecological movement of today and our interest in nature, and "Porno" alludes to the racy ways bugs, insects and other creatures have sex, if human, these acts would not be allowed to be screened or air on television, considered instead as most filthy and obscene.

Each film is executed in a very simple childlike manner. They are a playful mixture of real world and cartoon. Each episode begins with Isabella speaking to the camera "If I were a..." (firefly, spider, dragonfly etc.). She then transforms into the male of the species explaining in a simple yet direct dialogue the actual act of species-specific fornication. The costumes, colorful sets and backdrops as well as the female insects contribute to the playfulness of the films. The contrast of this "naïf" expression and filthy sex practices adds to the comicality of Green Porno.

Sundance Channel Signs Up Isabella Rossellini For 5 More 'Green Porno' Shorts

Sundance Channel has commissioned Isabella Rossellini to create five additional short films for her series titled "Green Porno." There will be a total of eight films in the series. Sundance Channel had initially funded three earlier pieces which have recently been selected to premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. A selection of Rossellini's "Green Porno" shorts will also debut at the 2008 Berlin international Film Festival.

Sundance Channel plans to premiere these shorts on mobile devices and online in spring 2008. Once they make their digital debut the "Green Porno" shorts will air as interstitial pieces on Sundance Channel.

Previously.

Making cows fart like kangaroos

Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.

"Fourteen per cent of emissions from all sources in Australia is from enteric methane from cattle and sheep," said Athol Klieve, a senior research scientist with the Queensland Government.

Researchers say the bacteria also makes the digestive process much more efficient and could potentially save millions of dollars in feed costs for farmers and graziers. "Not only would they not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15 per cent more energy out of the feed they are eating," said Dr Klieve.

I've been wondering about this ever since I learned about fecal bacteriotherapy!

Orexin A is a promising candidate to become a "sleep replacement" drug.

The monkeys were deprived of sleep for 30 to 36 hours and then given either orexin A or a saline placebo before taking standard cognitive tests. The monkeys given orexin A in a nasal spray scored about the same as alert monkeys, while the saline-control group was severely impaired.

The study, published in the Dec. 26 edition of The Journal of Neuroscience, found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their brains look "awake" in PET scans.

Siegel said that orexin A is unique in that it only had an impact on sleepy monkeys, not alert ones, and that it is "specific in reversing the effects of sleepiness" without other impacts on the brain.

The research follows the discovery by Siegel that the absence of orexin A appears to cause narcolepsy. That finding pointed to a major role for the peptide's absence in causing sleepiness. It stood to reason that if the deficit of orexin A makes people sleepy, adding it back into the brain would reduce the effects, said Siegel.

"What we've been doing so far is increasing arousal without dealing with the underlying problem," he said. "If the underlying deficit is a loss of orexin, and it clearly is, then the best treatment would be orexin."

Previously.

Best. Infographic. Evar.

PHOENIX -- A 14-year-old Lake Havasu boy has become the sixth victim to die nationwide this year of a microscopic organism that attacks the body through the nasal cavity, quickly eating its way to the brain.

"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

The amoeba typically live in lake bottoms, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment. Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose -- say, by doing a cannonball off a cliff -- the amoeba can latch onto the person's olfactory nerve.

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up to the brain.

People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers, Beach said. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes.

Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have been effective stopping the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said. "Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," Beach said.

In addition to the Arizona case, health officials reported two cases in Texas and three more in central Florida this year. In response, central Florida authorities started an amoeba telephone hot line advising people to avoid warm, standing water, or any areas with obvious algae blooms.

YOU MAY RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. THE GIANT INSECT MENACE HAS PASSED.

A higher concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere let dragonflies sometimes grow to the size of hawks, and some millipede-like bugs reached some six feet in length. Now that the proportion of oxygen has decreased, however, bugs can't grow much larger than they do now, the authors write.

Hollywood Pigeons to Be Put on the Pill

Over the next few months a birth control product called OvoControl P, which interferes with egg development, will be placed in bird food in new rooftop feeders.

"We think we've got a good solution to a bad situation," said Laura Dodson, president of the Argyle Civic Association, the group leading the effort to try the new contraceptive. "The poop problem has become unmanageable and this could be the answer."

Dodson said representatives from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals contacted her group with the idea to use OvoControl P. Other animal rights groups, including the Humane Society of the United States, support the contraceptive over electric shock gates, spiked rooftops, poisons or other methods.

I think the ubiquitous pigeon-spikes and mesh fences covering every statuary alcove are a far bigger architectural blight than the poop they are intended to avoid, so I'm all for it.

Now if only we could put human birth control in the water supply, we'd really be getting somewhere.

By the way, why is it that 99% of the birds you see in cities are pigeons? What makes them so much more successful than any of the others? Does it have something to do with their greasy coating or their deformed club-feet?