the spice is life

News from Colombia, Smithsonian paleontologists are onto a huge trove of fossils, and boy are they finding some monsters. The most awesome: a giant snake as big as a schoolbus:

Indeed, it had an average length of 43 feet — far longer than any of today’s pythons or anacondas — and it weighed 2,500 pounds, more than a small car. Its diet included giant turtles and crocodiles

And not just one snake–28 of them, all between 42 and 49 feet. Dios mio.

They are finding these snakes on a mountain, so you can’t quite call it Snakes on a Plain. But we fit that joke in anyway, didn’t we! There are more beasties too:
The team’s work has already turned up giant crocodiles and freshwater turtles that weighed 300 pounds. There are also hundreds of fossils of leaves so perfectly preserved that the paleontologists can easily make out the veins and ridges.

omg, hi Smithsonian a/s/l? lol.

Hilarious tweet from @smithsonian this morn, a seemingly internal memo to other institutional twitterers advising and announcing a cunningly 21st century tactic:

Note: To RT other SI accounts, & still have enough room to fit their entire Tweet, we will still resort to a bit of “chatspeak” like “2day.”

We also recommend l33tspeak, LOLspeak, and web-2.0 style missing vowlspk.

Hope Springs Eternal: Nope

We took a gander at the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History last weekend. To be honest, it pales in comparison to the entire backroom of incredible, naturally formed crystals, not to mention several of the large, many-faceted gems (that’s a cut crystal, we learned) elsewhere in the room. Oh and the crystal ball that was polished into a perfect sphere in China in 1923. Wowzors.

At any rate talk of diamonds always reminds us of this article from the Atlantic Monthly, Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? It is one of the greatest articles EVAR, in our humble. It’s all about the shady-as-fuck diamond industry, monopolies, the invention of a luxury through advertising and product placement, and other romantic and eternal qualities of the diamond industry.

supersize my smithsonian souvenirs!

Just listened to this report about how the Smithsonian hired the retail-oriented consultancy group BerglassGrayson to evaluate their gift shops. Unsurprisingly, the firm returned with blazing criticism, lambasting the museum stores for their under performance and inefficiency compared to, say, non-museum retailers…

the museum that keeps on giving…us things to write about

Our old friends at the Smithsonian are up to it again, this time “toning down” an exhibit on global warming in the arctic to interject some good ol’ fashioned “both sides of the story” “objectivity.”

Among other things, the script, or official…

if it ain’t burke, don’t fix it: get your chubby little fingers out of there

More from Potomac swamp country–Lawrence “I’m really not *that*” Small joins the aforementioned Sheila Burke in the conflict of interest scandal at the Smithsonian. Small and Burke both sat on the board of directors at Chubb Insurance Group during their time…

The Smithpwnian: Burke ‘n’ stocks are comfortable

Burke’s resignation came on the eve of an independent report that sources said would criticize her extensive outside activities, including highly compensated corporate board seats, academic appointments, a federal commission that oversees Medicare, and numerous nonprofit organizations.