The Canadian election season is officially open, and with the season comes the first online attack-website: ignatieff.me.

The site, about the Liberal leader, has a tagline: “It’s not about you. It’s just about him.” (emphasis theirs.) At the bottom comes the expected text: “Authorized by the Registered Agent for the Conservative Party of Canada”.

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we are well aware that politicians are prone to hypocrisy, but we feel the need to remind our Canadian audience of this headline in the Globe and Mail, which is now one month and three days old:

Tories re-brand government in Stephen Harper’s name.

That’s right, that same Conservative Party which is claiming that you shouldn’t vote for Mr. Ignatieff because he will put himself ahead of Canada is the same Conservative Party which, when given power, removed the word “Canada” from the government and inserted that of the Prime Minister.

Hypocrisy? Thy name is the Conservative Party of Canada.

Illustration of a star being torn about by a black hole by M. Weiss (NASA). Found at Bad Astronomy.
Webcomic is Buttersafe, by Alex Culang and Raynato Castro.

Apparently English Heritage has decided that it owns all photos of Stonehenge. This seems a little wacky, but I’ll play along and declare that I own all photos of famous people. I expect the royalties to start pouring in now.

(The Flame Nebula, #1 on ESO’s list of the top 100 astronomy images)

Some people are teaching robots to punch. They claim that this is to help them to obey Asimov’s laws, but clearly robots should be taught NOT to punch.

Other people are teaching computers to argue with climate change denialists on Twitter. Making clear that the Terminators of the future will teach people about global warming while punching them to death.

You wake up. Traffic is bad. Trains are late. This commuting thing sucks, right?

It could be worse.

You could be sitting in this traffic jam in China. One hundred kilometers long, being stuck in it would cause a nine day commute.

(Dice being shot, by Lex Augusteijn, who takes pictures of bullets passing through various objects.)

If you have a very long commute, it is not recommended that you ride one planet into another, causing worlds to collide. Because this is what happens when worlds collide. It’s enough to give you terrible thrills.

The alternative to commuting to work — while avoiding unemployment — is to work from home. If you are thinking of working from home, all benefits and drawbacks should be considered. These have been neatly laid out for you by The Oatmeal.

Astronomers thought they had it all worked out — how solar systems form, planets and all. They were wrong — it seems that nearly 25% of solar systems have a planet that moves in the “wrong” direction. Where “wrong” means “in a manner inconsistent with accepted theory”, rather than, you know, wrong.

(The Big Bad Blog does not know who to credit. FFFFound tells us it’s from this LiveJournal. But who made it?)

Richard Dawkins wants to have the Pope arrested for crimes against humanity. I’m guessing that I missed the point in which covering up abuse was classified as a Crime Against Humanity. I would think that the rape of children would have to be a “systemic practice” for this to stick, and whatever you might think of the Pope or the Catholic Church, that’s reaching a bit.

A new low in academia? A professor (or, perhaps, his wife) has allegedly been taking an aim at his rivals by trashing them in Amazon reviews.