Dark Roasted Blend has a beautiful collection of photographs featuring spider webs, enhanced by dew, rain, ice, or just in their natural state. Link

(image credit: Evan Leeson)

Steve Irwin's death is, of course, included in this list of strange fish incidents, as well as the candiru and the poisonous puffer fish. But you'll also read about bizarre episodes of people being impaled, attacked, strangled, and bludgeoned by fish. http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/blog.php?blogid=198 -Thanks, John Cooper!

(image credit: spakattacks)

When I first saw the title to this post, I couldn't think of any whistled themes besides The Andy Griffith Show. I should've remembered Bridge Over The River Kwai. The rest I had forgotten or am unfamiliar with, but they are all intriguing. Most have videos. Sadly, Bogie and Bacall are not featured. Link -via Gorilla Mask

It might be a dream come true to live on a tiny island with a nice home but no neighbors, but I tend to think about the weather and waves and storms. Still, these five seem to be doing just fine! Link -Thanks, Dave E!

Today's Luchtime Quiz at mental_floss tests your knowledge of angels in pop culture, sports, literature, and religion. I scored 80% because I don't know much about baseball. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/17733

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Emily was created by Image Metrics in California, the same company that created the graphics for the game Grand Theft Auto.

"Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real," Mike Starkenburg, chief operating officer of Image Metrics, said.

"The subtlety of the timing of eye movements is a big one. People also have a natural asymmetry - for instance, in the muscles in the side of their face. Those types of imperfections aren't that significant but they are what makes people look real."

Link -Thanks, MoonCake!

The Burj Dubai tower, the tallest skyscraper in the world, is about to be completed. To celebrate it, David Hobcote has taken a series of amazing high resolution pictures from the air which give an exact impression of the breathtaking, massive scale of this building.

Construction is expected to be completed in August, 2009. See more pictures at Gizmodo. Link -Thanks, kid_icarus!

You've seen dolphins shimmy along the top of the water balanced on their tails at Sea World or on TV, but the behavior has spread to the ocean!

A wild dolphin is apparently teaching other members of her group to walk on their tails, a behaviour usually seen only after training in captivity.

The tail-walking group lives along the south Australian coast near Adelaide.

One of them spent a short time after illness in a dolphinarium 20 years ago and may have picked up the trick there.

Scientists studying the group say tail-walk tuition has not been seen before, and suggest the habit may emerge as a form of "culture" among this group.

Link -Thanks, Justin!

(image credit: WDCS/Mike Bossley)

Ariane is at it again! Previously, she sent us a picture pointing us toward a well-named village in England. This time it's a sign for a road she came across in her travels. Link -Thanks, Ariane!

Jerry Lerma and Terry Hogan plotted a map of Springfield, the hometown of The Simpsons! See the huge size to read all the sites you may know from the TV show, and an interactive version as well. Link -Thanks, Em!

Image posted by Flickr user Dan Cameron. PS: Congratulations, Dan, on the birth of your new son!

Justin Vaughn built a cool diorama of zombie hunters!

Inspired by Max Brooks' books, The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, and fueled in part by the flurry of post-apoc mocs, I set out to depict some zombie plague survivors on the hunt.

See an entire Flickr set of the Desert Zombie Hunt. Link -Thanks, Sion Lee!

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Andre Perkowski got such a great response on his "Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man" (previously at Neatorama) that he produced a three-part serial as a follow-up. It's called "Arkham After Midnight". This is Chapter One: "Mark of The Mad Hatter"

Big globs of setup concerning Arkham Asylum... madness! surreal delirium!
Hallucinations! Screaming lunatics! Obsessive supervillains! That amazing
triumph of conceit over technology, the incredible "Bat-Gyro." All this and the
trippiest final two minutes you ever needed to see.

To keep up with further adventure of retro Bat-Man, you can subscribe to his YouTube channel. Link -Thanks, Andre!

Scott Kasprowicz and Steve Sheik flew a helicopter around the world in 13 days, breaking the record for helicopter speed. The previous fastest round-the-world flight was 17 days, set in 1996. Kasprowicz and Sheik completed their journey by landing in New York yesterday.

The first week went off without a hitch. Kasprowicz and Sheik made it from New York to London in a stunning 40 hours and 41 minutes, shattering the previous record by a whopping 35 hours. Europe was a piece of cake, but Russia -- as they expected -- was a bear.

They arrived on the 13th, but construction at one airport and a fuel shortage at another cost them almost a full day. Things went from bad to worse after taking off from the Siberian city of Magadan -- the oil temperature in one of the copter's two engines rose so high Kasprowicz had to shut it down to avert crippling damage. They finally sorted things out with some help from local mechanics, but they lost still more precious time.

The route took the pilots through 15 countries. http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/08/helicopter.html

(image credit: Grand Adventure 2008)

deputydog takes you on a tour of the world's most bad-ass grotesques and gorgoyles. Pictured is a fish-footed man at the Pena National Palace in Sintra, Portugal. http://deputy-dog.com/2008/08/18/the-worlds-most-bad-ass-grotesques-and-gargoyles/

Update: Commenter Ângelo Fernandes identified this picture as Adamastor, a Portuguese mythological figure. -Thanks!

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A woman with synesthesia described what it's like to taste different musical chords. Professor Funk, who is not a synesthete, tries to recreate the sensation using the Imperial March from Star Wars. -via Of Two Minds