- How close to a train track can you set up a vegetable market?
- Despite everything, I believe that people are really stupid. Well, there are worse gifts. Like a Hanukkah card printed on a page out of Mein Kampf, perhaps. [via]
- Sci-Fi IKEA Manuals [via]
- “Oh, stewardess! I speak jive!” Now you can too. [via]
- And finally, “The Accidental Sea” [via]:
history
Wednesday various
- A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. Mark Twain probably didn’t say that. Anatomy of a Fake Quotation [via]
- World’s Biggest Pac-Man [via]
- The sad final end of former Attack of the 50 Foot Woman star Yvonne Vickers [via]
- A Rare Look at Antarctica, 1911-1914 [via]
- And finally, No Country for Old Men cartoon trailer [via]:
Thursday various
- Today is Harry Houdini’s birthday. In honor of that, here’s a look at his Scene and Prop List. [via]
- I don’t know… ordering the removal of a mural depicting your state’s labor history from the lobby of your state’s Department of Labor seems like kind of a dick move. [via]
- As, frankly, do these new farm “protection” bills discussed by Mark Bittman — although, there, there’s some dangerous precedent being set:
The Florida bill would require anyone wishing to photograph a farm to first secure written permission from the owner. And what if they don’t? First-degree felony. The implicit goal here is to deter and criminalize damning undercover exposés….The bill would also make it illegal for an agenda-less passerby to snap a picture of a farm from the side of the road, but my best guess is that those “crimes†might not be prosecuted quite so diligently.
- The Phantom Menace in 3-D? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me…oh, god, what is this? Like the at least the sixth or seventh time? Shame very obviously on me, George Lucas, but I will not be going to see this. [via]
- And finally, an interview with Terry Jones. He discusses, among other things, Monty Python‘s less than certain start:
I mean, even right up until the middle of the second series John Cleese’s mum was still sending him job adverts for supermarket managers cut out from her local newspaper.
Wednesday various
- “What killed Mozart?” isn’t the interesting question. The interesting question is: why are there so many wildly different theories about what killed Mozart? [via]
- 10 cool converted bookstores [via]
- Chinese archaeologists unearth 2,400-year-old ‘soup’. Undoubtedly, it tastes like chicken. [via]
- The woman without fear [via]
- And finally, Google’s Zeitgeist 2010. I think the top rank for “chatroulette” reveals just how quickly the zeitgeist can shift. When’s the last time you heard anything about this internet phenomenon? [via]
Tuesday various
- No more Caps Lock? FAREWELL, OLD FRIEND. [via]
- I bet you didn’t know Inception and Sex & the City 2 are essentially the same movie, did you?
- The day Niagara Falls ran dry. [via]
- One man was responsible for one-third of the world’s spam. Then again, I haven’t actually noticed a drop-off in my own spam since his arrest. [via]
- And finally, the bar for wedding proposals has been lifted: