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BBC Comedy's Misery Bear does his bit to promote Sport Relief 2012, a British running event on March 25th to raise money for Comic Relief's charitable works. As always, Misery Bear runs into obstacles in his quest, like a friendly competition with champion UK runner Mohammed "Mo" Farah and a break with a distracting singer. -via Arbroath

Outside the city of Šiauliai, Lithuania, there's an area covered with an estimated 55,000 crosses. They are memorials to Lithuanian patriots who died in campaign after campaign to free the nation from various occupying forces. The crosses have been bulldozed several times, but spring back starting immediately afterward. Read the history of this amazing memorial at Environmental Graffiti. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Kyle Taylor)

Encyclopedia Britannica has been printing encyclopedias in book form for 244 years, but no more. The 2010 edition will be its last. You have to wonder how many copies they sold since the last update. Britannica president Jorge Cauz is not as sentimental about the change as you'd think, as the change has been coming for a long time. The majority of the company's business comes from neither the print nor online encyclopedia, but from other educational products. The online version of the encyclopedia has been losing subscribers to Wikipedia, but will begin to offer some free content to entice new subscribers.

In a nod to those changes, Britannica is relaunching its site in three weeks to add more social connections and interactivity.

Cauz says he celebrates those changes, as well as the end of the print set -- which was first published in Scotland in 1768. In fact, Britannica is throwing itself a party on Wednesday.

"We're going to have a cake in the shape of a print set to celebrate," Cauz says, laughing. "Is that morbid?"

Link -via Boing Boing

Dallas Seavey was the first to cross the finish line of the 40th Iditarod race in Nome, Alaska, yesterday evening. At 25 years old, he is the youngest winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race ever, though it's not his first sports championship -he was a state and national champion wrestler in high school.

A third-generation musher who shared the race trail this year with his father and grandfather, Seavey kicked from White Mountain to Nome on Tuesday. A north wind walloped his sled, fanning snow into the Bering Sea as the young musher extended his lead into Safety and pushed ahead for the title.

Seavey finished at 7:29 p.m., an hour ahead of runner-up Aliy Zirkle. His total time for the 975-mile race was 9 days, 4 hours, 29 minutes and 26 seconds.

This was Seavey's fifth Iditarod. His father won the race in 2004. Link -via The Daily What

(Image credit: Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News)

Combine LEGO, Transformers, and Game Boy, and you've got a toy geek's dream creation. Julius von Brunk built a Transformer (named Domaster) out of LEGO bricks that changes from a classic Nintendo Game Boy to a robot! Domaster's blaster weapons are double-A batteries (made of LEGO pieces) that fit inside his thighs for storage. Domaster has a sidekick, too, a robot bird named Tetrawing that transforms into a Tetris game cartridge -that fits in Domaster's Game Boy slot! Read more about this project and see plenty of pictures at MOCpages. Link -via The Daily What Geek

Update: Check out von Brunk's website!

A new exhibition called Star Wars Identities opens April 19th in Montreal and Edmonton. The exhibit is subtitled "What Forces Shape You?" To promote the exhibit, six posters illustrate the characters in collage form using components from their personality and narrative. See them all in large size at My Modern Met. Link -via Everlasting Blort

The entire town of Buford, Wyoming, is for sale. Despite what the picture shows (it's from 2006), there is only one resident. Don Sammons is retiring, so several buildings, ten acres of land, a zip code, and a high-altitude view are all going on the auction block. Bidding will start at $100,000, which sounds like a steal. Link -via HuffPo

(Image credit: Flickr user Eszter Hargittai)

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IKEA developed a kit that enables people to use their smart phones, iPads, and other touch screens while wearing cold weather gloves. Norwegians bought up 12,000 kits in just two weeks! Maybe they'll make more. -via The Daily What Geek

If you go to see a Little League game in San Diego this spring, chances are you'll see a matchup of the Padres vs. the Padres. That's because their uniforms are all various historic versions of the MLB team's uniforms!

