Red Pandas

A video of a red panda trying to reach a doorknob charmed everyone who saw it this week. Red pandas are possibly the cutest animal on earth. Let’s take a good look at these little balls of fluff, in this collection of eleven videos I posted at mental_floss.

(Image by Wikipedia user Brunswyk)

Good Reads and Info

Spent is a role playing game where you negotiate life as a poor person. The choices and results can seem random and capricious, but that’s life for millions of people. (via Fark)

A 100-year-old men’s club in New York has been renovated and converted into a home. With some of the original fixtures and furnishings, it’s a one of a kind historic property I’d love to live in. (via Everlasting Blort)

The Gippsland Lakes are a chain of lakes in eastern Victoria, Australia. A combination of fire and floods changed the conditions of the water and led to the proliferation of a new species of dinoflagellate, which glows in the dark when you disturb it. (via Monkeyfilter)

The Top Ten Passwords. Don’t use these unless you’re trying to hack into someone else’s account. And don’t do that, either.

10 Pop-Culture Facts That Hammer Home the Reality of Just How Depressingly Dumb Americans Are.

The Anchoring Effect gives you a number you can us to begin comparisons. Whether that number is a useful statistic, a random number, or a deliberate manipulation, it will affect your perceptions and choices.
It’s been a year now since Conan O’Brien left The Tonight Show to avoid being pushed around by Jay Leno. Here’s the story of how the internet rallied around him while he waited to get back on TV. (via The Daily What)

A Brief History of Historically Incorrect Oscar Winners. Now that I’ve learned the truth and seen the clips, I want to go back and watch about half of these movies again.

Things To Do For Lonely People On Valentine’s Day. You know, to get your mind off the fact that everyone else is totally focused on pair-bonding with their sweetheart.

6 “Ghosts” Caught on Film. With video “evidence”, of course.

Horse Enjoys Petting the Cat

(via Arbroath)

12 Science Valentines

There are Valentine cards, ecards, and gifts for every taste imaginable! If you don’t find a card or image that perfectly expresses your sentiments, you can easily make your own. And if you lack the imagination, skills, or time to create one, someone else probably has just what you’re looking for. The scientific community is no exception -and they take advantage of every opportunity to make a pun when they can. Here are some valentines from different scientific disciplines, in a list I posted at mental_floss.



Fun and Funny Links

Can you think of anything better to watch in high-definition slow-motion than this attractive and energetic kitten? I chose to watch it over and over again.

Dispatches from the Fast Food Wars of the Twentieth Century. If you don’t remember the Burger King Kingdom and its bizarre characters, you’ll be forgiven for doubting they could ever be real. (via The Daily What)

Reel Wisdom: Lessons From 40 Films in 7 Minutes. The more you listen, the more banal and trite they sound.

The Crack/Cocaine/Meth-Addiction Employment Plan.

The Harry Potter Pole Dance. Did you ever think you'd see those words together?

C3PO tries to be helpful. He isn't.

Is this the coolest welcome page ever, or the creepiest?

If social media were a high school, we could slot all the sites into well-known stereotypes. Ethan Bloch has already done that, and designed a yearbook already.

Lucy Lou is a bitch, but she’s also the mayor of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. She beat out a jackass, a possum, a cat, lots of other dogs, and even a human to win the 2008 election, and has handled her duties admirably.

Informative Links

6 Weird Things That Influence Bad Behavior More Than Laws. The human race is seven kinds of gullible to fall for these tricks.

Dream Rangers. What do you do when your old friends die off, your health is failing, and life is getting short? Go ride motorcycles!

The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology. Screenwriter Haggis resigned from the church over its attitudes towards homosexuality, family ties, fraud, human trafficking, and many other issues. (via The Daily What)

The corner store in New Orleans is an architectural oddity that is repeated around the city. A closer look shows that the traditional style, although strange to outsiders, developed for perfectly reasonable aesthetic purposes. (via Nag on the Lake)

7 Simple Rules For How to Take A Nap. Rule #8: Don’t wake me up from one.

Tetsuro Ahiko was a World War II prisoner in Russian Kazakhstan who twice, maybe three times, lost his chance to go back to Japan due to clerical errors. Now he is the last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan, out of choice. (via Metafilter)

We fought a war on lies, and lies won. Part of Salon' series The Real Reagan. (via TYWKIWDBI)
Images from the Secret STASI Archives. Simon Menner explains how these pictures are only sinister if you know the stories behind them. (via Metafilter)

If I had a 32-foot long touch screen, I wouldn’t get any real work done all day. The University of Groningen in the Netherlands has the only one, and they are too busy playing with it to make more.

Behold, the most terrifying thing your roommate can invent and ask you to test: the Shaving Helmet!

The Bizarre Origins of 8 Wedding Traditions. You won’t believe what earlier tradition the garter toss replaced!

Statues from Movies and TV

Detroit mayor Dave Bing reached out to citizens of the internet for suggestions for how to invigorate his city. One of the suggestions that came in yesterday was that Detroit should erect a statue of Robocop, from the 1987 film Robocop, which was set in Detroit. The mayor seemed to dismiss the idea out of hand. He’s probably hearing more about it today, as the idea is gaining ground. Plenty of statues of fictional characters from film and TV stand in other cities, as you'll see in this collection I posted at mental_floss.



Links for Fun

The Adventures of Eggplant. Nasubi became a national superstar on the weirdest game show ever and didn’t even know it!

Portraits from the most stylish goth weddings. They do look a bit hot, however.

How not to launch a boat. Still, the boat came out better in the end than the crane that launched it. (via Breakfast Links)

Paul “Bear” Vasquez, the guy who went nuts over seeing a double rainbow, swoons over other things in this New Zealand Vodaphone ad. It’s catchy, but darned if I know what they are trying to sell.

99 bottles of wine of the wall, 99 bottles of wine… Hey! What if ALL of those bottles should happen to fall?

Adorable puppy enjoys a bath. Video slowed down and set to music for your enjoyment.

Axe Cop became a hit webcomic, then a book, and now it’s been brought to life in a live-action video that stays true to the spirit (and appearance) of the original.

Devils and Angels. Another really weird moment at the new Family Feud.

How to Embarrass a Bee.

Andy Ellison posts MRI scans of vegetables on his site Inside Insides. This is a much cooler idea than can be conveyed without seeing it for yourself. (via Everlasting Blort)

Slacklining at the Totem Pole

Jen, who must be made of pure steel, walks a slack line at Tasmania's sea stack known as the Totem Pole. After you marvel at his focus, strength, and balance (not to mention bravery), consider one other thing -how did they get up there in the first place? (via Metafilter)

Good Reads and Information

Yesterday, for the first time in history, humans got to see the entire sun. Probes launched in 2006 reached opposite sides of the star and will send back data for the next eight years.

Humans are peculiar among species in that we can deliberately adapt to almost any situation we put ourselves into. A case in point is how some people learn to swim underwater for minutes at a time. (via Not Exactly Rocket Science)

The Roma's Long Road to Equality.

You probably remember how the Berlin Wall fell, but do you know how and why it was erected? The building of the wall in 1961 was actually a deadly serious game of double-dare between world superpowers, as the world waited to see who would blink first.

The Big Picture has a roundup of disturbing, scary, uplifting, and certainly historic photographs from Egypt. Despite interruptions in internet service, journalism rises to the challenge.

What we know so far about the Jerusalem UFO. Three videos from different angles, but as of yet no one is asking us to take them to our leader.

7 Animals Humans Brought to Extinction.

Think about it: when someone hugs you, it lasts about three seconds. But it’s not just a rule for hugs -almost everything we do happens in three-second durations! (via J-Walk Blog)

Now we have statistics that track the outcomes of the cases in each of the first ten seasons of the TV show Law & Order. Not only that, but they are compared with what was actually going on in New York City at the time -the NYC murder rate and the politics of municipal law enforcement. (via Metafilter)

10 Foods You Can Allegedly Make In A Coffee Maker. The only problem I see if that the coffee maker would be temporarily unavailable for coffee-making. (via Gorilla Mask)

Mega Monster Movies

Movie trailers aren’t what they used to be. The trailer for the 1975 movie Jaws was 3.5 minutes long and you never saw the shark, except for a short clip of a fin and a shot of the movie poster. We all wanted to see the shark, so we all paid our $2 to go to the theater. In more recent monster movies, the trailer has all the very best scenes so you can avoid the movie altogether! Here are some over-the-top sea monster movie trailers that will save you a lot of time, in a collection I posted at mental_floss.

Bayan

A bayan is a Russian accordian, which has a ton of buttons. Performing here is bayan virtuoso Alexander Hrustevich.

Friday Fun Links

Alchemy’s Shower of Gold. That means exactly what you're thinking.

Mind Heist has several animations you can change with the “view” menu. Created by the guy who composed the music for the Inception trailer.

For those who cannot get enough of Allie Brosh’s stories at Hyperbole and a Half, she also writes for The Gloss.

A collection of Soviet work safety posters that will give you nightmares. An extensive gallery of the horrifying things industrial accidents can do to your body.

Thought for the day: I reckon if you're not making a fool out of yourself at least once a day, you're not living hard enough.

That’s the Most Illegal Thing I’ve Seen in the History of Wrestling! Not to mention the most bizarre! (via Breakfast Links)

Darth Vader uses the Force for his own ends. Can’t you just feel his surprise when it actually works?

The “All In Your Head” Movies.

Everything is a Remix: Movies. If that movie you’ve never seen already seems familiar, it’s because all good ideas get recycled. (via Metafilter)

Carl Sagan and his Fully Armed Spaceship of the Imagination. The late astronomer is a super hero who battles the forces of woo with the power of the scientific method!

