The New York Times has a six-part multimedia presentation detailing the story of 16 skiers and snowboarders who were caught in an avalanche last February in the Cascade Mountains. The series includes awesome graphics, slideshows, videos, and a compelling narrative by John Branch that follows the events from the point of view of the survivors and rescuers. Not everyone survived. The story opens with professional skier Elyse Saugstad.

She had no control of her body as she tumbled downhill. She did not know up from down. It was not unlike being cartwheeled in a relentlessly crashing wave. But snow does not recede. It swallows its victims. It does not spit them out.

Snow filled her mouth. She caromed off things she never saw, tumbling through a cluttered canyon like a steel marble falling through pins in a pachinko machine.

At first she thought she would be embarrassed that she had deployed her air bag, that the other expert skiers she was with, more than a dozen of them, would have a good laugh at her panicked overreaction. Seconds later, tumbling uncontrollably inside a ribbon of speeding snow, she was sure this was how she was going to die.

In the series, you'll learn about the history of Tunnel Creek, how avalanches occur, and the story of the rescue, as well as those of the skiers. Link -via Ed Yong

(Image credit: Washington State Department of Transportation)

Odd things happen in the confusion of war, or training for war, or even peacetime that resembles war. An example of the latter happened in 2010, when Nicaraguan commander Eden Pastora and his men accidentally invaded Costa Rica, supposedly because of a border error in Google Maps.

It's not clear why he decided to consult an Internet atlas instead of official military charts (which clearly depict the borders that both countries recognize). It's also not clear why it took him so long to figure out where he was. At one point, they took down a Costa Rican flag and replaced it with a Nicaraguan one, presumably because the flag wasn't represented by Google Maps so they assumed it had been erected by mistake. That's like walking into someone's house, throwing out all of their family photos to put up pictures of you and your grandparents, and then trying to tell the police that Mapquest is to blame for giving you shitty directions back to your apartment.

In Pastora's defense, the Google Maps view of the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica is off by about 3,000 meters (around a mile-and-a-half) in Nicaragua's favor. In Google's defense, their maps are meant to locate Burger Kings, not plan military patrol routes for rival South American nations.

But that's just one embarrassing story. Read the rest of it and five more at Cracked. Link -via Unreality

(YouTube link)

YouTube asked its most viral participants to star in a mash-up of culturally defining moments of 2012. That includes, PSY, Freddie Wong, Rhett & Link, Felicia Day, and more. Can you spot all the viral references of the year?

This image went around the tubes a few weeks ago, supposedly proving that PSY's "Gangnam Style" video will fulfill a prophesy from Nostradamus that points to the date of the apocalypse. It was funny at the time, but look! Today, December 21, 2012, the YouTube video of "Gangnam Style" reached a billion views! YouTube added a dancing gift to the count as a congratulations.

But don't be too frightened at this turn of events. There is no actual proof that Nostradamus ever said any of these things. However, the unknown person who put the graphic together may have a career as a psychic. Link -via Metafilter

"It's the wrapping paper that ruins the surprise!™" That is, if you want to download and print your own wrapping paper. The text on the wrap tells what the gift is! How fun!

But they also have a generator on which you can design your own wrapping paper. That opens a world of possibilities -if you have a color printer and plenty of paper. Link -via b3ta

Apparently, the world has dodged a bullet. Or not, as few people believed the world would end as the Maya calendar ran out. However, some people were ready, while others used the opportunity to party. The Mail Online has a roundup of photographs of events held the world over as December 21st dawned. Shown here are Peruvian shamans warding off destruction. Link

(Image credit: Reuters)

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Even geek icons celebrate Christmas! Here's your sincere greeting from Boba Fett and Deadpool, shown spreading cheer through the streets of London. -Thanks, Nick Acott!

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is such a classic tale that many, many movie versions, television shows, and stage plays have been produced since the story was published in 1843. Balladeer’s Blog has an ongoing series on those productions, from the forgettable 1923 silent movie to the silly 1983 made-for-tv special "Scrooge's Rock and Roll Christmas," with more famous and obscure productions to follow.

