Elephant and Dog

A lovely story about an elephant and a dog who found each other at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. (via Arbroath)

Friday Fun Links

The top ten Super Bowl Ads of All Time. I'll even sit through football to see something as funny as the flatulent horses.

15 Gifts That Will Surely Piss Off Your Valentine. Spending a lot of money will not hide the underlying message these gifts imply. (via Neatorama)

Her Morning Elegance is a clever stop-motion music video. This woman does more in her sleep than most folks do all day long!

Virgin Atlantic's 'Culinary Journey of Hell'. The best letter complaining about airline food ever published.

Televisions's Sci-Fi and Superheroes from the 70s includes some from the 80s, which in no way detracts from the fun. How many do you recognize?

Pittsburgh vs. Arizona Super Bowl Food-Off. Which location has the best game day snack foods in their restaurants? Vote for your favorites!

Make your own Valentine message hearts. These are bigger, taste better, and say cooler things than the little candy hearts you know.

20 Baffling Foreign Movie Posters. Artists know they don't have to actually see a movie to create a poster that has nothing to do with the film advertised.

La Vie En Rose: A touching story of a great love and a long-awaited reunion. What it will touch is your funny bone!

Angels of Death: Seven Medical Murderers

The grisly stories of eight medical professionals who killed their own patients. This is part two of a series, with part three coming next week.

read more | digg story

Exiting the Factory

The oldest motion picture in existence, from 1895. (via Metafilter)

Legend of Wooly Swamp

By the Charley Daniels Band.

Fun Links

Obama and the Unicorn.

Have you seen what an iPhone can do to an airplane?

Sweet Dreams, the extraordinary adventures of an ordinary cupcake. Snacking is almost required during this video.

The Secret of Star Wars Fandom. As odd as it seems, you're not a true fan unless you hate Star Wars.

Use your arrow keys to make an Etch-A-Sketch drawing online. Unlike the real toy, you can save your masterpieces afterward. (via Neatorama)

Scriball is a simple game that will suck up your day. Guide one ball to the other ball with a line you draw. Easy to understand once you get started, but you'll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what strategy to use. (via Metafilter)

This machine fells, strips, and chops trees in to logs in mere seconds. Now I know what "deforestation" means.

Sexy Panda. An interesting look into how people manage to entice pandas to mate.

Information Links

This handy list of Oscar nominees will prepare you for the awards on February 22nd. This list of Razzie nominees will tell you which movies to avoid.

The rise and fall of a video game champion. Playing video games professionally wasn't as easy as it looked in 1982.

How to Lose $20 Billion of Value in 2 Trading Days. The story of Bank of America and its disastrous deal with Merrill Lynch.

Keeping your used car can save you big bucks in the long run. The author of this post figures he saved $25,000 by driving his '95 Prism instead of trading it for a new car.

She isn't as well-known as Jane Goodall or Dian Fossey, but Birute Mary Galdikas has devoted her life to the orangutans of Indonesia. She's worried about how palm oil plantations are dstroying their territory.

"If you started enforcing all the rules in Room 315 there would be no students — everyone would always be suspended." School of Hard Knocks is a heartbreaking 7-part series of articles about kids with behavioral problems in a Philadelpha high school. Links to each chapter are here.

The 20 Worst Foods in America 2009. Before you get sick thinking about it, know that they offer an alternative for each. (via Geek Like Me)

6 Words That Make Your Resume Suck. They appear on everyone's resume, but they don't mean anything. (via Lifehacker)

Cats Can Be Jerks

(via YesButNoButYes)

Where the Blacktop Ends

From Keith Urban.

Fresh Hare

Bugs Bunny from 1942.

Threads

1984 British TV docudrama about nuclear war.

Informative Links

In case you missed it, here's a transcript and video of president Obama's inaugural speech. And a bird's eye view of the crowd on the national mall.

The bark of a male cheetah will cause a female to begin ovulating. This discovery will help conservation breeding programs for the endangered species, if those in charge can figure how to make a cat bark.

January is the perfect time to dream about summer and plan your garden. If you’ve never had one before, read 7 Tips for Starting Your Own Vegetable Garden. (via Lifehacker)

Dangerous Psychology Experiments from the Past. Stage a rape to see what bystanders will do -what could possibly go wrong?

10 Awesome Things You Didn't Know About Clint Eastwood. (via Unique Daily)

Soldiers returning from war must pay for lost or damaged equipment, including bloodstained uniforms.

Clever Critters: 8 Best Non-Human Tool Users. Scratch "tool use" as the dividing line between humans and other animals.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. The choices we make about spending our money are dependent on many things besides logic. (via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories)

Deaths on the Movie Set explains some of the different ways movie producers have dealt with the sudden loss of an actor in the middle of filming.

