What's scarier than a 300-foot concrete statue?

. . .a 300-foot concrete statue that's about to fall over:

One of Russia's most important war memorials, a huge statue towering over the southern city of Volgograd, is in danger of collapsing, an official says.

The Motherland statue is leaning at such a precarious angle that many people are scared of going near it.

Rising water levels are causing the foundations of the memorial to subside. . .

When it was completed in the late 1960s, the Motherland statue was the largest in the world.

Made of concrete, it stands 85 metres (300 ft) high and weighs around 8,000 tons.

From the BBC.

Slow and tubular

A huge ocean wave has been filmed from beneath the surface, revealing features never before captured on camera.

The remarkable video, which will be shown as part of the BBC Natural History Unit's new series South Pacific, was filmed in super slow motion using a high-definition camera. . .

The spectacular results show the wave barrel closing over Australian big wave surfer Dylan Longbottom, who rode the wave to illustrate the scale and power of the water.

From the BBC -- can't wait to see the full program.

Is that an octopus on your head, or are you just glad to see me?

Cephalopod crochet inspiration here, spotted via the inimitable Pharyngula -- a great clearinghouse for all things cephalopod.

Appears that the outfit was from a collection by Romance Was Born, though I can't find it on their website. Whoops -- here are a couple of writeups, a slideshow (see #18) and video.

An older Pharyngula post worth noting:
Amazingly well-preserved octopod fossils from the Cretaceous.

End of the line for Bern's bear pit

It's a sad time for Bern: Pedro is dead. And with him has gone a slice of Bern's history.

Pedro was the last bear in the capital's famous bear pit. At the grand old age of 28 he had to be put down on Thursday.

But Bern will not be bearless:

He will not be replaced in the pit: his successors, currently living in Bern's zoo, will stay where they are until the new bear park - much bigger and bear-friendlier than the pit - opens later this year.

Symbols of the city, the bears have historically been treated rather unsentimentally:

In 1891 the pit kindly provided a bear for the city fathers' feast marking the 600th anniversary of the foundation of Switzerland.

In 1913 the number of bears reached a record 24. No fewer than eight of them were killed and stuffed and arranged like the carousel of bears on Bern's Zytglogge clock for display at the national exhibition in 1914.

From Swissinfo.

Digitizing the catacombs

Rome's underground Christian, Jewish and pagan burial sites, the Catacombs, date back to the 2nd Century AD.

There are more than 40 of them stretching over 170km (105 miles).

But, until now, they have never been fully documented, their vast scale only recorded with handmade maps.

That is now changing, following a three-year project to create the first fully comprehensive three-dimensional image using laser scanners.

A team of 10 Austrian and Italian archaeologists, architects and computer scientists have started with the largest catacomb, Saint Domitilla, just outside the Italian capital.

From the BBC, with video. The article does note, however, that the current project is restricted to the one catacomb -- but it is to be hoped that it will spur efforts to record more. In many cases the conditions underground are parlous, making this one of the most timely and appropriate digitization projects imaginable.