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Image: lala a gogo [Flickr]
Check out the wicker seats and canopy in this cute little Fiat micro-car! Found at mod*mom
When plain ol’ wallpaper just doesn’t cut it anymore, and you need to declare your love for wasting natural resources, here’s a wall of wood by a Danish company Connecta: Link
Nathan Wells was inspired by the giant "No Real Than You Are" LEGO minifig that washed up on a Dutch beach to create his own (of more usual size!).
Link [Flickr] – via The Brothers Brick
You’re looking at Hoss, a champion boar, who gets $50/dose (whatever that means, but I’m sure you can guess).
Maybe someone can fill us in on the story of this guy and his um, … unique ad: Link
Stained Glass Town Square forum user Grandapok has a neat collection of sci-fi inspired stained glass artwork!
This one to the left is Robby the Robot from the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet.
Link – via Need Coffee
Darius of the awesome COLOURlovers blog told us about Blog Action Day:
On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.
Blog Action Day is about MASS participation. That means we need you! Here are 3 ways to participate:
* Post on your blog relating to the environment on Blog Action Day
* Donate your day’s earnings to an environmental charity
* Promote Blog Action Day around the web
Link – Thanks Darius!
This Silver Brickwall ring features those familiar 2×2 nubs that allows you to snap on actual LEGO pieces onto the ring.
Link – via Uncrate, thanks Lee!
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You may remember the bottle dance sequence from the movie Fiddler on the Roof. Bottle Dancers USA is a professional troupe who will perform the bottle dance or other traditional Jewish, Hebrew, Yiddish, or Klezmer dances at your wedding, bar mitzvah, or other special occasion. They even have a routine where they carry the guest of honor in on their shoulders! Link -via J-Walk Blog
This is such a cool opportunity! If I weren’t already overextended, I would be tempted to keep this information to myself.
Once again, we here at Damn Interesting are in search of proficient purveyors of intriguing information. But as a bit of a departure from our previous writer-replenishment efforts, we now hope to add a larger number of authors with a considerably smaller commitment per person. See the send-a-sample link for specifics.
If you are a talented writer in search of an outlet, we enjoin you to join us. Our fancies are yours to tickle.
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The descendants of Papua New Guinea cannibals who killed and ate four Fijian missionaries 130 years ago have apologized.
In 1878, a Fijian minister and three teachers were killed and eaten by Tolai tribespeople on the Gazelle Peninsula. The tribesmen were carrying out longstanding practices with people they saw as enemies.
Now if only Italy would apologize for crushing the Carthaginians.
Nearly 80% of all electricity in France is generated by 58 nuclear power plants:
Not everybody is happy with that. The anti-nuclear lobby seems to have found a friend in Asterix, the Gallic comic hero who fights against everything that threatens his peaceful existence.
Here are some covers of anti-nuke Asterix comics that have been published in different countries – probably illegally. The Spanish one (also shown above) is clearly the most artistically designed.
Link | Anti-nukes Asterix comics (scroll down)
Did the ancient Egyptians invent bowling?
Throwing stone balls along a lane might have been a popular game in ancient Egypt, according to evidence unearthed some 56 miles south of Cairo by Italian archaeologists.
A mixture of bowling, billiard and bowls, the game was played at Narmoutheos, in the Fayoum region, in a spacious room which appears to be the prototype of a modern-day bowling hall. [...]
"We first discovered a room with a very well-built limestone floor. Then we noticed a lane and two stone balls," Edda Bresciani, an Egyptologist at Pisa University, told Discovery News.
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It may be the Forbidden City, but apparently this Imperial-Palace-turned-tourist-attraction in Beijing, China, wasn’t so forbidden to Starbucks (it opened a store there in 2000).
Now, thanks to Chinese bloggers, the coffee shop’s days may be numbered:
One of the most incongruous sights of the globalised age – the Starbucks coffee shop inside Beijing’s Forbidden City – could soon be a thing of the past after a furious online campaign for it to be relocated outside the palace’s 600-year-old walls.
In response to this latest demonstration of “netizen” power in China, the guardians of the ancient site have announced plans to review the presence of the Seattle-based coffee chain. A decision on its future will be made within six months, the local media reported today. [...]
