Fun and Funny Links

The Marvelous Breadfish. (via the Presurfer)

Here’s how time works. Measurable time and perceived time is quite different, as you always suspected. (via Cosmic Variance)

Pavlov’s Dog Game. If you remember your Psych 101 class on classical conditioning, you can make the dog drool on command.

Twin baby bunnies sitting in paper cups. Sweeter than any soda you could have put in them.

Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake perform the history of rap. Take my word for it, this is better than you would expect.

Glenn Beck saw the Donald Duck cartoon made about him and responded. Of course, his response was immediately edited into a Disney cartoon.

A Graphic Guide to Facebook Portraits. Funny, the circumstances of my picture are nowhere to be found on the chart. (via Buzzfeed)

An industrial milling machine plays the MacGyver Theme while it works. Why they selected that particular tune to listen to all day, I have no clue.

How old is too old to trick-or-treat? At a certain point, you’re expected to pay for your own candy.

The Harlem Yodel

Performed by Dandridge Sisters and the Cats And The Fiddle. (via Everlasting Blort)

Ten Ways We Use Corn

The date today is 10/10/10! In celebration, mental_floss is publishing ten lists of ten. My contribution is an article that doesn't sound all that interesting by title, but turned out to be a fascinating subject as I put it together. The most historically American crop is also the most versatile, as you'll see in this article I wrote for mental_floss' on 10/10/10.



The Late Movies: Wildlife Recreation

“Look Ma, there’s a wild animal in the backyard! Get the video camera!”

There are lots of fun things to do in our backyards, so who can blame the creatures who want to come and play? Just have your camera ready, like the folks who made these videos I gathered and posted at mental_floss.



Carmen Amaya

Legendary Flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya in the 1939 movie Maria de la O.

Informative Links

Close Encounters of the Sacred Kind. A retired Presbyterian minister finds UFO sightings in the Bible.

This is what happens when you don't pay taxes and pay-for-service is voluntary. Here's how it works. Kinda like health insurance.

A Breed Apart: Boning up on Man's Best Friend.

Why do people confess to crimes they didn’t commit? A dozen people in New York state alone have been exonerated by DNA evidence after they confessed to murder. (via Metafilter)

Canadian artist Tom Thomson’s death in 1917 remains Canada’s greatest mystery. But there is some new information in the case, thanks to CSI-style forensic analysis. (via Nag on the Lake)

Animal Prosthetics: A Leg Up on a Bad Break. Most of these cases are filed under “research”, but a replacement limb makes a big difference in the quality of life for that particular critter.

Take a look at The World’s First Artificial Heart. It looks mechanical almost to the point of steampunk, yet it did its job back in 1969.

A story of censorship in our schools. The original post is reprinted at Reddit, where someone said, sure you have the right to be offended, and we have the right to ignore you.

The Sculpted House in Genessee, Colorado was made famous in the 1973 Woody Allen movie Sleeper. Take a closer look at it, and peek inside with these recent photographs. (via Boing Boing)

One Froggy Evening

Warner Brothers, 1955. (via the Presurfer)

Neatolicious Fun Facts: Bluetooth

Where did Bluetooth come from? And why did they name it that? I went looking for the answers and found some really interesting tidbits, which I jotted down to pass along to you as these Neatolicious Fun Facts at Neatorama.


8 Curious Periodic Tables

One thing I love about the internet is the never-ending supply of geeks with a sense of humor. Most of us learned about the periodic table of elements in junior high school (middle school to you younger folks). Some understand and remember it well enough to adapt the template into an organizational table for other things besides elements. Go ahead, have a seat at one of these tables in a list I posted at mental_floss.



Links for Fun

9 Things You Missed At The Beverly Hills Tea Party.

With this web toy (also known as a Javascript bookmarklet), you can turn any website into your own game of Asteroids. Drag the script to your toolbar, then activate it to begin shooting stuff on the page. (via Gorilla Mask)

Mark Zuckerberg Did Not Enjoy The Social Network. You can tell because the “like” button suddenly became disabled.

This menu was apparently translated by machine. Or by someone who doesn’t speak both languages, but was in a hurry to get the job done. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

4 Infomercial Superstars (and Where They Came From). But wait! For extra shipping and handling, we’ll throw in videos of each.

Genki Sudo and his band World Order have a new song called Mind Shift. You might not even notice the song while you’re watching the baffling video.

Right Wing Radio Duck. Jonathan McIntosh combined dozens of Donald Duck cartoons with some clips from Glenn Beck radio shows to make an astonishingly seamless cartoon.

Stand-up Comedy: Funny Urinals of the World. Laugh all you want, as long as I don’t have to clean them.

Hollywood Party

Laurel and Hardy, 1934.