The discovery of methane on Mars caused a media frenzy last week, because one source of methane is "little critters basically farting." We still don't know the reason it's there.

Tombstone Canyon

1932. From the YouTube page:

Trying to find the answer to his mystery-shrouded past, Ken Mason narrowly escapes an ambush at Tombstone Canyon... which is haunted by the mysterious and disfigured Phantom, whose strange cry is a warning of death!

Fun and Funny Links

The fashion statement of the inauguration was Aretha Franklin's hat. In just a few short hours, everyone is trying out the look.

Mongo the Trebuchet. Mark Winkler spent six months building a machine to fling watermelons and fireballs, just for kicks.

Marry Me, a cute short film about a girl who likes a little boy and a boy who likes his BMX bike. Inspired by a true story.

My friend, Biggus Dickus.

An animated music video for "Ding" by Seeed puts the wild back in wildlife. Warning: The tune might stick in your head all day.

The Remnants is a web-only series pilot (starring Ze Frank) shot during the writer's strike about life after the apocalypse. If you like it, sign the petition for more episodes.

The 5 Most Terrifying Civilizations In The History of the World. Their behavior makes one question the definition of "civilized".

Relax

Frankie Goes to Hollywood from 1983.

Inauguration Day Links and Other Stuff

Inauguration Day Links.

Goodbye, George and Goodbye George 2.

A combination of extreme cold and high fuel prices has created a humanitarian crisis for the village of Emmonak, Alaska. Since when do we let things like this happen in the United States? And what is governor Palin doing?

A Brief History of Breast Implants.

Dirty Secrets of College Admissions. When the decision process is this arbitrary, you should never beat yourself up over a rejection.

Watch time-lapse videos of the Aurora Borealis. It’s nature’s bonus for those hardy enough to live that far away from temperate zones. (via Metafilter)

Make any drink in your refrigerator into soda pop with the U-Fizz.

Searching for Intelligence in our Genes. Despite amazing advances in the study of genetics, intelligence remains a profound mystery.

Inauguration Day

The Haunted World of Ed Wood, Jr.

A documentary about the strangest film producer ever, responsible for Plan 9 From Outer Space, Glen or Glenda, and more. (via Metafilter)

The Ad Placement From Hell

You’ve seen unfortunate ad placements before, but you’ve never seen anything as unfortunate as this commercial break during Friday’s Battlestar Galactica. There are other words I could use besides “unfortunate”, such as shocking, disgusting, or hilarious, but I couldn’t decide between them.

read more | digg story

Links for Fun

120 Celebrity Mugshots.

The Ten Funniest Workout Videos Ever. (via Gorilla Mask)

The wedding cost about $200, and customers continued to order burritos during the ceremony.

How to select your medical specialty. (via Metafilter)

Everyday Normal Crew. Jon Lajoie raps about people you can relate to -you probably know them. Language NSFW.

Japanese games shows are wacky. French games shows are something else entirely.

Ugly Jugs. Get your mind out of the gutter; that means exactly what it says.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button should be an oscar contender. We also enjoyed it years ago when it was called Forrest Gump.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King would have celebrated his 80th birthday this year.

Barack Obama on the Inauguration

Born To Be Alive

1979 hit by Patrick Hernandez.

Good Reads and Information

The 5 Most Amazing Real Life MacGyver Moments. We laughed when MacGyver did it, but gape in awe at real-life heroes who fashioned amazing things out of nothing.

Champion Ice Skater Dies; Gives Birth Two Days Later. A really bittersweet story of the miracle of medical technology.

Meet the People Who Made Your Clothes. The "made in..." labels don't tell nearly enough of the story.

Taking a walk in the country can do wonders for your short term memory. But only if you remember to do it.

The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder. An inability to calibrate one's feelings and behavior baffles psychologists and leads to a 10% suicide rate among sufferers.

1300 girls defy the Taliban to attend school in Kandahar, despite an attack on 11 students and four teachers that left some scarred for life. There's nothing in the world more threatening than a woman who can take care of herself.

The lowest blood oxygen levels ever recorded were taken by, and from, healthy doctors near the peak of Mt. Everest. Their findings could lead to savings patients who are at risk of sudden blood oxygen deprivation.

Six Kids Who Made the World a Better Place. Not just for their friends and family, but for everyone.

How Barry Obama became Barack.

Informative Links

A Brief History of Breast Implants.

Champion Ice Skater Dies; Gives Birth Day Days Later. A really bittersweet story of the miracle of medical technology.