According to local media, half a million people have signed his online petition and dozens of newspapers have carried prominent stories about the controversy. "The Starbucks was put here six years ago, but back then, we didn’t have blogs. This campaign is living proof of the power of the web", said Rui. "The Forbidden City is a symbol of China’s cultural heritage. Starbucks in a symbol of lower middle class culture in the west. We need to embrace the world, but we also need to preserve our cultural identity. There is a fine line between globalisation and contamination."
"Even a bad movie can have a great trailer," states Trailers From Hell, a website dedicated to showcasing those 2-4 minute teaser, which often turn out to be the best the movie has to offer anyhow.
Link [with Flash splash page] – via Yahoo! Picks
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Here’s the perfect gift for the politicos in your family: the Hillary Nutcracker!
Love her or hate… you’ll have nonstop fun cracking nuts with Hillary. Regardless of your affiliation (Republican or Democrat) you’ve just found your new favorite kitchen tool!
Work those thighs back into the white house. This might be the reason why Bill never strayed too far. Quite possibly THE toy of the 2008 election – A must for anyone on any side of politics! Her stainless steel thigh teeth will pulverize any nut that stands in her way to the Whitehouse.
Link – via growabrain
Haaretz reports (via Mirabilis):
Archeologists have discovered a footprint made by the The discovery of the print made by a hobnailed sandal, the kind
sandal of a Roman soldier – one of the few such finds in the world – in
a wall surrounding the Hellenistic-Roman city of Sussita, east of Lake
Kinneret.
used by the Roman legions during the time when Rome ruled the region,
led to the presumption that legionnaires or former legionnaires
participated in the construction of walls such as the one in which the
footprint was found.
The post title is from a famous stanza in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time
Criticker is a movie recommendations engine and community.
The idea is simple: rank a bunch of films on a scale of 0-100, and Criticker will search its database of thousands of users and critics to see who you best match up with. Apparently, I have the almost same taste in film as Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune. Criticker refers to the measure of how good we match as the "Taste Compatibility Index". The lower the TCI, the better.
Film recommendations are generated by looking at the movies which my top TCIs have highly ranked. Criticker has thousands of users, and over 15,000 films, so the supply of recommendations is seemingly endless.
The best part is, Criticker doesn’t hide any of its calculations. I can see exactly why a certain film has been recommended to me. Or, the reason Frank Lovece (TV Guide) and I have such a poor TCI (hint: he loved Ice Age). It’s extremely addictive. Add a forum, a blog, and buddy lists, and you have a site which could easily consume hours of idle time. Link
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What happens if participants in a business meeting behave like Internet commenters? Here’s a funny (because it’s true) video clip: Hit play or go to Link [College Humor]. Warning: crude language. Thanks Stephanie Belsky!
Here’s the story of Daniel Price, a man who lives in a hobbit hole (yes – it’s from last year, but still very neat):
Here is a man who has the time and space in his life to watch and wait patiently to bring a new friend into his hobbit-like world. In third world countries where people value people slightly more than money, this is common. In a white western middle class America, to stumble across it is a delightful anomaly. [...]
Further along is a tiny arched door set into the side of a grassy embankment. The door is about two and a half foot square, and though it’s just big enough to crawl through on one’s stomach, it’s solid and curiously inviting, He pushes back a flap of flywire and turns on a light, motioning for me to crawl in.
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Chinese couple wanted to name their baby "@" saying that they wanted a distinctive and modern name …
A Chinese couple seeking a distinctive and modern name for their child chose the commonly used @ symbol., much to the consternation of Chinese officials.
The unidentified couple and the attempted naming were cited Thursday by a Chinese government official as an example of bizarre names creeping into the Chinese language.
"The father said ‘the whole world uses it to write emails and translated into Chinese it means’love him’," Li Yuming, the vice director of the State Language Commission, said at a news conference.
The symbol pronounced in English as ‘at’ sounds like the Chinese phrase "ai ta", or "love him".
Link – Thanks Rachel!
Wanna work out like Spider-Man? In 1976, Marvel published this exercise book called "The Mighty Marvel Strength and Fitness Book," featuring superheroes doing sit-ups and so on: Link – Thanks John!
