Through the wonders of streaming Netflix, I’ve finished Faulty Towers and am now working my way through Arrested Development. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how this show could have been cancelled. It’s like Twin Peaks all over again. David Lynch set out to tell the slowly evolving story lines of all the fascinated characters he created, but half way through the second season the ABC execs panicked at declining ratings, and demanded he reveal Laura Palmer’s killer. And that pretty much destroyed the narrative. Arrested Development is more of a mystery since the ratings seemed to have dropped just a bit, but critics loved it and it had a strong fan base.
There’s a fan who set out to document all the actual locations where the iconic scenes from Twin Peaks were shot, and he's collected them in a site called In Twin Peaks.
It’s about that time of year when all the best of’s start coming out. So we’ll start with Ebert’s list of the best films of 2010. I must be really slipping in my movie-watching habits, since I didn’t see a single one on this list.
Trivia (10 Biomes points): This picture represents which historical achievement in photography?
This is a time lapse video of last weekend’s snowstorm, taken by someone in Belmar, New Jersey. During our annual N.J. collecting trip, Dr. Dan and I stop in Belmar to change the fish water for the final leg home. We choose this town because the saltwater inlet at Shark River is really clean, and the take out places have phenomenal food.
Tuesday coonhound blogging: I no longer own the couch. Click to embiggen.
The invasive lionfish, a venomous fish from Australia that has invaded the east coast, has a new nemesis: The Lionfish Hunter. He even has the largest collection of lionfish recipes anywhere in the world.
Stuff you should know: How to eat a mostly fast food diet and still keep it healthy.
Today’s long read is about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and why he is doing what he’s doing.
The University of Maryland did a study that really didn’t need to be done. It found that some TV viewers are misinformed by the news, and that Fox viewers are more misinformed than any of them.
PolitiFact has released their choice for 2010’s Lie of the Year award. It goes to wingers referring to health care reform as “A government takeover of health care”.
This week’s Green Thing is the Eco Urinal, a urinal/basin contraption where you can relieve yourself and wash your hands at the same time.
There’s a store in London, called the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies, that sells everything from eyeballs, cans of despair, to even this neck-bolt tightener.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of following the SparkPeople nutritional plan (I don’t call it a diet, since I eat great and am never hungry), is gaining overall nutritional awareness of the foods that are available to us. After a late night working, I decided to treat myself to some KFC on the way home (and I had a coupon). I instinctively went with the grilled option, instead of the tempting extra crispy that my pre-spark self would have ordered. Check this out. One extra crispy breast (just one, and who eats just one?) packs in 470 calories, 28 grams of fat, 135 mg of cholesterol and 1230 mg of sodium. Simply choosing the grilled option changes these numbers to 180 calories (similar to a cup of yogurt), 4 grams of fat, 110 mg of cholesterol and only 440 mg of sodium. Now you can argue that KFC is crap food that is bad for you no matter what, and you’d be right, if you lived on it, but the numbers astounded me.
Ricky Gervais answers some questions from WSJ readers about his holiday essay explaining why he’s an atheist, that I linked to the other day. He looks like he’s lost a ton of weight.
Some of us remember when it was launched over 33 years ago, and v’ger is now closing in on the edge of the solar system. Here’s a cool fact I didn’t know: the edge of the solar system is known as the heliopause.
Some bored Poles built a 31-foot-high snowman, and used a traffic cone for the nose.
With the repeal of DADT laws here in the US, the amazing thing isn’t that gays and lesbians are now able to serve openly, it’s that this has even been an issue at all. Scan through this list of all the countries with a military, and what their policies on homosexual military service are, and see how embarrassed we should be.
The people who shot this video are claiming it’s a thylacine, an animal that is supposed to have been extinct since 1936.Turns out there’s a ton of claimed sightings. Here’s some very old footage of the last thylacine, one that lived in the Hobart Zoo in the early part of the last century.
Timewaster of the week: I guess you could move this dog head around for a while if you’d like.
Fifteen animals that will cause you horrible harm. This one is Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish, and it’s the only cuttlefish species with poisonous flesh.
I'm fascinated by how people first find various sites they keep returning to, so let's keep yesterday's conversation going. Plus, my wireless keyboard is making making a normal post painful. I really don't why I would have ever bought a microsoft product.
Here's the final draft of the billboard that will be going up on I-95 in Providence tomorrow. I'm pretty proud of The Boy, who designed and formatted the whole thing himself. Click to embiggen Ruby.
I started the Biomes Blog on December 17, 2003. From the beginning my friend Bartcop taught me, write what you know and write something new every day. I’ve done 2559 posts in 2559 days. Question for the usual suspects: How did you first find this site?