The lowest blood oxygen levels ever recorded were taken by, and from, healthy doctors near the peak of Mt. Everest. Their findings could lead to savings patients who are at risk of sudden blood oxygen deprivation.

Six Kids Who Made the World a Better Place. Not just for their friends and family, but for everyone.

How Barry Obama became Barack.

Dirty Secrets of College Admissions. When the decision process is this arbitrary, you should never beat yourself up over a rejection.

Watch time-lapse videos of the Aurora Borealis. It’s nature’s bonus for those hardy enough to live that far away from temperate zones. (via Metafilter)

Searching for Intelligence in our Genes. Despite amazing advances in the study of genetics, intelligence remains a profound mystery.

How Spiders Spin Webs

(via Bits and Pieces)

Fun and Funny Links

The Recently Deflowered Girl, an etiquette book for those awkward moments you hadn't planned for. By Edward Gorey writing as social expert Hyacinthe Phyppe.

Chatty Katty will talk your ear off. When your cat is already hyper, the last thing you want him in is your caffeine drink.

The Viral Video Pet Store. Why get just a dog or cat, when you can get one that will bring you millions of hits on YouTube?

Ricky Gervais inspires David Bowie to write a song about him. Too bad it's not a song you'd ever admit to inspiring.

The coolest test pattern ever! If you're too young to know what a test pattern is, just take my world for it -this is cool.

How to select your medical specialty. (via Metafilter)

Everyday Normal Crew. Jon Lajoie raps about people you can relate to -you probably know them. Language NSFW.

Watch artisans put designs inside hard candy. And you thought it was from a machine!

I Put A Spell on You

Screamin' Jay Hawkins. (via Boing Boing)

Links to Learn Something

The biggest full moon of 2009 will be visible this weekend. When the perigee Moon is near the horizon, an illusion mixes with reality to produce a truly stunning view.

Some Protect the Ego by Working on Their Excuses Early. When you have a built-in reason for failure, the rare victory is even sweeter. (via Lifehacker)

A class action lawsuit by residents of the Amazon may cost Chevron up to 23 billion dollars! No one disputes that Texaco (which was later acquired by Chevron) left an environmental mess in Ecuador; the question is who is legally responsible for rectifying it.

The hacker who infiltrated Twitter a few days ago explains the very simple way he did it. The lesson learned: don't make your passwords so easy to guess, especially if you administer a social network site.

The Washing Machine That Ate My Sari. When it comes to developing successful products and services for a global market, there is an almost infinite number of ways to get it wrong. Also see Cross Cultural Marketing Blunders. (via Metafilter)

9 Methods for Mastering Your Money in 2009. Commonsense advice with tips on getting these things done. (via Consumerist)

Despite DNA technology, it's harder to solve a murder than ever before. Factors on both sides of the law have causes a drastic drop in the case clearance rate.

Someone Behind the Door

1971 thriller starring Anthony Perkins and Charles Bronson. From IMDb: A neurosurgeon with a cheating wife takes an amnesiac into his home and conditions him to believe that the cheating wife is his own and to take the "appropriate" action.

Friday Fun Links

Watch the entire pilot episode of Gilligan's Island, with a different Professor and two girls you don't even know, setting out on a doomed six-hour tour.

Top Ten Birds That Could Kick Your Ass. (via Unique Daily)

You'd be surprised to see what TV newscasters do during commercial breaks. (via I Am Bored)

Loss Cat. (via Everlasting Blort)

Ten Movie Endings Spoiled By History. (via Look At This)

What happened at 3:18 PM?

Can you ace this logic test? Or would you rather argue about the answers?

This dog wants her blanket! And she knows exactly how to get it.

Wet Hare

We can also use an occasional dose of Bugs Bunny! (via Canadian Cynic)

Walk-in Fridge

The Thief of Bagdad

From 1924. Learn all about it at the Internet Archive.

Links to Learn Something

How to convert your car to run on trash with a homemade biomass converter. Just like Doc Brown in Back to the Future! (via Gizmodo)

The Real Story of the Von Trapp Family, on whom The Sound of Music was based. See what they are doing now. (via Metafilter)

Fred Syversen skied off the wrong cliff, fell 351 feet, and lived to tell about it. He accidently set a world record for the highest cliff jump, according to video evidence. (via Arbroath)

How cool would it be to be a buyer for Think Geek? In this interview, meet John Frazier, the guy who looks for cool toys all day.

Ann Edie has a guide dog, but he's a horse named Panda. Parrots, pigs, monkeys: who decides what kind of creatures can be considered service animals? (via Metafilter)

Blow soap bubbles in cold weather and watch them freeze and break! Or see pictures from someone who did just that.

