Informative Links

Why Did Bill Murray Keep Going Back in Groundhog Day?

Queer Blues. (via Everlasting Blort)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. A college professor remembers that maybe he wasn't that great as a student, either. (via Metafilter)

Obama is the best salesman ever, just ask Al Green and Jan Brewer.

25 Things I Learned From Opening a Used Bookstore. (via Metafilter)

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert filed at report with the Federal Election Commission on the Super PAC's fundraising, which has exceeded a million dollars.

Take a sneak peek at the Best Super Bowl XLVI (2012) Commercials. You'll be able to take real breaks during the game Sunday if you've seen the ads already.

Three teenage girls were murdered by their father, brother, and mother, who were convicted in Canada of the "honor killings." How can a mother turn on their daughters like that?

NASA’s Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission gives us the first-ever video of the far side of the moon. Coming soon: a closer look.

What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind? Nothing, if you look at the world the way they do, during their artificially-extended modern adolescence. (via Neatorama)

Researchers are developing ammunition that can correct its course after leaving the gun. It becomes more accurate over longer distances -even miles.

8 Secessionist Movements in American History. If they'd succeeded, we'd have neighboring countries like Beaver Island, McDonald Territory, and the Conch Republic.

Bathtime for Baby Sloths

Animal Planet shows how baby sloths get a bath. Then they hang them out to dry! The babies would rather just stay dirty, but they are rewarded with a treat. (via Arbroath)

11 Charts and Graphs About Television Shows

Television is one thing that unites people across the country, in that almost everyone watches at least some. However, the landscape of TV offerings has expanded so much with hundreds of cable channels available, that you need a chart to keep up with it. Or many charts. Since I always get a kick out of the entertaining charts people make, I’ve rounded up a few that try to make sense out of all these television shows, all in a list I posted at mental_floss.

Links for Fun

Porn for Pregnant Ladies. (via Metafilter)

The annual Animal Planet Puppy Bowl on Superbowl Sunday will feature a kitten halftime show. See a series of adorable photographs taken during the taping of the halftime show.

If players in the Super Bowl were movie characters, which ones would they be? Difficulty level: they must remain in New York or Boston.

The film One For the Money managed to get exactly one sort-of-favorable critic's review. The best lines of MovieBuff's review stand alone as comedy gold.

A new Sweded version of The Phantom Menace was produced in honor of the new 3D theatrical release of the old movie. But it's better because it's free, it's not 3D, and George Lucas isn't responsible for it.

Remote-control "flying people" are released over New York City. Makes you wish you could be one of them, doesn't it?

Matthew Broderick reprise his role as Ferris Bueller in a Super Bowl ad. Watch the full-length version and note that the product is prominently but not obnoxiously displayed.

Masters of Food Art. Their mothers never told them to stop playing with their food.

All her life, actress Kristin Bell wanted to interact with a sloth. She got the opportunity on her birthday, and was overcome with emotion, as she tells Ellen Degeneres.

20 Actors Who Appeared on Law & Order Before They Were Stars.

Understanding Your Cat's Emotions.

Scientific Dining: Reviews of Research Institute Cafeterias (part one).

Fancy tips from cheap British magazines. Or: how to festoon your life with garbage. (via reddit)

Groundhog Day

he newscaster is wrong. If the groundhog sees his shadow and goes back underground, that means six more weeks of bad weather.

Good Reads and Information

Misfit Zeitgeist. Some really neat observations on what the world has become for creative people.

The Caging of America. Six million people in prison is more than Stalin had in the Gulag. (via Metafilter)

Mr. Toilet Talks Some Shit. In a serious way.

"No is an extraordinarily complicated word when you're drunk." Alcohol and Sex. An excerpt from the book Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp. (via Metafilter)

She called 911 for help, but the cop who responded raped her. And the scared teenage mother was the one who was hauled off to jail that night.

The 25 Most Colorful Sea Slugs on Earth. They look like plush toy art pieces set in an underwater photo shoot.

With everything that's happened since the idea came up, they are still talking about making a fifth Terminator movie. All we know for sure is that it will be an R-rated film.

The family consists of him, her, his kids, her kids, and her brain-damaged ex-husband. With enough trust and compassion, the family makes it work.

Washington Didn’t Sleep Here: A White House FAQ. As Gerald Ford once said, “the best public housing I’ve ever seen.”

Who parks a car better, men or women? A new study suggests what you've known all along.

