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July 13, 2008
Ask the pilot
Landing around the world flickr pool
Mark Langford's Homebuilt Airplane and Online Builder's Manual
Do I really need to point out that an airline pilot would hardly need a butter knife if he or she desired to inflict damage? Where will the airport security lunacy stop?
7 Fascinating Bird’s-Eye-Views of Florida. (Thank you, Dave E)
unrelated: Matchstick art by Scottish artist David Mach
A Huge Depository of Unusual Flight Links Here
July 13, 2008 in Flight | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Celebrities Leaving Court
Re-post: Homes of movie stars on old, colored postcards. Found at Image Archeology
There are 186 places listed on the United States National Register of Historic Places in Los Angeles. Seventeen of these Registered Historic Places are in fact historic districts which include numerous buildings and other structures. Wikipedia’s List of Registered Historic Places in Los Angeles
Picnic and film screenings at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. (From a Favorite things about Los Angeles thread on Metafilter)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Los Angeles Links and Orange County Links Here
July 13, 2008 in Los Angeles | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sleeping Around Craigslist (NSFW post)
It takes a woman about a thousand words and a condom to get laid on Craigslist. But for a woman to be laid properly -- by a passionate lover who knows what he's doing -- well, that's a whole different ball game. Sleeping Around Craigslist
Enhance your vajayjay at The UK Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Centre. (Found in a Daily Mail article Boosting the G-spot)
Tantra Chair, fine furnishings for meditation and sacred intimacy
A Huge Depository of Things to do before you die Here
July 13, 2008 in Things to do before you die | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 10, 2008
Silence of the lambs Optical illusion
Silence of the lambs Optical illusion is based on the origin of the skull on the moth of the cover. The Death’s Head Moth features a skull over its head, but the skull is not an actual Skull. The Skull was originally the Dali Portrait which features nude women arranged in such a way to make the outline of a skull. Another
A man goes into a restaurant, orders albatross, eats one bite, and kills himself. What happened? One of many Realistic Lateral Thinking Puzzles
The new Bubble Wrap Calendar
Chinless wonders Upside down Faces
A Huge Depository of Intelligent Links and Even Brainier Links Here
July 10, 2008 in Brainy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
When pot is legalized, where would you buy it?
At the local Farmer's Market: There's two or three stalls selling weed, each with many varieties. Oddly, you remember just a few weeks ago that these same stalls and farmers sold a lot of delicious tomatoes, salad greens, apples, and berries at ridiculously cheap prices. You've often noted the hippy-like nature of the stall operators, and wondered how they could sell vegetables so cheaply week after week. Now you know.
The names on the signs are exotic, hand-inked with colorful markers. The signs also indicate local origins, growing conditions, hybrid types and organic or inorganic status. The weed is ridiculously cheap, as well as lush and outrageously delicious - but much of it is also poorly groomed or otherwise rather wild looking. Some booths have entire plants hanging in them. When you ask for a twenty dollar bag the rather faded looking hippy farmer shrugs, picks up a large machete and hacks off about half of a plant and stuffs it into your burlap shopping bag, spilling weed everywhere. He or she starts to ask "Is that enough... no, wait..." and then also puts a large brownie in your bag and then, with a large metal scoop, shovels up about a cupful of what looks like beige sand or salt, drops it in a baggy and also puts that in your bag. "A little table kief. Good for cooking or sprinkling on spliffs! Have a great weekend!"
Which you do. Though you don't remember much of it, you do remember eating everything in the house, including a sandwich involving peanut butter, ice cream, bacon and pancakes that sounded like a good idea at the time but was proven otherwise - much like the attempt at repainting the bathroom about the same time. Something about being inspired by the color of fresh blueberries in vanilla ice cream "soup", which involved rushing off to the local hardware store with a handful of blueberries and a bowl of rapidly melting ice cream as "color samples". (By Loquacious)
A Huge Depository of many illegal drugs especially Acid and Pot Here
July 10, 2008 in Drugs - "Save the Roaches, Arnie" | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Crashing
Have you ever been so stoned that you crashed your car into a tree? Then did you get out of your car and see there wasn't actually any damage from the accident—not so much as a scratch on your bumper? Then did you notice that there also wasn't any tree? When you were finally able to calm down and get back in your car to drive away, were you embarrassed to realize that all along it was the air freshener hanging from your rearview mirror?
