Narration and space nerditude by the lovely and talented Dr. Olivia Johnson. Cool (via). Of course Flyer’s goalie Ilya Brygalov still does a better job.

TAKE ANOTHER BREAK

by Sean Orr | Burnaby lagoon snakehead caught on tape again. If you think about it, this is the perfect metaphor for Vancouver. There is an invasive species pushing out a native species, only the snakeheads are these mouth-breathing, hyper-sexualized creatures that can sometimes move across land (or bridges and tunnels). Now imagine fishing and catching a crowd of Axed-out roid freaks wearing Parasuco jeans and Snakehead Gym hoodies!

Also, I really don’t think that we are taking this Scottish Broom threat seriously at all. They’re as miserable as their Pictish namesake. They’ll make you a Presbyterian and your life will forever be like Breaking the Waves.

By Jove, the jock-cum-journalist gets it right! Cities deserve bigger share of tax dollars. This is what I was saying just the other day to Jordan Bateman. The cities take most of the province’s most marginalised people. And then we have to pay when the suburbs destroy our city. Is anti-urban rhetoric like Bateman’s just thinly-veiled anti-intellectualism?

Oh, plus we can’t even afford to transport ourselves. TransLink property sell-off plan startles region’s mayors. Weird. It turns out that by hitching transit to gas funding you actually lose money when people start using it. It’s like the infamous Factory Records deal with Happy Mondays that saw the company lose money with every record sold.

Shaking in their boots: Prospect of ‘free-enterprise coalition’ scales back B.C. NDP’s lead. Keep dreaming, you crazy dreamers. You think all those fired BC Libs are going to be allowed back in? They hate each other more than they hate the NDP! Hell, the NDP hates itself (or least they should) more than the two combined.

Speaking of hate: Vision’s ideology makes them ‘mean,’ ‘divisive’. Vision’s vision is way too Vision-y.

B.C. needs more immigrants to address looming labour shortage: task force. Oh, the south of the Fraser is not gonna like the sound of that.

Rat count underway on DTES. The number of ratgoofs, however, remains undetermined.

The following is actually an opinion piece from The Courier: From Napoleon to 20-sided dice.

So it turns out that our kids will be able to create new life forms from their phones and play cooties with home laser-enriched uranium in the not so distant future. Thanks, Dr. Kaku. You have a great day, too (via).

by Sean Orr | How to make a riot bigger: Video shows Montreal police pepper spraying bar patrons during protest melee. Ain’t nobody better be fucking with my pint of Le Fin Du Monde, yo.

Tweet of the day c/o Stephen Taylor: “Why does violence only ever emerge during leftwing demonstrations? They own the mantle of domestic violent political extremism”. Because nobody ever brought a gun to a Tea Party demo.

Harpoon Stephen: Killer whale expert out of work as feds cut ocean-pollution monitoring positions. Maybe this alone will be the single issue that sinks Harper (aka Captain Ahab).

A theme developing: Cuts at Environment Canada mean fewer left to clean up oil-spill mess. If your irony-metre just went through the roof, you are not alone.

Robyn Urback on shocking anti-male hatred on the SFU campus. More shocking than the real violence they are talking about?

We Built This City on Boosterism: 100 Years of complaining.

That is not a bubble. This is a bubble. Actually, they’re both bubbles, so don’t just take City Caucasian’s word for it. Check in with Bob “Everything Is Going To Be Alright” Rennie, too.

First World Problems: High-speed Internet remains a fantasy for many Canadians. I wanted to read that article, but the page took forever to load.

Gloria Mackarenko practicing for Bard on the Beach: “The boyfriend. Upset about the break-up. He loaded his van with weapons and explosives and burst into her home. It happened. Last evening. In Kamloops.”

Deadly weekend: a scuba diver dies, a woman dead after falling off a Hornby Island cliff, and a Canadian woman dies on Mount Everest in the notorious ‘death zone’. I think the message is clear. Stop doing stuff.

Painting: “Emperor Haute Couture” by Margaret Sutherland.

(via) Take a moment and sympathize with all the local science geeks who had yesterday’s shit weather kick them in the shins with steel-toed meanie boots. Why you so rain, clouds?