Here's the deal: All Little League chapters within a 10-mile radius of Petco Park were given the opportunity to choose from 20 past and present Padres jerseys and matching caps, all at no cost. Most of the leagues jumped at the chance. When the dust settled, the Padres had supplied 11,600 jerseys and caps to over 800 local T-ball, baseball and softball teams. Even better, the kids get to keep the gear when the season's over.

The uniform program is the brainchild of Padres president and COO Tom Garfinkel, who came up with the idea last year during a Little League promotion at Petco Park. "We had about 8,000 Little Leaguers doing a parade around the warning track before the game, and it occurred to me that almost none of them were wearing Padres jerseys," he recalls. "They had jerseys sponsored by local businesses, jerseys from other teams. And I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if they were all Padres?'" So Garfinkel and his staff made it so.

You don't have to think very long to realize that this is a win-win for everyone involved: The kids get sharp-looking new uniforms; their parents get to reconnect with old Padres uniforms they remember from years past; the leagues can repurpose their uniform budgets toward other objectives (many of them have used the savings to improve their fields, upgrade their scoreboards, and so on); and last but not least, the Padres generate a huge amount of goodwill while forging an early bond with their next generation of customers.

So how will they announce the teams and keep them straight?

"You can't just say, 'The Padres are playing the Padres,'" says Bruce Bourdon, another local league administrator. "And we didn't want to name the teams after the coaches -- Bruce's Padres against Paul's Padres, or whatever. So instead we're saying, 'It's 1972 home against 1984 road.'"

Link -via Buzzfeed, where you can see more pictures.

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When this video was recorded, Nala was cared for by a foster family in Namibia after her mother was killed by a car. She's a squeaky toy! -via a comment at reddit

We can't post a quote from this (or any) infographic, because you can't copy text from a graphic. Also, infographic "facts" tend to be unreliable, but this particular one is just trying to make an overall point, so go see it at SplatF. Link -via Boing Boing

These portraits of exotic dancers of the 19th century probably appeared scandalous at one time, but they are SFW. What is fascinating is that, outside of wearing corsets, these professional exotic dancers display the size and shape of average women who would never be offered a professional position in entertainment today. See the entire collection at Retronaut. Link -via Metafilter

Artist Sarah Johnson illustrates Batman doing what the super hero does when he's not out fighting evil and protecting Gotham City. And they're animated, too! Watch Batman fishing, eating ice cream, visiting the men's room, etc. Link -via The Daily What Geek

A funny story from Letters of Note:

Late-1993, renowned astronomer Carl Sagan learnt that Apple's forthcoming computer, the Power Macintosh 7100, had been given a codename of "Carl Sagan" — the joke being that they would sell "billions and billions." This was mentioned in a MacWEEK article some time later, to which Sagan sent the following letter in response.

Apple soon changed the codename to "BHA." Upon learning that it stood for "Butt-Head Astronomer," Sagan filed a lawsuit for defamation of character, and lost. He then sued Apple again, for the original codename, and lost again. So he appealed. Late-1995, the two parties settled out of court, and Apple apologised for any unintended distress caused by the situation.

The 7100's final codename was "LAW." It stood for "Lawyers Are Wimps."

Oh yeah, there's a letter, too. Link -via @shaunusher

(Image credit: All About Apple)

Friskies released some iPad games for your cat to play last year. Now they have a game that you can play against your cat! “You vs. Cat” was unveiled at the SXSW interactive Festival in Austin last night.

The game is simple enough: At one end of the screen the human slings a piece of animated cat food onto the playing board.

The goal? Get the item across the screen into a goal box before you cat stops it by putting its paw on the item.

It’s sort of a 21st century air hockey table for you and your favorite feline friend.

Shown is Buddy the Cat, the current game champion, who demonstrated the game at the unveiling. “You vs. Cat” will be available as a free download next week. Link