Filed under my ongoing fascination with sea monsters: Improbable Research links The Database of Norwegian Sea Serpents and The Aquatic Monsters Site in their post highlighting “Cetaceans, Sex and Sea Serpents: An Analysis of the Egede Accounts of a 'Most Dreadful Monster' Seen Off the Coast of Greenland in 1734.” The excerpt says it all:

[T]here is an alternative explanation for the [reported sighting of a] serpent-like tail. Many of the large baleen whales have long, snake-like penises. If the animal did indeed fall on its back then its ventral surface would have been uppermost and, if the whale was aroused, the usually retracted penis would have been visible. The penises of the North Atlantic right whale and (Pacific) grey whale can be at least 1.8 metres long, and 1.7 metres long respectively, and could be taken by a naive witness for a tail.

(That was yesterday’s topic, and things have moved on. The IR folks are evidently on a roll of appreciable magnitude, demonstrated by today’s post: The Leonard Nimoy Should Eat More Salsa Foundation.)

In slightly related news: I should be reading various Derrida selections, but instead I’m reading Chuck Berry: The Autobiography, which contains sentences such as “My Ding-a-Ling was big and everybody wanted it, with the exception of some person in England named, I believe, Mary Whitehouse, who wanted it banned.” Strangely enough, this has to do with my upcoming pedagogy presentation. Really. Sort of.