Fun Links

This Indian Talent Show is the Awesomest Thing Ever.

Dee said she’d made her “legendary chocolate biscuit cake so many times now that the ingredients could make it by themselves.” Watch them do just that in this cute stop-motion animation.

The Christmas season has begun, but Christmas Day is still a month away! This little boy is finding it awful hard to wait.

Are Your Greetings Seasoned? One way to sell Christmas cards is to create a fabulous and funny story about their origin.

5 Fun Facts About Mitt Romney’s Hair. This is an example of the burning issues that will shape the 2012 presidential election.

Who could possibly give the Grinch a run for his money in the department of evilness? Darth Vader steps into the Dr. Seuss role as if he were born for it.

Grumpy Old Men in Real Life. Two former CFL football players from way back go at it with punches and a cane. NSFW language.

7 gifts not to get your girlfriend this Christmas. They each send an obvious message to her that you didn’t even think about.

Creating a Wildfire Out of Crayons. The art that is meant to melt has a burning message while it lasts.

Running Staying upright on a treadmill is hard enough. One woman not only keeps the pace but adds smooth dance moves!

Soviet Aeroflot Ad

Don't know the date on this, but I'd guess late 1960s.

Papageno the Jolly Birdcatcher

A 1935 German film by Lotte Reiniger. (via Your Daily Cartoon)

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

An all-star tribute to George Harrison from 2004. (via Breakfast Links)

Interesting Links

Designer Yeon Su Kim made a camera that’s so small it’s actually a ring you wear on your finger. What’s more, it activates by finger gestures, one for a shot, another for video recording.

Women make up less than a third of all speaking roles in movies. A new study by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found Hollywood is as sexist as we already know it is.

How dangerous is pepper spray? For one thing, it has way too many Scoville units to be classified as a vegetable.

When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality? A longtime Republican wonders what happened to his party.

Anne Rice Talks about Sparkly Vampires. She likes True Blood and doesn’t really hate Twilight.

Watch ten quirky science stunts in one video. Use them to entertain the kids and make yourself the coolest uncle in the family.

Billions of Chinese women endured the crippling tradition of foot binding, although many died trying to achieve the goal of “lotus feet.” The process of deforming a girl’s feet was started when she was between two and five years old.

How the Destruction of Rainforests is Contributing to the Rise of Malaria. Messing with Mother Nature tends to have a domino effect.

The miracle of miniaturization gives us a wireless pacemaker as small as a grain of rice. This means less invasive surgery and less chance of infection.

The Most Frightening Dance You’ll Ever See (unless you’ve seen Al Gore do the macarena). But the haka was designed to be that way.

Links for Fun

A Device to Deter a Bear. A ridiculous device. Let me show you it.

An award-winning hack puts YouTube videos on the front of your microwave. They’re not only for entertainment; the videos are selected to be the exact length you must wait for your hot ramen.

The man who made things fly. Like washing machines and lawnmowers and …suddenly I feel my life has been wasted.

The people in charge of getting the stadium ready should remember how big football players are. Terrell Brown is 377 pounds, which is no match for this flimsy chair.

If The Lord of the Rings had been made in 1944, I might have starred Humphrey Bogart, and might have looked something like this. Peter Lorre makes a pretty good Gollum.

Every week, we wonder which is the principle characters in The Walking Dead will end up as zombies. Here’s a look at their possible fates.

When you mashup Spongebob Squarepants with “Party Rock Anthem,” you make a 33-second video seem like three minutes. And then the tune gets stuck in your head! In most DVD commentary tracks, you get some insight into how the film was made, or at least extra trivia.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s commentary on Total Recall is a literal description of what you can see with your eyes, which makes it funnier than the movie alone.

Oscar the kitten may have been born blind, but things are looking up for him. Watch him in his new home, discovering what toys are for.

Ride down a mountain on an Alpine coaster. You might want to have some Dramamine before watching this video.

Doctor Who wants his hat back. This delightful story puts the Doctor in a children’s book role.

How many of pop culture faces can you identify from these minimalist icons? Sure, they look easy, but see how many there are!

A study shows drinking beer is good for you. But only one beer a day for maximum health benefits.

15 Songs You Always Knew, But Never Knew The Names Of. I am almost ashamed to admit that I knew almost all of them by name.

Thanksgiving Links

Why Thanksgiving is the Best Holiday of the Year. (via Bits and Pieces)

Top 10 Reasons Why Thanksgiving Eve Is the Best Bar Night of the Year. This is especially true for college students coming home. NSFW text.

5 Thanksgiving Disasters You're Probably Not Prepared For. And if you're not, this will scare you away from ever hosting the big dinner at your place. NSFW text.

