Miss Cellania's Links

The Meaning of the Finger.

I was brushing my dog and this was the face she gave me...

You’re Eight Times More Likely to be Killed by a Police Officer than a Terrorist.

6 Actors Who Thought They Had Made a Totally Different Movie. (via mental_floss)

Friendly Robots of the Soviet Union. (via Metafilter)

7 Tips for Building the Best Snow Fort Ever. Built it right, and it may last until April.

Following George Takei around the Sundance Film Festival is exhausting, even just reading about it. But going all day is what you do when you have a film to promote -even at age 77.

8 Ways To Get A Fictional High. Literature addresses drug addiction by making up drugs that act any way an author wants them to.

What Happens to the Death Penalty When Lethal Injection Isn’t Quick and Painless? It starts to look like cruel and unusual punishment.

The Arctic Ocean was once covered with ice and mostly ignored. Now that it's navigable water more of the year, international shipping rules must be hammered out.

Drawer

(via Bad Newspaper)

What a Wonderful World

Eva Cassidy closed her show with this song at the Bayou in September of 1996. It was her final performance, as she died of cancer in November. (Thanks, Bill Badrick!)

One of These Things...

(via reddit)

Happy Squirrel Appreciation Day!

Frank Page, the cartoonist behind Bob the Squirrel, brought an important subject to my attention. January 21st is Squirrel Appreciation Day! How do you celebrate Squirrel Appreciation Day? I have quite a few suggestions, in an article I wrote for mental_floss.

Winter Weather

(via Neatorama)

Slow-motion Match Burning

This match head was filmed at 4,000 frames per second. That means the ignition, which normally happens in an instant, takes several minutes. We get a good look at what happens before the flame begins, involving the cascading chemical reaction over the surface and melting globs of sulfur. It's totally mesmerizing,and by the time the flame comes, you've almost forgotten what it is you're watching. To get such a good view, Alan Teitel and his UltraSlo Studio team used a huge array of lights on this one tiny match.  (via Boing Boing)

Miss Cellania's Links

What Does the Freezer Say? (via Metafilter)

Poet Christopher Smart wrote the 89-line eulogy of his cat Jeoffry sometime between 1757 and 1763, while he was an inmate at St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics in London. Read the story of how that came about, and its entire text, at Spitalfields Life. (via Nag on the Lake)

The Market for Used Dentures. (via Most Forbidden Zone)

Around 15,000 people turned out in the cold Saturday in Riga, Latvia, to form a two-kilometer-long chain of book lovers to transfer books from the old National Library to the newly-built National Library across the river. They could have used trucks, but what's the fun in that?

Grandma gets a bikini wax. (Thanks, Rochelle!)

A two-man bobsled team from Jamaica has qualified for the Olympics. Internet donors contributed almost $30,000 in Dogecoin to fund their travel to Sochi.

How I Met Your Mother Filmed Its Big Climactic Ending Almost Eight Years Ago. That had to make planning difficult when you don't know how long a series will last.

10 European Churches Adorned With Human Bones. After all, there's only so much room in the cemetery, and people are waiting their turn.

Researchers hid a camera in an egg among a colony of penguins. The camera was rolling when a falcon stole the egg and flew off, resulting in a great aerial view.

The many, many problems of the Sochi Olympics. The expense, the politics, the security concerns, and the lack of snow all make us wonder how the place was ever selected.

Bird with a Mic

(via Fark)

Star Trek Quartet

The Hi-Fidelity Quartet performs at a barbershop competition. I know I've posted this before, but it's been years and I can't find it anywhere.

8 DNA Sculptures from Around the World

It's been more than 60 years since we learned about the double helix structure of DNA, the code inside living cells that controls the building blocks and functions -and even the length- of life. That shape is very important, but it's also pretty. Artists all over the world have taken that attractive structure and created artworks with it, as a tribute to science and as something wonderful to see. See a few of them in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Teaching the Baby to Walk Down Stairs

In this video, we see how a mother dog teaches her pup how to walk down the stairs. First she lovingly demonstrates, then she provides watchful encouragement. The puppy is scared, but he does the job. That's a good dog! Then we are treated to a look at a cat teaching a kitten how to navigate down the stairs. Now you know the difference between cats and dogs. (via Daily Picks and Flicks)

Cult

(via Mostly Forbidden Zone)

Search Terms

The way you select or spell your words has an effect on your search. I tried it myself with a slightly different term.

(via Pleated-Jeans)

The Daily Egret

This guy in Florida has made friends with a snowy egret who comes to call every day for a bit of dinner. He better be ready with the boloney, or this friendship won't last! Do you get the sneaking suspicion that this egret has friends all over town? (via Tastefully Offensive)

How To Tell If You've Been Abducted By Aliens

Have you been abducted by aliens? 

Believe it or not, there is a support group called Abduct Anon for people who believe they've been kidnapped by extraterrestrials. Are you about to be abducted by aliens and subjected to medical experiments? Or has it happened already? Here are some signs that Abduct Anon and other UFO groups say you should be on the watch for. 

Read the list at Neatorama.

Miss Cellania's Links

Introducing the Slingshot Spider.

The Comment Section for Every Article Ever Written About Intimate Grooming. (Thanks, Kate!)

How I Flunked China's Driving Test ... Three Times. Try a sample test yourself.

Frankenstein's Monster Takes a Tea Break.

35 Behind-the-scenes Photographs on the Set of Ghostbusters.

Girls on Film: How Frozen killed Prince Charming. Little girls should know that there's more to a man than good looks and royal titles.

50 Highly Anticipated Films At The 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Let's hope all this creativity leads to some fresh ideas at our local theaters.

Get to Know the 2014 Oscar-Nominated Short Films. Watch the trailers and read about the documentary, animated, and live action short nominees.

Dystopias Aren't Just Great Literary Fun, They're Excellent Social Barometers. Cautionary tales are best read in the context for which they were written.

In 1945, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was told to stay on Lubang Island and defend it from the Allies. He took his orders seriously -for 29 years.

Crawdad

(via Fark)

Fun with Dry Ice

The video blogger who goes by the name CrazyRussianHacker took two pounds of dry ice and plopped it into a kitchen sink containing hot water. The effect is grand! His roommate made me nervous for a bit when he lied down in the fog, because he's depriving himself of oxygen, but he didn't stay there long. (via Viral Viral Videos)

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Closing

(via Bad Newspaper)