News Anchors on commercial break

Have you ever wondered what the news anchors talk about during commercial breaks? (Being a pessimist, I wonder if they secretly hate each other, but are forced to make polite small-talk for the camera), but this video from the Chicago Tribune blog HeadCandy proves me wrong. Watch the vid - they are both a little too fabulous.

This may be the best thing I've seen on the internet all week.

Kingfisher feathers as jewelry

The WearableArt blog kicks a$$! So much to love. Artist Tzu-Ju Chen creates jewelry using traditional Chinese techniques, like kingfisher feather inlay. But she also uses Chinese paper money - an offering for the dead - as the base for all this amazing jewelry. Take a look at some of the pieces on her website!

Here's the link from Wearable Art to Tzu-Ju Chen, too.

When venison is too bothersome

This is an article from the NY Times, pertaining to the trendy human consumption of grey squirrels in Britain. See, the native red squirrels are being decimated by the robust, disease-carrying grey squirrels from the New World. So, the locals have taken to eating squirrel - apparently much like rabbit, though dependent on time of year - fat or lean? - and the diet of each squirrel. Nuts and mushrooms sounds a little better than dumpster garbage and peanuts, in other words...

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. Let's not forget that. Put down the Big Mac, pick up an organic free-range acorn-fed squirrel, supplemented with morel mushrooms, pecans, beetle grubs, quail eggs, and pea shoots.

Braised and served with...roasted acorns and grubs, toasted pecans, sauteed morel mushrooms, quail eggs and fresh pea shoots. Just kidding.

I'd have a hard time eating squirrel, because they're adorable little monsters. But if there was a squirrel problem, I guess I would try it. Shoot for the head, don't eat the brains! I'd want summer squirrel, not winter squirrel - unless I was starving and needed to eat pure blubber. Like they do in the arctic - arctic squirrel! Sqwerl.

a love story (makes me nervous)

the 300 calorie food gallery

for the visual learners, curious people, and people trying to lose weight: the 300 calorie food gallery - which has a nice sound to it - featuring photos of different kinds of foods equaling 300 calories, with the weight and cost of the food. also, a $10 bill for scale. for example, how many bananas make 300 calories? you can see it in the gallery: about 2.5 medium-small bananas. categories include fruit, veggies, meats/fish, fairy/eggs, grains/nuts/seeds, and pastries/candies.

totally useful, and i am appalled at the amount of olive oil equaling 300 calories. ah well. just a smidge, then. from neatorama and healthassist.net, that's who.

edit: i love my typo, "fairy" instead of "dairy"! i'm keeping it.

aardvarks and cheap adjustable eye-glasses-for-the-masses

from zooborns and neatorama - i can't believe i've been missing out on a blog dedicated to new baby zoo animals around the world!!! - here is a fresh baby aardvark at the Detroit Zoo. (yes, an "ahd-vahk".) this is one precious wrinkly little animal.


so this is a photo of the receptacle in which scientists plan to ignite a tiny man-made star, dabble in fusion, and see what happens. we all feel an "i lived through" tshirt coming on, yes? from the Daily Telegraph and neatorama, here's the article about igniting a tiny man-made star in a giant metal box. this'll be at the National Ignition Facility in california, btw. brink of fusion power, one more time! c'mon y'all, let's see if you can do it without blowing us all up.


my fave picture here - this is a Zulu man wearing adjustable glasses. a physics professor at Oxford university designed some glasses with adjustable, liquid-filled lenses. They are adjustable in the sense that one can fill the lenses to the desired thickness, and thus change the magnification. the professor wants to distribute them to poor folks worldwide, and make these glasses for less than a dollar each. he's already distributed over 30,000 pairs in poor countries, with great success. one point for the near-sighted and far-sighted of the world! i myopically salute you all, and professor Silver. brilliant!!!

from the Guardian UK and neatorama, here's the link to adjustable glasses for the masses.

"Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription."

i wonder how the glasses stand up over time? is there a mini-warranty? harnessing the power of fluid, okay!

owl demonstrates relativity

huh-larious. i can't even understand what they're saying, but just watch - the video becomes reeeally interesting at about the 1min 45sec mark. i love that owl.

this is from Wired's Top 10 Reader's Choice Animal Videos. includes "hamster eats popcorn while laying on piano keys", "dolphins artfully blowing bubble rings", "genius cow dog" and "chickens herding rabbits", among others.

wearable art and buzzwords

why haven't i heard of the wearable art blog before? ah well. thanks neatorama! i'll add it to my linky links. in the meantime, look at these crazy dresses and suit jackets sewn together from FRAGMENTS OF ANCIENT POTTERY, omg. you can even wear them, since they are sewn onto sturdy leather clothing. wear the weight of art, clink-clink. i love it - here's a link to the article on the wearableart blog. Chinese artist Li Xiaofeng does some beautiful stuff.

here's a temporary link to the gallery showing at the Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, FLorida.

also: a link to buzzwords of 2008, including "obamanation", "staycation", and "caribou barbie" among others. from the NY Times.

crown royale and forensics

okay, the two are not really related. yet! check out this case of linking a carjacking suspect to his police file, using the stomach-blood of a mosquito found in the stolen car! GENIUS. that is almost jurassic park, even. from neatorama and yahoo news, here is the link to the secret of the finnish auto-mosquito!


next we have a quilt made out of crown royal bags - you know, the purple velvet bag the bottle of fancy whisky is wrapped in before you gift it to your aunt who doesn't drink. it's apparently made-to-order on ebay. found on geekologie. will only cost you about $400 including shipping, because crown royal is not that cheap. drink up.

tshirt origami

seriously, what? i need a slo-mo replay, seventeen times.

wolverine: the movie!

origins of wolverine in movie format, with outrageously inconceivable action sequences and all kinds of weird comic-book characters fighting each other. i love it! i must see it. comes out in may! next: maybe a movie with hugh jackman and george clooney making out?

now you know more about me.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE HD

paper water bottles, omfg

you loved your nalgene so much, you carried it everywhere - once you even defended yourself against a mugger using your trusty nalgene. but then we discovered the plastic in nalgene bottles was leaching toxins into our water, and you switched to an aluminum bottle. or you bought a sigg bottle. or you just started drinking out of cheap plastic water bottles because you're contrary and grieve for your nalgene. aluminum, plastic, maybe you even tried glass...where's the love? why isn't it easy to carry potable water?



what about recycled paper water bottles, holy shit! these are from geekologie. and they look very sci-fi to me. and what a great idea - does it really work? why don't they leak, why don't they soak through? SOMEONE TELL ME WHY. here's the product page.


and then of course we have apples with apple logos on them. the geekologie writer assures us that No, The Apples Are Not McIntosh! (fuji apples, 'cause it's japan and all.) dammit. those japanese people missed the whole point. but, the apples are quite adorably commercial-ready. who knew you could do that with stickers? heck. this one is from geekologie and weird asia news, which is an awesome site i keep forgetting to check! here's the article.

how to ruin a book

found this instructable on neatorama: turn a favorite book into a working clock. great! a cookbook for the kitchen, a children's book for the rugrats' room. what an amazing way to ruin a useful, readable book! and make it into a semi-useful clock. a clock that you CANNOT READ - a book that has been DISABLED. the pages literally stuck together forever BY TIME.

this instructable, though outwardly cute, may as well be called How To Greatly Annoy A Librarian With Little Effort.

just saw this picture on the daily coyote blog

this is charlie the coyote enjoying a smoked pig ear. just like your average coddled domestic dog. charlie is so cute and clever-coyote-ish, you just want to bring him home and put him on the couch, no? i sure do.

except that shreve, the woman who raised him, does not want you to believe that raising a coyote is easy. for example, charlie the coyote - in his inexhaustible coyote cleverness - becomes easily bored. charlie will turn the kitchen faucet on and off, on and off, to provoke his boring human companion. he can turn the roomba on and off with his nose. he can open the cupboards and take all the pots and pans out, making a pile in the center of the room. he also does not accept anyone other than his two human companions, and friendly dogs.

he could probably suffocate me in my sleep. or win every game of battleship. or trick my chihuahua into trying to swim in the deep end.

so, class. let's enjoy the cute coyote while also remembering that coyotes do not make good pets. primarily because they'll erase your favorite tivo shows when you're not home.

'tis the season...for frugal gifting

found a list of 50 frugal or DIY gift ideas on boingboing - originally from the LA Times - and i liked many of them! particularly the mason jar of prunes stewing in armagnac for two weeks. or the homemade baby carrot pickles? or toasting some pecans in a sweet/hot spice mixture with sugar, then putting them in a little tin? cute and edible gets four gold stars from me. i love a reuseable gifting container. this list goes way beyond so-called denominational holidays; i just like to give people gifts in winter. the idea being that, in case of zombie war, the gifts will foster secure social bonds with my friends. and then those friends will be less likely to cannibalize me.

especially if i gave them breadsticks or herbally infused vodka. yep, i'm up way too late tonight.


speaking of food, i love love love these adorable fold-out sandwich boxes. found these on boingboing, and they are designed by emma smart, for ASDA - british grocery company. trompe l'oeil place settings are just what the world needs for take-out food! i would totally keep trying to pick up that shiny fork.


and here we have an expandable christmas stocking from neatorama and instructables. this is DIY project involving lots of zippers, and ends up making a cunning striped stocking. however, one could look at the glass half-empty, and see a clever way of making a shrinking stocking.

yep - just enough room for an orange, an apple, a milk chocolate jesus-on-the-cross, a fancy fountain pen...oh wait, that was last year. all i've got now is this bagel i found in the dumpster. (i know you like sesame, though.) and some baby carrot pickles in a jar i forgot to sterilize. and a pink slip from work, how 'bout that?