Good Reads and Information

The San Francisco Fire Department's Ladder Shop.

For the fifth year, College Scholarship.org is offering the $10,000 Blogging Scholarship. If you are a college student with a weblog, get your entry in by October 21st!

Rolling Stone magazine traveled to Kentucky for research on the Tea Party. I'm honestly afraid people voting against their own interests may decide this election.

Australia’s Lost Giants. Seven foot red kangaroos are scary, but they may have fallen to a puny predator called Homo sapiens.

Citizens of Sicily are standing up to the Mafia. There’s safety in numbers, and organized crime is beginning to look weak in the face of opposition.

Beam Me Up Scotchie: 10 Star Trek-Themed Cocktails.

Facebook Fakery. You will be shocked, shocked, I say, to find that the movie The Social Network is not exactly a true story.

Do you know how to use various shapes of pasta in recipes -or even name them? The Geometry of Pasta has the terms, usage, and recipe for dozens of them. (via the Presurfer)

A man accused of stealing 40,000 coat hangers is on trial. A very interesting trial, as it turns out. (via Breakfast Links)

My Financial Career

A 1962 short by Gerald Potterton based on a story by Stephen Leacock, archived at the National Film Board of Canada. (via Everlasting Blort)

9 Spooky Halloween Party Treats

Trick-or-treaters don’t eat homemade Halloween treats anymore, which is a shame for imaginative chefs. For those of you throwing a Halloween party, the sky is the limit for spooky, clever, and downright gruesome food and drinks. There are nine projects to try out in this list I posted at mental_floss.

Information Links

Nine Restaurants Sent Back From the Future to Destroy Us (With Good Eats). Cooking, ordering, and delivery all go hi-tech at an eatery near you. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

A series at Slate magazine explores whether a man and a woman can really ever be “just friends”. Part two explores platonic relationships in the movies; more posts will up the rest of the week.

Top 10 Craziest Ironic Deaths of All Time. A wise man once said we all carry the seed of our own destruction; some people wore theirs on their sleeve.

If Iron Man were real -wait, he is! Watch Raytheon’s new military exoskeleton at work.

7 Wizards… or are they all the same guy? Literature and movies make them so much alike so we will recognize them without thinking too much.

The rich get richer, as the rest of us drown in the tub. The gap between rich and poor is growing wider and wider.

A Third of ‘Extinct’ Mammals May Still Be Alive. After all, their ability to hide from predators is what enabled them to outlive the dinosaurs.

Meet the Micronium, the world’s smallest musical instrument. You know its tiny when the musician has to wear a clean suit and play through a microscope!

Inside ThinkGeek, Where Mythical Meat Can Make Millions. The secret is to know your customers -and give them caffeine.

Fun and Funny Links

In one particular high school football game, the losing team’s only touchdown will be remembered way more than the winning team’s score. Of course, it took both teams to make this happen.

Anatomy of a telephone conversation. It’s more complicated than you ever imagined!

The original Star Trek theme... with lyrics!

How Should I Dress? About the time you get comfortable with your own style, it goes out of style. Go figure.

The Incredibly Depressing Mega Millions Lottery Simulator! See what it's like to play and play and play and never win!

Check out these authentic 1966 Batmobile® Replicas. Yours for only $149,000.

One of my favorite distractions from way back: Desktop Blues.

The weirdest phobias that were ever named. If you suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, you won’t want to read this list. (via Dark Roasted Blend)

Marx Brothers Clips

A promotional film for Monkey Business and some footage of Groucho entertaining the troops during World War II.

Never Underestimate Old Guys

Gregory hines thinks Sammy davis Jr. and his old buddies can't dance. From the 1989 movie Tap.

The Opry House

A portion of the 1929 cartoon The Opry House in which Mickey plays the piano.

Informative Links

This is a news website article about a scientific paper. And this is how I link those kinds of articles.

How Much Should We Practice? A new study shows that it’s better to occasionally step back and listen for a while.

Shirley was ordered to stay in bed and eat a strict bland diet until the baby arrives. Her husband takes special care to liven up her dull breakfast by creating elaborate scenes with her food. (via Nag on the Lake)

Tennis Shoes (And Other Election Gimmicks). Dignity and logic matter not a bit, as long as the gimmick is remembered until election day.

How nature documentaries are staged. Filmmakers no longer have three years to wait for the sharks/bears/wolves to show up.

How ghosts, superstitions, and vampires have been used for psychological warfare. Spread a few rumors, say “boo!” and watch the enemy run for cover!

Knowledge as motivation. Utterly mundane jobs such as housework become almost enjoyable when you do your research.

A Peregrine falcon can reach flight speeds of 150 miles per hour. Equipping one with a camera lets us all see the world through her eyes.