I’ll come right out and admit it – I’ve always been a sucker for any version of A Christmas Carol. Trouble is, most adaptations distort the story or are produced by people who don’t seem to “get” the story or treat it like it’s a children’s tale. Anyone who thinks that needs to read the novel. My love of mythology is partly why I love the story so much. A Christmas Carol is the closest thing to an Epic Myth the Industrial Age has produced. The language Dickens uses is very close to prose poetry but precious few adaptations of the story preserve enough of it.

It's not a complete list -yet. But there is plenty to look through, and you can look forward to this series continuing through Christmas, and next year, too. Link

Why post an end-of-the-year list when you can post an all-time list? Zooborns celebrated their 2,000th post recently, and bloggers Chris Eastland and Andrew Bleiman are marking the occasion by ranking the cutest baby animals ever featured on the site. Squee! Each photograph includes information about the animal and the zoo or sanctuary in which it lives. Link

(Image credit: In Cherl Kim)

Redditor colt1hryh headlined this "Not photoshoped picture of Australia at the moment." Obviously, because even I can use Photoshop better than this! The comments are golden, especially this one:

Australian here. This actually looks like a pretty standard Friday afternoon.

Further updates may follow, if at all possible. Link

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Little panda Xiao Liwu lives at the the San Diego Zoo. If you like what you see in the video, you should check out the zoo's panda cam. Link -via Buzzfeed

More than a century before Indiana Jones first cracked his whip, Sir Richard Francis Burton had already mastered the daring art of scholarly adventure.

Richard Francis Burton was a hard-living combination of Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt. By 1853, he'd already swashbuckled his way through enough adventures for several lifetimes. The British explorer, writer, ethnologist, polyglot, and spy had spent his youth traveling Europe and drinking in its culture, learning as much about history and poetry as he did about sword fighting and bordellos. He'd worked undercover investigating his fellow English officers' behavior in Indian brothels. And he'd penned travelogues and anthropological studies detailing his adventures.

But Burton craved more. During an extended leave from the military, he began devising one of the greatest adventures of the Victorian era. Burton wanted to be the first Englishman to walk into the forbidden city of Mecca.

Other Englishmen had caught glimpses of Mecca, but only as prisoners. Burton wanted to waltz in on his own. Only then would he be able to see the holy city as Muslims saw it during the hajj, the sacred pilgrimage Islam requires of every adult. The stakes were high. Any infidel caught sneaking in faced immediate execution. "A blunder, a hasty action, a misjudged word, a prayer or bow, not strictly the right shibboleth, and my bones would have whitened the desert sand," Burton later wrote.

Burton had a few aces up his sleeve. Although his father was Irish, Burton's dark hair and complexion helped him pass as a Muslim. His linguistic wizardry was unrivaled -he'd mastered at least five languages before turning 18 and added many more throughout his life. His obsessive reading and previous travels had taught him the Islamic customs he would need to avoid critical errors.

Even with these gifts, the Royal Geographical Society was skeptical about funding Burton's expedition. But a glimpse inside the forbidden city was too tantalizing for geographers to refuse. They agreed to bankroll the journey, with a catch: Burton had to survive the trip before he received the funds.

Provisional cash in hand, Burton began preparing for his hajj. Even if he played his assumed character -an Indian-born Afghan named Abdullah- flawlessly, a glimpse of his uncircumcised penis during a roadside pit stop would have blown his cover. So Burton took method acting to a whole new level; at the age of 32, he was circumcised.

INTO THE BLACK CUBE

Hilary Sargent made a chart to help you understand who the Westboro Baptist Church is. The majority of the chart is the family tree of the Phelps family, although there are a very few members included who aren't related to patriarch Fred Phelps. The enlargement shown here is only a small portion. The full-size chart (enlargeable at Sargent's website) will keep you busy for a while. A lot of work went into this! Link -via Boing Boing

Why didn't I think of that? This Twaggies was illustrated by David Barneda from a Tweet by @IGotsSmarts. See more illustrated Tweets every day at Twaggies. Link

When Boeing tested its new in-flight Wi-Fi system, they needed passengers in the plane to simulate the presence of bodies and how those bodies interfered with the signal. But instead of human passengers, they used something much easier to deal with -20,000 pounds of potatoes!

"The vegetables' interactions with radio-wave signals mimic those of the human body," a video from Boeing explains.

They labeled the test SPUDS: Synthetic Personnel Using Dielectric Substitution.

The potatoes were later donated to a food bank. Read all about the simulation at the Atlantic. Link -via Ed Yong