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Hedgehog in the Fog is a fantastic animation made by Soviet animator Yuriy Borisovich Norshteyn [wiki]. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] to watch – via Z Recommends
A part of Christmas celebration in Mexico is La Noche de Rábanos or Radish Night, where people carve intricate sculptures out of radish! Link | Gallery [Flickr] – via Make
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Moss is selling crocheted finger puppets of terror. Included are Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad and President Bush (hm, I suppose the President is a key figure in fighting terrorism, although I’m sure many of you would just lump him in with the bad guys)
Link – via Didn’t You Hear
Ah the irony: The Golden State Fence company, whose work is to build the border fence between San Diego and Mexico, are fined $5 million for … hiring illegal immigrants to build the fence!
Title suggestion: Swiss Army Basket. (Thanks, Denita!)
This gruesome piece of art by Jake and Dinos Chapman [wiki] is part of the Tate Museum’s exhibition Bad Art for Bad People: Link – via valentina tanni
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Gizmodo’s Brian Lam found this crazy Japanese kicking arcade game in Japan called "Champion Kick": Link
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If you didn’t sleep through your college physics class like me, you’d probably remember Carnot cycle and the hypothetical Carnot heat engine (or in reverse, Carnot’s refrigerator).
Artist Marcus Ahlers built such a thing (although sadly, his website contains no further details): Link
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I don’t know if it’s right or not, but the Clueless Mailers’ Spamdemic Map is quite impressive. The map shows relationships among spammers and other entities (many of which are legitimate and do not spam)
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This amazing photo of a man "painting" the Moon during a lunar eclipse, taken by Laurent Laveder, is part of the Top 10 Astronomy Images of 2006 at Bad Astronomy.
Check out the entire list: Link | Also, visit Laurent’s website for more cool images
The picture above is air bubbles, trapped in ice of frozen O’Dell Lake in the high Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Climatologists love these sorts of things, as they represent a sample of the Earth’s atmosphere from a long time ago:
Far from mute, frozen bubbles can tell many interesting tales, especially if they are in glaciers and ice sheets. Climatologists take deep cores of ice around the world. Then in special laboratory conditions they slice segments of the core and study the composition of the air bubbles trapped within. The deeper the core, the further back in time the slices represent, so they can reconstruct prehistoric climates and track changes in atmospheric conditions.
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Peter Davies, who is half blind and was banned from driving after he crashed, expects to get back behind the wheel after his family bought him a special glasses for Christmas:
Pete’s family in Burry Port, near Swansea chipped together to buy him a £300 pair of special glasses for Christmas.
According to the Mirror he said: "They have made all the difference. My last glasses were like bottle tops and so heavy they slipped down. But not these.
"I fully expect to pass my eye test next time and my driving test."
German New Wave director Werner Herzog [wiki] directed this surreal 1970 film called Even Dwarfs Started Small [wiki]. In the movie, a group of dwarfs in an institution on a remote island rebel against the guards and directors (dwarfs as well) in a nonsensical way. How? You’ll see:
Here is a dwarf making fun of a camel [YouTube]:
… smashing plates and throwing eggs [YouTube]:
… and challenging a tree [YouTube]
via Attuworld
A question posed on Cecil Adams’ Straight Dope:
Early this morning after a night of drinking I woke up and really had to pee. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. But what happens if I don’t? Is there a long-term health risk if I regularly choose to hold it? If alcohol is thrown into the equation, are there other effects or considerations?
Here’s Cecil’s response: Link – via Alex Mizell
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Found at Say No to Crack
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They took this photo onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery with a digital camera. Follow the link to get a high resolution image.
Sun Spot from 5000 km
You can get the high res image of the sunspot here. There’s also a short video.