Obama’s Lean, Mean SEAL Machine. The Navy commandos pulled off another high-profile raid last week, illustrating the president's vision for the military.

You'll soon be able to invest in Facebook as the company prepares for its IPO (initial public offering). Its value may soar as high as $100 billion, but is that real, or just a number?

A college student found cocaine in a textbook she ordered from Amazon. And she didn't even have to pay extra for it!

Photographer Senén Llanos and dancer and yoga enthusiast Marién Enid began a tradition in 2005 of taking a photo of Marién against the backdrop of the last sunrise of the year. It is a chronicle of a friendship that survives time and distance.

Original UpRock!

Savoy Ballroom dancers Al and Leon and members of Whitey's Lindy Hoppers in 1959 on the Playboy TV show.

Where Did Groundhog Day Come From?

You gotta love a holiday centered around weather. You might think it’s about the animal, but no, any hibernating animal will do just as well. Did you that in Germany, it's known a Badger Day? This is the turning point of the season, and for pre-industrial societies (particularly farmers), the midwinter date was a day to take stock and determine whether you have enough food and firewood to last the rest of the winter. If you miscalculated the previous fall, or you found that the grain is full of weevils and your cow started looking skinny, you had good reason to look for omens of an early spring. Read about the origins of this holiday in an article I posted at mental_floss.

Fun and Funny Links

Time Travel Movie Marathon. What a great way to spend a weekend!

Microwaves Ruin Everything shows you all kinds of things that shouldn't be microwaved -in slow motion. I'd have to disagree about the Ivory Soap, that's always a hoot.

Jaipur's Elephant Festival is like a big beauty pageant for pachyderms. They show up with painted faces, bejeweled clothing, and bells on their toes!

Smitty the dog has found his favorite film. Don't turn it off; you'll break his heart.

Boots and Cats and Bees and Beef.

6 Amazing Animals That Practically Lived Forever.

The Colon Rectum, and Other Weirdly-named Animals.

Anne Billson knows that the cat Jonesy is much more important to the 1979 film Alien than most viewers realize. So she wrote the story of the spaceship Nostromo and its crew from Jonesey's point of view. (via Maximum Verbosity)

Save the Date Photobomb. Can you find what Ben added to the scene?

The Mathematics of Boneless Pork Rectums. Read at your own risk. (via a comment at Arbroath)

Fourteen dancing robots make up a chorus line to celebrate Chinese New Year. Do you think they could put the Rockettes out of business?

Liam Neeson records an awesome outgoing phone message for a fan. Her phone has been ringing off the hood ever since.

Filmmaker Freddie Wong attempts to find and unlock the power of the Fire Flower from the Mario Universe. However, with great power comes great responsibility, or risk, or something.

Chimpanzee hosting a talk show

Japanese TV is so much more entertaining than US TV.

Fascinating Links

10 Secrets of the Vatican Exposed.

Should Teens Be Jailed for Sex Offenses? Laws are there for good reasons, but the actual cases come in all shades of gray.

A state trooper pulled over a South Carolina mayor for speeding. The mayor than returned the favor and pulled over the trooper for speeding.

Mitt Romney's tax return reveals he is rich, but that's not the real shocker. The details show how the U.S. tax code is rigged to benefit the wealthy.

Julian Assange is going to be a TV talk show host. He's made a deal with Russia Today to host ten episodes of The News Tomorrow, even while under house arrest.

Should audiences be allowed to cheer at presidential debates? On the one hand, there's free speech; on the other hand, a few well-placed fans can affect an entire news cycle.

Cheetah vs. Leopard: What’s the Difference? I know cheetahs never prosper, and I heard leopards live in colonies.

Dance Moms and Toddlers & Tiaras are popular train wreck reality shows, which may verge on child abuse. Which is more exploitive: putting pressure on kids to perform, or recording their childhoods for an audience to ridicule?

In an alternate timeline of history, Nazis colonized the moon in order to launch a new invasion of Earth. After years in development, Iron Sky will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival next month.

Alibi aftershave products can make you smell like car trouble instead of smelling like the strip club you just left. If your wife knows what a strip club smells like, you'll have to go all out to fool her.

Historic new rules for school lunches will mean we can't blame them for obese kids. Costs will go up, but no one knows whether kids will actually eat more fruits and vegetables.

15 Noteworthy Nobel Prize Nuggets. These stories are obscure and strangely tangential but still fascinating.

The Soviet Army Dancers

(via Neatorama)