I'm not one of the more fundamentalist types in the broad science community who had any issue with Francis Collins leading the NIH.   His credentials are impeccable and the same people who were backflipping with glee over Stephen Chu as Energy Secretary despite his weird militancy about global warming seemed to mind that Collins liked to go to church.   Not an issue for me, I was more worried about his overselling of personalized medicine.

Ahoy maties, how the time flies. It is "Talk Like A Pirate Day" once again and the science communities be awash in pirattitude.

Or not, perhaps 'tis just me.

But if it's not just me, and the little Buccaneer in you is also seeking others to celebrate with and to find out more information on this important event, abandon all hope ye who blog here because I just don't have a lot more than you could find in 4 seconds of a Google search.

Talk Like A Pirate Day began, so the legends go, in 1995, when John 'Ol Chumbucket' Baur and Mark 'Cap'n Slappy' Summers' were engaging in a friendly game of tenpins or raquetball or whatever it is pirates do and one of them yelled "Arrrgh!" in pain. A holiday was born.

Today an archaeologist revealed that even in ancient Israel they were making outstanding likenesses of Alexander the Great.   Israel was a far cry from his usual stomping grounds but he had passed through on his way to Egypt and they had become so enamored with him - and his thousands of troops, we can assume - that they capitulated.

More interestingly, outstanding Hellenistic artists created likenesses of him, so the great ones were not limited solely to places like Alexandria.

Alexander was the first 'cult of personality' as his images attest: