To celebrate its AdWords advertising program, Google sent long-time sent advertisers a little gift: Google apron and cookbook! Cookbook? From Google? Yep!

John Dickman, Google's Global Food Manager wrote in the intro:

"This special cookbook represents some of our chefs' best and favorite creations - the kinds of dishes they prepare for their friends and family. There's a little bit of love here for every taste: from Crab Cakes with Cajun Remoulade, to savory Skillet Arugula with Nutmeg, to "Colonel Wade's" Fried Chicken and those amazing Cheeky Monkey Mudslide Cookies.

This is a limited-edition collection. We send it to you with our unlimited thanks for your loyal support of AdWords. We hope these dishes will give you a small taste of how much we value your business."

Well, without any further ado, here are the snapshots of the Google Apron and Cookbook:

Photo: Henry Hadlow

It's a time honored tradition on the Internet to call "'Shopped" on dubious photos that look like they've been photoshopped. But this time, it's the other way around: In this piece, called "Tell a Lie," Central Saint Martins College of Art student Henry Hadlow uses only the camera and handmade graphics to mimic common photoshop effects!

Link - via deliberatepixel

When 61-year-old angler Peter Hodge learned that he had a terminal disease, he made a last wish that his remains be turned into ... fish food!

The 61-year-old, from Puriton, near Bridgewater in Somerset said he wanted to swim with his favourite fish in the spot where he spent 40 happy years angling.

After his death last month he was cremated in a wicker fishing basket coffin, and his ashes were mingled with 30lb of fish food.

Mr Hodge's widow Caroline and daughter Sally were the first to catapult balls of the bait into the River Huntspill to signal the start of an angling competition among Mr Hodge's friends.

Mrs Hodge, 56, said: "Pete always said that when he died he wanted his ashes to be mixed in with groundbait. He wanted the fish to gobble him up so he could swim up and down the river after his death.

Link - via TYWKIWDBI

Patrick Biz of Geeks are Sexy blog has a neat post about the 10 must-read books about technology for geeks. Included are fares like iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith; The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed; Does IT Matter? by Nicholas G. Carr and so on.

Links: Part I, Part II

Some blogs present information in unusual ways. Jessica Hagy's Indexed, for instance, cleverly boils down the truth into simple graphs on 3x5 index cards.

Add this to the list: Where It Stands, where conventional wisdom is presented as scales between two opposing values. Here's a sample post:

Ford announced today it was shifting focus to making more small cars. I don't know about you but this news feels like 1981 all over again. That was when Ford first felt the crush of smaller, Japanese cars. A strategy they abandoned once they realized they could make big SUVs again. My guess is in another 15 years they'll make the same announcement.

Check it out: Link

Buying a new car? Boing Boing has a clip from Ignite Seattle, where Rob Gruhl (who probably happens to be the only guy in the world that loves buying new cars - besides my good friend Joe - some people are weird that way) offers advice on how not to get ripped off: Link

Photo: TAS

Is that a spout in the middle of a mountain? Actually, yes it is. Pruned blog has a neat article about Gazex, an anti-avalanche system that uses explosive gas to trigger controlled (smaller) avalanches to avoid the big fatal ones:

From a distance, they look like disembodied talons jutting out from the rockface, ready to prick at imminent disasters. With their array of remote sensors, they are constantly reading the landscape; the mountains are kept under constant surveillance, lest they want to endanger quaint Alpine hamlets and new luxury ski resort developments above Denver or lose skiers to the wintry wilds.

When an avalanche is deemed likely, it detonates a mixture of oxygen and propane gas in its explosion chamber. The resulting hot gas is then directed downwards to the zone at risk.

Cellar Image of the Day user wally took this photo of a sweet potato that looked suspiciously like his dachshund Brinks. Link (with photo of the dog checking out his doppelgänger)

Image found via Miss Cellania.

Yay! It's time for our weekly Neatorama and Hobotopia's Caption Monkey game!

The funniest caption will win an original Laugh-Out-Loud comic by Adam "Ape Lad" Koford. Contest rules are simple: place your caption in the comment section (one caption per comment, please - but you can submit as many as you can think of).

Be sure to visit Adam's blog for some inspiration and good luck!

Millions of viewers were captivated by Lin Miaoke, the cute little girl who sang during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Problem was, she was lip-synching because the real singer, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, was deemed not cute enough:

"The reason was for the national interest," said Chen Qigang, the ceremony's musical director, in a state radio interview. "The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression. ... Lin Miaoke is excellent in those aspects."

The decision was made at the highest levels, Chen said.

"We had to do it," he said. "We'd been through several inspections. They're all very strict. When we rehearsed at the spot, there were several spectators from various divisions, especially leaders from the Politburo, who gave the opinion it must change."

Link

Take it from Mohammed Bello Abubakar. The 84-year-old Nigerian man will tell you from experience that you shouldn't have that many wives. How many? 86 to be exact!

Nigerian Mohammed Bello Abubakar, 84, has advised other men not to follow his example and marry 86 women.

The former teacher and Muslim preacher, who lives in Niger State with his wives and at least 170 children, says he is able to cope only with the help of God.

"A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them," he told the BBC.

He says his wives have sought him out because of his reputation as a healer.

"I don't go looking for them, they come to me. I will consider the fact that God has asked me to do it and I will just marry them."

The full story is weird and full of intrigue: Link - via Look At This

Ever wish that you could combine the joy of popping bubble wrap with crossing off days from the calendar?

No? Well, someone sure did because they came up with this insanely awesome invention: the Bubble Calendar!

Link - via The Presurfer

No, seriously, it's a pic of a woman welder all decked up in coveralls of flame-resistant cowhide suit from a 1944 Popular Science at Modern Mechanix, but I couldn't resist the comparison.

Chris Harrison and a friend built these motherboard walls for Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Hudson:

Each motherboard wall took approximately 6 hours to assemble . The longest step by far was laying them out. Not only did we try to distribute the colors in an interesting way, but dozens of different sized boards had to fit together perfectly and not overlap the edges. Not an easy task I assure you. Additionally, we added a third dimension by stilting approximately one fourth of the boards at different heights.

Link - via growabrain

I don't even know. No, I serious this time! It's teh best game ever with lots of boss defeats. Joo Win! Next Mission, please!

The. Best. Flash. Game. Ever. Srsly. Link