Last night, there was a large-scale solar storm, bringing the promise of possible aurora sightings further south than is usually even imaginable. It is one of my lifetime ambitions to see the Northern Lights – but, as someone who lives not much more than 50 degrees north, I have to accept that I’m highly unlikely to fulfil it on my own doorstep.

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Me and Colonel Gaddafi, we’re like that… and, by the way, would you like a chunk of his missing millions? Yep, the 419 scammers have been to call this morning with another amusing missive.

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Phantom (n): A ghostly image, an illusion, a spectre or a product of the imagination.

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Looks like the 419 scam (or advance fee fraud) email has morphed into yet another form, after this gem of imaginative creativity dropped into the inbox this morning.

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After a period when it looked like scammers had got bored with the 419, here it is back in abundance. We have received five or six of these in the course of a couple of weeks, after months of being free of them.

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Interestingly, the classic 419 scam does not appear to have had its day yet. This fine example dropped into the inbox a few days ago.

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While the management is in a video-embedding mood, here’s another – The Scientific Baloney Detection Kit, which arrives with us via a long and prestigious line of scientists including Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins.

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What I’m reading online today – if you like what you see, add me to your Delicious network…

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John Cleese, asked what he thinks of Sarah Palin, bursts out laughing. He then says: “It’s like a nice-looking parrot.” Watch him on YouTube and share the laughter.

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An excellent piece in today’s Guardian by Philip Pullman, author of the wonderful His Dark Materials trilogy, debunks censorship during the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week (it’s important to point out that they celebrate the books, rather than the censorship).

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Did the adventurer and explorer Steve Fossett fake his own death? This seems like an incredible question to find posed in a national newspaper, even in August. You feel that an editor would want some pretty decent sources before running a story of this sort, that is potentially so upsetting to the deceased’s loved ones. Yet, here is The Independent running just such a story. And it has some pretty good sources.

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Here’s a cautionary tale about how a life of crime can be turned to the good. This forger of letters by Noel Coward, Dorothy Parker and even Humphrey Bogart has now found success with an original work telling her story.

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