Honda launches ugliest car ever - will probably become a big hit with hipsters
Vintage Car Logos. (From the new-er Dinosaurs and Robots)
More from there: Aux origines du Photomaton, A Vintage French Photobooth Film Stars set on flickr, and Buy the White Tower Burger Joint in Toledo, Ohio for $1. Submit proposals prior to July 31, 2008 by mail, fax or e-mail
A youngster with sandals drives a Lamborghini Murcielago
Un-related: Heat wave continues across U.S. Naba, a four-year-old female African lion, keeps cool as she licks a "bloodsicle" made of frozen cow blood on Monday at the National Zoo in Washington
A Huge Depository of Unusual Car Links Here
July 10, 2008 in Cars | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Look who reads the Bible
Welcome to MySweetJesus.com, the home of the adorable My Sweet Jesus doll
The people who make music today read the Bible. It's that kind of book. It can make things work for you. Read the Bible. Find out where all the music's coming from.
And if you don't have a Bible of your own, we'll send you one for only a dollar. Hard cover and everything. Just one should do it. The Bible lasts a long time
Un-related: Professional dancer Rosa dances to Paraguayan folk music while holding 10 bottles over her head
A Huge Depository of Unusual Jesus Links Here
July 10, 2008 in Jesus | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The world does not need another linkblog
Warren Ellis about the web’s patchwork years: The years 2001-2007, approximately, on the web were the crazy years. The patchwork years. The years the web was massively and chaotically pumped full of Stuff. 1995-2001 were pretty crazy, of course, but they were checked by connection speed and the limitations of personal publishing. By 2002, broadband was happening over a broader swathe of the world, and blogging had bitten in. Followed by the takeup of bit torrent, YouTube, podcasting, and every other damn thing.
One of the few sane responses to this explosion of production was to assume the role of curator. (Other sane responses include moving to the woods and considering a completion of the work Ted Kaczynski started.) The two most famous examples of same are Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom (est. 1997) — Barger is said to have coined the term "weblog" — and Mark Frauenfelder’s Boing Boing (est. 2000 as a weblog, previously a print magazine est. 1988), co-produced for much of its life by Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin. The latter, in particular, has spawned countless imitators, all deeply involved in doing the web-work of 2001-2007 — sorting out all the weird crap that’s out there and re-presenting it in some kind of ordered and aesthetically or politically filtered manner for our consideration…
A Huge Depository of Unusual blogs and bloggers Here
July 10, 2008 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 07, 2008
From Steve Jurvetson's flickr sets
Steve Jurvetson is a venture capitalist with an impressive resume
Here he is at TED talking about his hobby, launching model rockets - The joy of rockets
From his flickr photostream:
- Neil Armstrong did not use Tang on the Apollo missions
- With James Watson, after receiving a LEGO Double Helix kit. With Queen Noor of Jordan
- At zero gravity
- With Prof. Richard Smalley, who discovered the Buckyball. Part of the Federales series
- Sentinel
- It's only kinky the first time
- The Puzzle Series
I discovered this from a link at the bottom of Send Barack Your Baby: "Barack Obama travels a lot, but many babies live in places he hasn't been. That's why he's now accepting babies by mail. Send him your baby, and he'll kiss it and send it back to you"¦
- All his flickr sets Here
A Huge Depository of Unusual People Doing Unusual Things Here
July 7, 2008 in Unusual People | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Chess ratings
From the birth of the promotion in the 1960's, until it’s demise in 1987, Championship Wrestling From Florida was regarded as one of the premiere wrestling territories in the country
“Holy mackerel! there are lots of different figure skating spins...”
There are now 29 chess players rated over 2700 - “Achieving a chess rating of over 2700 is very hard to do. This is a reflection of either: a) just how much talent and sponsorship the modern world has, or b) just how narrowly restricted some people's talents are.”. (From Marginal Revolution)
Fitness hundred years ago. (From Armstrong family circus)
A Huge Depository of Extreme Sports Links Here
July 7, 2008 in Extreme Sports | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Organ Grinders
Studs Terkel interviews Frank Zappa, August of 1968, on Chicago's WFMT-FM. (From If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats)
Also, in his They Were Collaborators series (which includes over 473 excellent & surprising parts as of now) - CHEESE!
