Before Melvin Baker died at the age of 79, he asked that during his funeral, he be carried in the front bucket of a digger. He had driven one most of his life, and wanted to leave this world in one. So his former boss arranged for an operator to pick up the casket with a digger and carry Baker's body from his home, to the funeral, and then to the crematorium:

Melvin had originally worked for Keith Bell’s father Jim. Keith remained a family friend and after chatting with his family was happy to make the wish come true.

He said: ”Melvin ended up driving the diggers for us and told me he wanted to make his final journey in one.

”When he first brought it up I thought he was joking but kept on going on and on about it.

”After he died, I dreaded bringing it up with his family, but Jean just said ‘we’ve got to do it for him, Keith, he went on about it all the time’.

http://swns.com/mans-dying-wish-to-be-carried-to-funeral-in-the-bucket-of-jcb-granted-021605.html via Jalopnik | Photo: SWNS.com

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In this commercial for the Logitech Revue, Kevin Bacon plays his own most obsessed fan. The best part is when he does an impression of himself doing an impression of himself.

via Urlesque

Debbie Wright invented this culinary delight. The batter and frosting are both made of oreos, and there's an oreo resting at the bottom of the cake. Finally, it's topped with a mini oreo.

Article Link and Recipe Link via Michael Silence | Photo: Eat. Drink. Smile.

Previously: Oreo Cupcakes with Internal Milk Glass

Yu-Hsiang "Shaun" Chung is an artist specializing in typography. He made a movable wooden Rubik's Cube that can be used as a stamp:

Chinese has a long history with the printing. In 105 AD, Cai Lun invented the paper. In 200 AD, the Chinese invention of Woodblock printing produced the world’s first print culture. In 1040, Bi Sheng invented the first known movable type technology. Therefore, I want to use a Chinese text for my cube. The text I used for my cube is called “Three Character Classic.” It is a traditional Chinese text that teaches young children to be a good person in the society. The text is written in triplets of characters for easy memorization, which is perfect for the cube since the cube is 3 by 3 on every side. The text is written by Wang Yinglin during the Song Dynasty, so I used a font called “Song,” which is correspond to the Song Dynasty when a distinctive printed style of regular script was developed.

Link

An Israeli company called ID-U Biometrics thinks that the patterns of eyeball movement are unique to each individual, and are therefore a definitive means of identifying people:

In ID-U Biometrics' system, the user has to watch a moving object onscreen, while the camera observes the motion of their eyes. Since the way our eyes move is based on a combination of factors --such as anatomy, physiology, behavioral characteristics, eye structure--it's a signature that simply can't be duplicated or forged, according to its developers.[...]

This approach differs radically from eye-related biometrics we've written about previously, such as iris scanning. Iris scanning systems rely on matching the image of your iris structure with a stored pattern of your iris. In contrast, the pattern the ID-U technology is based on consists of dynamic movements made by your eyes as they track a target, something that cannot be controlled or learned. "Most of the eye movement components are involuntary, and we are not aware of them at all," says Palti-Wasserman.

Link | Photo by Flickr user CJ Sorg used under Creative Commons license

Previously: Ear Scanning as a Means of Identifying People

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Apache Pictures made a short film that imagines Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner as human beings. It's called Wiley vs. Rhodes. The special effects are impressive for an independent short film.

via Nerdcore

The architectural firm y+M designed this house in Japan. It's two stories tall and one exterior side is a functional staircase:

To allow sunlight into the house, there are a number of glass slits in-between the steps on the south side.The glass slits not only make them feel liberating but also keep their privacy at the same time.[...]

The outside structure links the garden to the rooftop, and the inside of the house links a private porch/reception/lounge area to the bedrooms. The windows are designed and situated to allow in as much sunlight as possible, whilst retaining privacy.

Link via DVICE | Architects' Website (Google Translate) | Photo: Dezeen

Photographer Håkan Dahlström snapped this picture in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. He tilted his camera so that the building would be appear to be tipping over instead of lying on a steep incline.

Link via Boing Boing | Photographer's Website

On the coolness scale, the Corvette station wagon lies between the Ferrari station wagon and the Ford Mustang station wagon. According to a Craigslist ad, which has several more pictures, this 1974 custom 'vette is on sale for $4,995 in Conroe, Texas.

http://houston.craigslist.org/cto/2069191409.html via Jalopnik

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Hulk: Inside and Out is, unfortunately, not a real musical. It's just a sketch by the comedy troupe Captain Hippo.

via Nerd Bastards | Official Website

Previously: Hulk Smash Oppressive Phallocracy!

Pictured above is a design submission for the Zayed National Museum in the United Arab Emirates. The project is named after Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918-2004), who was president of the UAE. In memory of the Sheik's love of falconry, the main structures are shaped like wings. But they also serve a practical purpose:

The galleries are placed at the bases of five solar thermal towers. The towers heat up and act as thermal chimneys to draw cooling air currents naturally through the museum. Fresh air is captured at low level and drawn through buried ground-cooling pipes and then released into the museum’s lobby. The heat at the top of the towers works to draw the air up vertically through the galleries due to the thermal stack effect. Air vents open at the top of the wing-shaped towers taking advantage of the negative pressure on the lee of the wing profile to draw the hot air out.

Link via DVICE | Photo: Foster + Partners

US Department of Defense engineers and Sony built the most powerful computer in the Department's inventory by linking 1,760 PlayStation 3 gaming consoles:

The supercomputer, nicknamed the Condor Cluster, will allow very fast analysis of large high-resolution imagery -- billions of pixels a minute, taking what used to take several hours down to mere seconds, Barnell said.

Its sophisticated algorithms also will allow scientists to better identify objects flying in space, where movement and distance create blurring, with higher-quality images than possible before.

Its capacity makes the PlayStation 3 cluster about the 33rd largest computer in the world, Barnell said. "It's in that magnitude. "

The supercomputer is currently housed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: US Department of Defense

This photograph of unknown provenance shows a Nativity scene made out of meat and sauerkraut. All it needs is an angelic host made out of deviled ham.

via Say Uncle

UPDATE: Say Uncle emails to say that it's probably hash browns, not sauerkraut. What do you think?

UPDATE 12/3/10: Say Uncle has found the original source.

In January, construction workers digging a new subway tunnel in Berlin found a cache of sculptures that had been banned by Adolf Hitler for being "degenerate". It's uncertain who is responsible for saving them, but it's possible to make some educated guesses:

Archeologists have so far determined that the recovered works must have come from 50 Königstrasse, across the street from City Hall. The building belonged to a Jewish woman, Edith Steinitz; several Jewish lawyers are listed as her tenants in 1939, but their names disappear from the record by 1942, when the house became property of the Reich. Among its subsequent occupants, German investigators now believe, the likeliest candidate to have hidden the art was Erhard Oewerdieck, a tax lawyer and escrow agent.

Oewerdieck is not widely known, but he is remembered at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel. In 1939, he and his wife gave money to a Jewish family to escape to Shanghai. He also hid an employee, Martin Lange, in his apartment. In 1941 he helped the historian Eugen Täubler and his wife flee to America, preserving part of Täubler’s library. And he stood by Wolfgang Abendroth too, a leftist and Nazi opponent, by writing him a job recommendation when that risked his own life.

The eleven sculptures are now on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin. Pictured above is "A Likeness of the Actress Anni Mewes" by Edwin Scharff.

Link via Flavorwire | Photo: Angel Flores Jr.

Artist Justin Gignac has a flair for juxtaposing the ordinary and the refined. Four years ago, he started selling small bundles of garbage from New York City as art. Two years, he tried to buy items for paintings of those items (e.g. a painting of a slice of pizza for the price of a slice of pizza).

One of his recent creations is a security tag, like those in clothing stores that prevent shoplifters from making off with merchandise. Except that this one is plated in 18-karat gold and features white diamonds. Each one costs $700.

Link via Born Rich | Photo: Looptid Industries