The Food Lab's Complete Guide to a Stress-Free Thanksgiving. Of course, the most stress-free Thanksgiving is one where you don't cook! (via Metafilter)

14 Great Examples of Thanksgiving Food Art.

Eat Like the Pilgrims. That means preparing Thanksgiving dinner with no microwave, no can openers, and no sugar!

The classic WKRP Turkey Drop.

Posters for rejected Thanksgiving films.

Five Other Thanksgiving Holidays. Gratitude is the theme, not the turkey and football.

Thanksgiving dinner will cost a bit more this year than in years past. Here are the numbers.

Let's Talk Turkey!

Manly Ways to Prepare Turkey. And here are another 5 Odd Holiday Dishes to go with that adventurous bird.

Great Food Ideas For A Fantasy and Sci-Fi Themed Thanksgiving. Just in case you'd rather have fun with friends than eat turkey and watch football.

7 people who will ruin your Thanksgiving dinner. And guess what? The table only holds eight!

Charleston

Al Minns & Leon James from the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.

10 Celebrity Refreshments

Advertisers know that the taste of a better lifestyle will sell products. Celebrities learn this as well, and can make a killing putting their name on something that can impart even a little of their charm on a fan. These beverages just might be the perfect gift for a fan that you know. Here are ten you might not be familiar with, in a list I posted at mental_floss.

Good Reads and Info

The Occupy Wall Street movement was losing steam after two months, until the police crackdown Tuesday night. It may have been just what the protesters needed.

Sour candy? That stuff will rot your teeth -kinda like soaking them in battery acid.

6 Attempts at Damage Control That Caused Way Bigger Problems. It's called the Streisand Effect after a real-life example.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is taking a new look into the case of actress Natalie Wood’s death. A new book has some information that should have been disclosed 30 years ago -if it’s true.

Staggeringly Tall and Mind-Blowingly Old. I used to date a guy like that, but we’re supposed to be talking about magnificent trees.

Magnetism, electricity, traffic, cell phones, pesticides, and other features of modern living may have serious effects on babies in the womb. If that’s not depressing enough, antidepressants can also cause problems.

Retirement may become a thing of the past as people work into their elderly years. Some like to work, but others just can’t afford to quit.

An undercover FBI agent spent twenty years infiltrating white supremacist groups. Now 59 and sick, John Matthews wants to tell his story before its too late.e.

The ‘mysterious’ whale graveyard discovered in a desert. The twenty or so whales of various species date two to seven million years back.

A portable shelter inspired by a an armadillo’s shell won the Bustler’s annual Zombie Safe House Design Competition. It has many of the comforts of home, folds up into backpack size, and should protect you from the undead.

How Merrill, Goldman and the Brothers Lehman made their Money. Even those who are too big to fail had to start somewhere.

Neighbors aren’t always neighborly, especially when they’ve both decided to spruce up their yard at the other’s expense.

Fun and Funny Links

The Sand Box. How embarrassing to finally get a home and then find out your new family is just stupid.

Congress declares pepper spray a vegetable.

Meanwhile, on Toddlers and Tiaras...

A two-man dubstep robot dance is only interesting if the dancers are very good at it. Fortunately, the Robotboys are very good at it.

The Seven Deadly Websites. If you don’t recognize them from their logo color schemes, then you are not a proper sinner.

The World Longboarding Championships in Teutonia, Brazil is caught on video. Imagine skateboarding at 70 miles per hour down a mountain -then watch it!

One of these days, I’m going to get a cute bunny rabbit just to open my mail for me. Since all I get is junk mail, he can eat it,too.

10 Bizarre English Pub Names. (via Breakfast Links)

The movie Expendables 2 is scaring off all of Bulgaria’s endangered bats. This is important, because the Bulgarian EPA is scarier than Sylvester Stallone any day.

10 of TV’s most beloved characters with disabilities. Each is a small step toward making televisionland somewhat like real life.

Primitive

Blaze Starr getting all sexy without getting naked. This was filmed sometime in the 1950s. Music by the Cramps.

Interesting Links

10 Most Incredible Volcanic Eruptions Seen from Space. The earth has always been awesome, and photography is getting more awesome all the time.

A Golden Mean in Your Mouth.

LIFE's 20 Worst Covers. (via Fark)

Rich Juzwiak judged a child beauty pageant. No extra snark is necessary to make this both interesting and disturbing. The extended version is here.

Spend some time on the internet and you should became an expert at both detecting and delivering sarcasm. According to research into the subject, that could benefit your brain. Yeah, right.

