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For those of you who would like a somewhat larger Cadbury Creme Egg, here’s an oldie but goodie: Pimp My Snack’s recipe for making your own giant creme egg at home! Insulin not included. Link
The scene shown here is Alessandro Botticelli’s illustration of Dante’s Inferno, Canto XVIII. It is a colored drawing on parchment, 320 x 470 mm, dating from the 1480′s and is part of the collection of the Staatliche Museen, Berlin.
The colorful figures you see are Vergil, in blue, the guide to the underworld, and Dante, in red. Here is a brief overview of the scene they are observing, from John D. Sinclair’s commentary on the Inferno.
In the first ditch the two trains of panders [pimps--GH] and seducers, circling opposite ways but alike in their betrayal of innocence to lust, are driven by the scourges of horned demons, horns being traditionally associated with adultery, and their sin keeping them in eternal unrest. . . .
The second is the ditch of the flatterers and nothing less than its vile circumstances [they are wallowing around in a pit of excrement--GH] could express the nausea, emphasized by the unusual brevity of his account of it, that is felt by one of Dante’s temper for their sin.
More of these amazingly detailed, accurate, and imaginatively rendered illustrations here.
When we last met Speak (the Hungarian Rapper), he was “speaking” to us about the futility of war. If you missed the post, it’s worth checking out.
Everywhere I go, people ask me: “Adam… Who is Speak the Hungarian Rapper?” Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to help them. Speak the Hungarian Rapper was as big a mystery to me as he was to anyone else.
But everything’s changed now.
Thanks to “Peter” in comments on the original thread here, we now have the URL for the Unofficial Speak the Hungarian Rapper fan site, which appears to be the work of some English-speaking expats in Budapest. (Some content on the unofficial site may be NSFW.)
Yeah. C’mon!
It all started with a young man named Tamás Deák…
[link to Unofficial Speak Fan Site] (possible NSFW)
Update: Upon reading the entire Unofficial Fan Site, I must confess that I am ever-so-slightly skeptical that the info contained therein is entirely legitimate. My advice: don’t invest in Speak’s next world hip-hop def jam tour based solely on the “facts” that appear on that page. Biz-ness!
Update 2: Sahan in comments discovered an English language Wikipedia article about Speak. Thanks, Sahan!
At the Bloomberg offices in London, employees can leave each other messages using these Scrabble cushions, designed by Stephen Reed Industrial Design and Alistair Willmott. The end tables serve as double and triple word scores, leaving the possibility for some pretty high scoring words. The best I could come up with was “quartzy” (218 points after 50 point bonus). Link via Freshome via digg.
Here’s a particularly, um, hilariously suggestive clip from the UK gameshow "Catchphrase," where the contestants have to guess a phrase suggested by the animation.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via VideoSift
When the keychain on his USB Drive broke off, instead of throwing it away, Russell Jones saw opportunity to create the indestructible drive by making an aluminum case for it!
Internationally-known violinist Joshua Bell played busker at a Metro station in Washington, DC during morning rush hour recently. It was an experiment to see if anyone would recognize him, recognize the talent behind the music, or would drop money in his case. What do you think happened? The results may surprise you. The cover story in today’s Washington Post Magazine includes videos of the experiment. Link -via Grow-A-Brain
Richard Pulfer of the Comic Book Journal wrote a really nice article about the Top 10 Accidental Comic Book Discoveries. For example:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Unlike Stan Lee or Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Kevin Eastman and Peter TMNTMedium.bmpLaird didn’t have high hopes in the least when they penciled on masks and ancient ninja gear onto four overgrown turtles – they were just brainstorming.
But still, Laird and Eastman knew something was up as a result of their accidental discovery, so they gathered funds from tax refunds and family loans to publish one single issue – parodying current comic hits like Daredevil (”The Foot Clan” to “The Hand”), New Mutants, Cerebrus and Ronin.
The resulting pop culture tidal wave was probably more than any Laird or Eastman could have prepared for.
The Dialectizer is a neat website that takes text from a website and "translates" it into various dialects such as Hacker (top one above), Cockney (the one below it), Redneck, Jive, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, or Pig Latin.
Link – Thanks toreishi!
Must … get … Peep .. out … of … blogging … system… Ah, what the heck, here’s one more Peep fan site about Peep Surgery:
One of the great mysteries of the Peep species is that these creatures are always born as conjoined quintuplets. Some scientists have theorized that this arrangement, much like pack behavior in other species, serves as a natural protection against predators. As evidence, note that Peeps are most often consumed by predators only after they have been separated from their siblings. Conversely, Peeps which remain attached to their siblings are rarely preyed upon.
Nevertheless, as Peeps integrate into modern society, there is no ethical reason they should be denied the benefits of individualism, freed from the bonds of their sticky, marshmallow kin.
We thus applied the advances of modern medicine to attempt this miracle separation of these 5 brave volunteers.
Link – Thanks Spencer!
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To help you celebrate Easter, how about some Peep haiku?
Ten brown beady eyes
Indestructible gazes
Awaiting their fatePopular yellow
Most chosen of all the peeps
Like eating sunshineRanks of unwrapped Peeps
Damned by lingering freshness
Wait for redemption
Many more at Raaven O’Quinn’s website: PeepHaiku.com
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