Link – via The Science Blog
Watch what comes prancing into this little Siberian town at night — and what chases it off. From English Russia
A part of celebrating the New Year is to sum up the old year, usually with year-end lists. Some of those lists are lists of the best lists. The 2006 List of the Lists of Lists! is the top ten list of those lists of lists. Somewhere here, you’ll find everything you ever wanted to know about the year 2006. And some examples of circular recursion. Link -disclaimer: I wrote this.
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Let’s all hope for peace in 2007 (sigh, one can hope, right?).
Today’s Cellar and Neatorama Image of the Week is this photo found by Cellar user xoxoxoBruce, captioned:
Dinner Time in Eagle River, Wisconsin. These people living in Northern Wisconsin put some corn out in the dead of winter to sustain the area deer. When I said the deer up here were as thick as cats and dogs, I wasn’t far off. Wisconsin community of Eagle River.
See more fun and fantastic images on Cellar Image of the Day, you won’t regret it (check out their extensive archive!)
In Spain, it is tradition that people build a nativity scene instead of decorating a Christmas tree. In the Autonomic Comunity of Catalonia, many people put a statuettes of “El Caganer” or the great defecator in their nativity scene!:
The Virgin Mary. The three kings. A few wayward sheep. These are the figures one expects to find in a traditional Christmas nativity scene. Not a smartly dressed peasant squatting behind a rock with his rear-end exposed.
Yet statuettes of “El Caganer,” or the great defecator in the Catalan language, can be found in nativity scenes, and increasingly on the mantelpieces of collectors, throughout Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region, where for centuries symbols of defecation have played an important role in Christmas festivities.
During the holiday season, pastry shops around Catalonia sell sweets shaped like feces, and on Christmas Eve Catalan children beat a hollow log, called the tio, packed with holiday gifts, singing a song that urges it to defecate presents out the other end.
I’d also like to tell you that in Italy, most of the country eat lentils in porridge for New Year. In Spain, people celebrate the New Year by eating 12 grapes, one per every 12 dings of the clock bell at midnight. This started in 1909, when there was a very good grape season – the grape growers started a campaign proclaiming that if you eat twelve grapes as the clock bell rings the year away, it will bring you good luck for the coming year.
Master magician Dai Vernon tells the secret of the cups and balls trick. He performs the trick slowly so we can see how it is done.
Link to Youtube video (Warning: the video is of really low quality.) – via Bifurcated Rivets
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Dan Carlson created what is probably the most comprehensive pictorial of relative sizes of starships in various sci-fi books and movies: Link – via reddit
Update 1/1/07: Jeff Russell has a comprehensive website on starship dimensions: Link – Thanks William!
Apparently, there is such a thing as the Burt Reynolds Museum! It’s in Jupiter, Florida.
Ironic Sans has the scoop: Link – via Macelodeon
And yes, the museum has a website: The Burt Reynolds Museum
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Found at Places of Interest, who said that such robots protect the Russian border (no other detail, sadly) – via Look at This …
Update 1/2/07: Photoshoppery: see Dora Gun.
Check out Elissa Englund’s DIY: happy instruction on how to make beautiful melted plastic bead plate or bowl (be forewarned that melting plastic smells really bad, so open the window and have a fan ready!). Link – via too many commas
This wallpaper, made by Duncan Wilson and Sirkka Hammer, consists of four notes of grey tones with a red backing. Pixelnotes create a functional wall – as you pick up the notes, the wall changes aesthetically.
Link – via shake well before use
Found at Inside Aperture – via Microsiervos
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From Fanpop, here’s the Top 10 Creepiest Fast Food Mascot. For example,
#3: Old-School Ronald McDonald
The only thing more horrific than the current McDonald’s clown is the old-school original. Who designed this monstrosity? It looks like someone strapped a food tray atop his head and attached a dixie cup to his nose and called it a day (here’s the original tv spot with weatherman Willard Scott). This thing is hideous. If I saw this on the street, I’d run for help.
Need more evidence? Even after they revamped the look of the old-school Ronald, he was still damned freaky. Just watch this commercial.
Link – via This is the Last
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