mouse obstacle course

this video from CuteOverload makes me feel a little better about the mouse poop on my kitchen stove. like, if the mouse is going to look cute and work so hard, well...fine, i guess one tiny mouse turd on the stove is fine. but not more than that, right? jeez.

ramen pizza, ramen pizza!!

yes, ramen pizza. from neatorama and seriouseats, here we have one of the annual ramen-off cooking contest winners. yes, karol lu won the competition at brooklyn kitchen with her recipe for pepperoni ramen pizza. i can't even talk about it anymore. ramen was created to be the stuff of my nightmare, yet i'm strangely drawn to the picture of ramen pizza. get the recipe for ramen pizza here, at seriouseats.



and here we have this clever ad about global warming, in the form of a huge aerial cityscape - new york - decal on the bottom of a swimming pool in mumbai, india. get it? because that's where we'll all be if we don't cut down on the fossil fuel! picture is neat-o-rama. i would prefer swimming in this pool to a slice of ramen pizza, thanks.

so the only encouraging part about our "economic downturn" is that library usage is up - thrifty patrons are looking to squeeze every freebie out of the local library, perhaps not realizing that resources and services are always free at the library? well, happy day for libraries in search of funding. here's the link to the article from lisnews. apparently libraries are always more popular during recessions, how 'bout that. it's like the library is the plain, steadfast wife, there when you need her. and blockbuster/amazon is the blonde bombshell bimbo mistress of patrons everywhere, a fair-weather rental.


what we have here is fiber-optic wallpaper with intricate floral designs. don't know how it works. probably couldn't look at it for very long. but it's kinda nice. let's try an LED fireplace next, with built-in crackle. also, i just read about a japanese aurora-borealis simulator/projector machine thing. the likelihood of an accurate aurora on one's bedroom ceiling is minute! but a sweet idear.

humbuggery

no, humbuggery is not what you think. you pervert. what's really obscene is this pair of salt and pepper shakers cast from the heads of actual dead turkeys. they are, at the time of this writing, on sale at www.etsy.com for $65. i kind of love them - like these are what you bring to thanksgiving dinner when you hate thanksgiving. or perhaps when you are a vegetarian attending the carnivore carnival. morbid! awesome! from boingboing and neatorama - here's the boingboing link to turkey shakers.



so this is a link to a 10-item list of usb-powered warming devices for chilled personal computer users. (for instance, my feet and hands have gotten painfully cold in previous apartments with sketchy radiators. this made playing zoo tycoon for five consecutive hours that much harder!) so for all those people tied to their computers and suffering from sluggish sedentary circulation, here is a list of usb-powered gadgets that will keep the warmth in your extremities. from neatorama and geekalerts.

i think my favorite is the heating mitt/mousepad shaped like a fish.

finally, did y'all known that there is a world-class gym inside disney's matterhorn mountain ride? well, i just accidentally closed the tab to the article. so you'll have to find that article yourself - 10 things you didn't know about disneyland, on neatorama. i was shocked! but then, i have not been to disneyland since i saw michael jackson in "captain eo" in 3D.

my god, i love 3D movies.

omg, omg = usb-powered owlbot from ThinkGeek and Japan

See it on www.thinkgeek.com right here! maybe buy me one. blink-blink! also featured on cuteoverload, where this phenomenon is known as both adjective and noun: baroo?!owl.

chocolate fashion shows and giant salmon

this picture is a Chinook salmon found dead post-spawn by a park ranger in Battle Creek, California. from Neatorama, read the original post here. see, this is why untouched nature - the kind of nature that gets large in the absence of humans eating up their habitat and resources - is a little scary. it's the world of 800 lb bears, 300 foot trees, 150 lb wolves, giant sea creatures of all kinds...including giant salmon. (yes, salmon spend their lives at sea before swimming up their freshwater birth streams and spawning. this makes salmon anadramous fish.)


here we have a swiss chocolate swiss army knife. filled with hazelnut praline! 'nuff said. what a great consolation stocking stuffer! and so shiny... from neatorama, right here.


here's that chocolate fashion show i mentioned. seems it's the 11th annual new york chocolate show, and this is the fashion segment. warm chocolate is adhered and molded to models, who then strut around wearing chocolate corsets and things. one model does faint - perhaps the combination of heat and weight? from the amazing boingboing.


last but certainly not least, a sort-of-new species of simulation video game. "after shock" is a 3-week real-time california earthquake disaster simulation - you can jump in and participate at any time! simulated disaster recovery think-tank, anyone? what a great idea. gaming for the greater good. no seriously, AWESOME. next, a simulated zombie/vampire attack. here's an excerpt, followed by a link to play:

"Aftershock, run by the Institute for the Future and Art Center College of Design, is based on a 300-page U.S. Geological Survey scenario report that details the extensive damage that Southern California could experience in the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude quake on the San Andreas Fault. The game began on Thursday and will run for three weeks, prompting users to complete real-world missions — and submit content based on them to the gaming community."

play After Shock!