The Iguana That Darwin Never Saw. It's an evolutionarily distinct species that lives only on one volcano, and it's endangered. Oh, and it's pink!

Fun Links

Photographs of people re-enacting memorable panels from The Far Side. I don't even need captions to laugh all over again!

Sparebots, delightful figures made out of resistors, caps, pots, chips, sockets, and other electronic parts!

Accusations of Photoshop! Matt Harding spills the beans about his Where in the Hell is Matt? videos.

Fark's annual headlines of the year.

All you need to rent a U-Haul is a license and a credit card. A bit of driving experience would have done this driver some good.

What happens when Dr. Who meets Captain Kirk? Watch and see!

A look at what happened to Michael Vick's dogs.

Yes, I'M Cute!

Gotta chew them toesies! (via Arbroath)

Weblog Awards

Through some quirk in the universe, I am up for a Weblog Award in the category of Best Large Blog! Please take a minute to go vote for me here. You can vote once every 24 hours until January 13.

A couple of the other sites I work for are nominated, too. Vote for YesButNoButYes in the Best Humor Blog category here. Vote for Geeks Are Sexy in the Best Technology Blog category here.

Vote for everyone else here. There are a lot of fine blogs in the running you should check out! I posted a list of recommendations if you don't have a favorite and want to do me a favor.

Thanks a million!

The Times of Harvey Milk

The 1984 documentary about Harvey Milk the San Francisco openly gay member of the Board of Supervisors. Milk and mayor George Moscone were assassinated in 1978. The new movie Milk starring Sean Penn is now in theaters.

Good Reads

The End of the Financial World as We Know It. The mess we're in now required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain.

5 Homeless Guys Who Accomplished Amazing Things. Any accomplishments are much more difficult without an address, bathroom, or place to keep your stuff.

Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille, who invented the reading system for the blind. The instrument that caused his blindness became the tool used for his invention. (via Fark)

25 of the Greatest Self-Made Men in American History. Finding a man like this is a lifetime project -I know!

Numbers are Innate. I'm surprised; I thought the process of learning math is why we have all these fingers and toes.

The Natural Basis for Gender Inequality. The sexes are so different, why should we work for equal rights?

Cities needlessly shine billions of dollars worth of light directly into the sky each year. Turn down the light pollution, and we'll be able to see the Milky Way. (via Metafilter)

The Legacy of Sadako. A 12-year-old girl who did fifty years ago is still inspiring people around the world.

Suicide is Painless

From the film M*A*S*H. (via Cynical-C)

Dark Eyes/St. Louis Blues

The Washboard Serenaders, from 1936.

Flirting with Magic

(via Unique Daily)

Friday Fun Links

The 11 Manliest Cocktails In The World.

This is the time to cry for mama. Not that mama wants to hear it... or see it!

How to get into the office when there's no one there. Like I always said, necessity is the mother of Southern ingenuity.

How Not To Do Plastic Surgery. (via Look at This)

Escape from Icy Hill. A bird's eye view of an icy hill in Portland, with the most appropriate music possible. This video is full of win.

A journalist/comedian interviews Fred Phelps, Junior of the Westboro Baptist Church. And then begins to flirt with him.

Watch a super-cute video of a gang of dogs decorating a Christmas tree. The site is in Hungarian, but don't let that stop you from enjoying the fun! (Thanks, Johnny Cat!)

The Legend of Master Legend. Rolling Stone takes a hilarious look at the lives behind real life super heroes. (via Neatorama)

Cheetah Cub and Puppy

The Cincinnati Zoo trains a cheetah cub to be an "ambassador cat". When grown, Tommy T will be taken to the public for educational talks. (via Arbroath)

Good Reads for th New Year

8 Television Pioneers. Meaning, the geniuses who invented television.

Please Don't Divorce Us. A large and growing Flickr set in reaction to California's Proposition 8.

Mystery of the Brain: a blind man navigates an obstacle course perfectly with no visual awareness.

It's Cheaper to Keep Her. The recession and economic turmoil is creating a new class of casualties: Married couples who can't afford to get divorced.

People say they understand their pets' language, and vice versa. Pets have no comment at this time.

Some things about traffic that may surprise you. Excerpted from the book Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt. (via Look at This)

The White House is still working to gut environmental legislation with a policy that prohibits controls on greenhouses gases for coal-fired power plants. The incoming administration can change that, but it will take time.

Men may flirt with risk because they think it will help them score women. That'll only work if they don't get killed first.

The Top Ten Dinosaur and Fossil Finds of 2008, from National Geographic. It's been a bizarre year for paleontologists.

The origins of Jesus' name.

Happy New Year!