A new book sheds light on the sorry conditions in U.S. women’s prisons. Rape, mistreatment, and threats are a daily part of life for prisoners.

Przewalski’s Horse: A Story of Survival. The last true wild horse on earth was down to only 12 individuals, but is making a slow steady comeback.

The movie version of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (by my erstwhile mental_floss colleague Ransom Riggs) will be probably be handled by Tim Burton. Although Burton is pretty sure he must have written the story, too.

The War on Sanity.

Neil Gaiman has a cameo role playing himself on The Simpsons this Sunday. Get a video sneak peek at Gaiman trying out his American accent.

For most of the world, the Twilight saga is burning itself out, but the most diehard fans are excited about the new movie opening today. Here’s a gallery of Twihard nuttiness at the Los Angeles premier.

Caldonia

Frank "Sugarchile" Robinson was only six years old when he performed in the movie "No Leave No Love" in 1946. Read more about this child prodigy at YouTube. (via deputy dog)

Extreme Slip’n’Slide

You may have seen Bruiser’s Slip’n’Slide at Something Awful. You may have seen the House Slip’n’Slide. But motocross professional Travis Pastrana has the ultimate Slip’n’Slide right here. Do not try this at home. (via YesButNoButYes)

11 Impressive Thanksgiving Cupcakes

Thanksgiving is a time for traditional foods, but there’s no reason you can’t celebrate with cupcakes! These cupcakes are already traditional in two ways: they either taste like traditional Thanksgiving foods or they are decorated with traditional holiday imagery. We’ve got both kinds for you, in a list I posted at mental_floss.

Links for Fun

Children show us how creativity takes time. So do you want it done by the deadline, or do you want something different and memorable?

Bruce Wayne's Medical Report from Gotham City Hospital. (via Neatorama)

2016 is a feature film from Ghana with Predator- and Alien-like creatures. The trailer is crazier than any viral video made by bored teenagers.

Paul made a sweet storybook gift for Emma. He put it on video and called it Vines.

Bert and Ernie record their voices for Tom Tom GPS. Maybe now they can tell you how to get to Sesame Street!

8 things your tattoo (and where it is) says about you. Anyone with these tattoos is welcome to speak up and refute any points.

Michael J. Fox appeared at a Parkinson’s disease fundraiser last weekend and took to the stage to play “Johnny B. Goode.” The event took place exactly 56 years to the day after the scene in Marty McFly played it at his parent’s high school dance in the movie Back to the Future.

It sounds like a SyFy story, but there’s no movie effects here. A giant robot snake has been developed, shown in a video with a real robot spider.

A group called 2CELLOS does a cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Try to guess what instruments they play.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is the adorable seashell that charmed the internet a year ago. Now he’s back with a new video.

The easiest way to have your very own TARDIS is to convert your refrigerator. I always wanted a fridge that’s roomier on the inside!

Warning: Arctic Fox Pups Are Obscenely Cute. One of them has heterochromia, which is cute in itself.

Informative Links

Ancient Astronomers. How come they knew so much?

Google Earth has some strange-looking pictures of the Gobi desert. Out in the middle of nowhere, China, there are massive grids and circle that can be seen only from space.

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich.

Football is almost a religion at Penn State, and the faithful have been shaken by the Sandusky scandal. This week, the fans are doing some serious soul-searching.

E. Coli scares us when we find it on food, but we could learn to love its fuel-producing abilities. With a little genetic modification, we could put the bugs to work eating sugar and cranking out biodiesel.

Mexican officials are investigating the case of the 10-year-old girl who gave birth, to see if she might have been raped. She’s ten years old, isn’t that enough evidence that she was raped?

Stuntman/gymnast/free runner Damien Walters shows what he’s been doing this past year. Get ready to let your jaw drop, as if that’s an acrobatic move.

An Unofficial Guide to Life as a Ref. In case you ever considered going in to the “field.”

The U.S. government has a few job openings in Houston, Texas, with some travel required. Applications will be taken now through January.

On Friday, a hearing will decide whether the military can be held responsible for rape within the ranks. A suit by 28 plaintiffs alleges that the brass swept their sexual assault cases under the rug.

Cardiac stem cells can help damaged heart muscles repair and heal themselves after a heart attack. The new technique contradicts the long-held view that hearts cannot regenerate.

UltraSlo

Z compilation of some super slow-motion footage. Neat!

14 Creative and Clever Soaps

If you want to get a gift for someone who seems to have everything they need or want, here’s a bit of advice. You should get them something they can use up! Or else get them something that’s so different and creative that they’ll treasure it anyway. The soaps on the list that I posted at mental_floss could fill both suggestions.