8 Regional Foods You Might Not Know

A couple of weeks ago I linked to a map of the US in which each state was labeled with a kind of food associated with the state. Many sites featured the map, and the comments were full of consternation and alternatives. Sure, Hawaii produces the pineapples, but the people who live there eat Spam. All over the world, people think fried chicken when you say Kentucky, but it’s not a particularly native dish nor all that popular in the state. There are foods listed that some state’s lifelong citizens had never heard of! So I looked up some of those obscure regional foods to see what they are all about. Read about knoephla, pasties, chislic, and more in this article I posted at mental_floss.

Informative Links

The difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England, explained in a hurry. Which leaves time to then explain the British Empire, the Commonwealth Realm, Crown Dependencies, and Crown Colonies. Go that?

A biologist at Colorado State University working with the Department of Defense is training plants for national security. Genetic engineering is making plants react to threats they never encountered in nature -for human benefit. (via Fortean Times)

Guillermo del Toro’s Monsters. A biography and interview, with some clues about the characters you’ll see in The Hobbit. (via Metafilter)

The Big Picture has a roundup of disturbing, scary, uplifting, and certainly historic photographs from Egypt. Despite interruptions in internet service, journalism rises to the challenge.

Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code. The tickets are mass-produced, but cannot be completely random because the lottery company must control the number of winners -how do they do it? (via Metafilter)

5 Complaints About Modern Life (That Are Statistically B.S.) We never had it so good as you kids do, so get off my lawn! NSFW text.

7 Myths Mythbusters Proved That We Still Can’t Believe Are True (with video evidence). Probably because we are so used to seeing myths “busted”. (via Gorilla Mask)

6 Obscure Sports To Try This Summer. Sign me up for watching them instead.

Darcy Padilla documented Julia’s life in words and photographs over an 18 year span. The grind of poverty, drugs, HIV, and childbirth played itself out over and over for all of us to see. (via Metafilter)

Explaining the Chinese Zodiac (Just in Time for Chinese New Year). Which is today! Happy New Year!

Funny Links

Developing a habit of reading, in the cutest way ever.

6 Plot Threads Famous Movies Forgot to Resolve. No, you weren’t the only one wondering about Toto’s fate.

Overthinking it. The curse of the thoughtful person is to imagine the best and then expect the worst possible outcome.

The Rick-Rolling Essay. This student should get an A for effort alone, however misguided.

Stacy posted a list of The 10 Most Annoying Songs Ever and got 154 suggestions and arguments. Sounds like “annoying” is in the ear of the beholder.

Banana War.

Meet Candle Kid - The Kid Who Loved Candles.

This is kinda cute! Click the zombies in the Zombie Tabernacle Choir to make them sing sweetly, if a little bit creepily.

This Belgian cartoon features a pig with a gas problem. But it’s no problem for him as he sings and dances through his day. Warning: earworm.

Weird Al Yankovic is now a grammar Nazi. In this particular case, I’m inclined to side with him.

The King's (Real) Speech

Best Picture Oscar nominee The King's Speech is about George VI of England's speech impediments. Here is an actual speech by the King, recorded circa 1938.

The Proliferation of a Virtual Species: You’ll Like This Alot

The world of the internet has seen the genesis of many fabulous creatures, but the alot has managed to successfully breed and proliferate across the virtual landscape better than most. It was introduced on April 13th, 2010. By April 18th, it had its own definition at Urban Dictionary. I believe there are two main reasons for the alot’s success.

1. The grammatical phenomenon of making “a lot” into one word strikes a chord with many internet users. This habit is common among English speakers, but is only obvious when typed. Therefore, the annoyance it brings flourishes naturally on the web, where the literate and semi-literate live side-by-side.

2. This creature is so ugly that it’s cute. Folks love that. Alot.

See how the alot has spread across the web in this roundup I posted at mental_floss.



Good Reads

Why Chicago Should be Called Phoenix.

A biologist at Colorado State University working with the Department of Defense is training plants for national security. Genetic engineering is making plants react to threats they never encountered in nature -for human benefit. (via Fortean Times)

Developing a habit of reading, in the cutest way ever.

17 Images That Will Ruin Your Childhood. Unless, like me, you were an adult when these childhood images appeared in our pop culture.

Brad Goodspeed wondered how an exact copy of the earth would look if it were as close to us as the moon. In this animation, he has earth and several other planets revolving around the earth at the same distance as our moon. (via Metafilter)

An innovative but intriguing idea for saving health care dollars: focus on helping the most expensive patients. Ignoring them only causes the bills to rack up unnecessarily. (via Boing Boing)

How (and Why) Are Black and White Films Colorized?

10 Weird Tax Deductions Other People Got Away With (But You Probably Won’t)

Jon Stewart Named to 9/11 Memorial and Museum board of directors. (via Fark)

Fly the Flag, Boys! Interesting flags from around the world.

BTTF Peel Out

Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!