Montana (YT) from 1973 live on Swedish TV. (From Internet Weekly Report)
A Portrait by relief-block printmaker Stephen Alcorn, part of a Modern Music masters series
Wikipedia on Michael H. Kenyon, aka the Enema Bandit
Unrelated: Joe Bush, one of only six genuine Organ Grinders in the US
(Click on pix above to biggify)
A Huge Depository of Odd Zappa Moments Here and Unusual Dylan Links Here
July 7, 2008 in Music - Frank Zappa | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cyber Cafés around the world
Highest Cyber Café in the world, located at Sherathang Trade Mart in Sikkim. (From “Darfur to Darlington”, Internet Cafes of the World set on flickr)
"Looking for a monkey who can bang on my keyboard to try to find the one random sequence of characters that is not yet taken as a domain name. Pay - $100"
"Customers who just got fired also had this happen…." Amazon's Recommendation Algorithm Applied to Life Events
Enter your name…. (Sokumenzu) Side View Generator
Un-related: Maya Angelou Reads Craigslist (NSFW)
A Huge Depository of Unusual Things To Do On The Internet Here
July 7, 2008 in Internet | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 04, 2008
Mad Men
Since I don’t have a teevee, I must miss out all the good “shows”. Somehow I saw a clip last year called The Wheel which moved me, even when I didn’t know its background.
But now I do, and it’s much richer than the casual viewing may suggest. Last week I was able to watch the whole season of a television show called Mad Men, and then I watched it again, I liked it so much.
It seems that there are many people who love this program. There are blogs dedicated to Mad Men, (Basket of Kisses). Prof. Paul Levinson analyzes each episode and follows up with interviews. The NY Times reviews it.
Update: Here's the personal blog of Rich Sommer who plays Harry Crane on the series!
Update 2: A 16-page 1960-lookalike Ad Age insert
Update 3: The art behind the art of the pitch - Michael Bierut's review at Design Observer. The titles, designed by 'Imaginary Forces'. (Also there, A visual history of IBM Selectrics)
Update 4: Spoilers from the second season
Update 5: It's 1975 And This Man Is About To Show You The Future (Scenes From An IBM Slide Presentation)
On Slate: Why Are Critics Slobbering Over Mad Men?
Update 6: Don Draper’s ‘Mad Men’ Bookshelf
Ah, The Fifties (And The Sixties!)... I highly recommend it, and I wish I could watch the second season right now.
July 28 Update: Andrew Johnston's recap of the second season's first episode "For Those Who Think Young"
Questions for Don at What Would Don Draper Do?
August 1 Update: The cast in street clothes
Semi-related: Winston smoking Flinstones
A Huge Depository of Unusual Advertisements Here
July 4, 2008 in Advertising | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Wisconsin Men
What Your Government Knows About Cannabis And Cancer - And Isn't Telling You. US Government Patents Medical Pot. (From NORML Blog)
Wisconsin Man found in basement covered in BBQ sauce. Another Wisconsin Man Runs Over, Eats Seven-Legged Transgendered Deer
World's Oldest Neurosurgeon Turns 100
Jesse Helms died on July 4, 2008, slitting his wrists in a washtub out back beneath the pecan tree and writing "I've been a bad boy" in his own blood. The skins of several children were found drying in his attic, swarms of horseflies going in and out of the eaves. His wife was quoted on CNN as saying "I always wondered about Jesse's collection of little shoes"…
90% Of Israeli Homes Have Solar Water Heaters
Deportation has become compulsory in Dubai for those who are found guilty of flashing their middle finger in public
A Chinese park has reportedly painted stripes on a horse and is charging people to have pictures taken with the ‘zebra’
A Huge Depository of Off Beat News Stories Here
July 4, 2008 in Current News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Happy 4th of July
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation….
Recorded exclusively for New York radio station WQXR’s 1957 July 4th observance. (From Group News blog)
(Thank you, C. Image by David Barrett)
This is a category that depends on submissions from Grow-a-brain readers. Please send me some good links! A Huge Depository of American History Links Here
July 4, 2008 in American History | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack