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Pastafarian halloween missionaries and pumpkin carving contest.
After rewatching Beetlejuice last night (3 starfish out of 5), I surfed around and was surprised I’d never come across Tim Burton’s official website before.
Amazing pumpkin carvings.
This week’s Green Thing is the climate change chocolate bar, manufactured in a wrapper that gives helpful hints on saving energy.
Saturday’s slide show is a collection of twenty-two things that look like the starship Enterprise.
Impossible motion is a pretty cool three-dimensional illusion.
Pet Corner: Set up your own puppy tweets for your pet.
Looks like I may be going into business with these guys, who will be setting up a climbing facility in my new building.
Snopes says the story of the humpback whale freed from entangled ropes saying “thanks” to the divers who rescued her, is true (via Hans). Although we may be anthropomorphizing a bit.
Geek Stuff: USS Enterprise costume for dogs.
Cool Site of the Week: The city of Stockholm mapped with old movie clips.
If you’ve never seen the Steve McQueen movie “Bullitt”, it’s famous for this ten-minute-long car chase scene. Here's an inside look at how they filmed this 1968 movie.
iPod Shuffle:
Animal of the week: The horseshoe shrimp, which this site says is the oldest living animal. I don’t buy it. Both the horseshoe crab and the nautilus are more ancient.
Joel got yesterday's trivia. It's orris root.
I put together a roster of all ten octopuses I've had since 1998. The dates show one year because that is their life span. The stories you're reading about Paul the pyschic octopus having died at 2 1/2 are false. There were more than one Paul, and this last one probably only lived for six months. (Click to embiggen.)
Trivia (8 Biomes points): Name this spice.
Jon Stewart gives up (via Deb).
A while back The Boy and I installed this free screen cleaning program, called Screen Cleaner Pro (free download!), that restored the brightness of your monitor. It looked convincing and even took several minutes to run, as a cleaning rag icon worked its way across your screen. It was a hoax, and worked about as well as this one.
Bill Maher says the next rich person who publicly complains about being vilified by the Obama administration must be publicly vilified by the Obama administration.
Hump day musical interlude: The second largest aquarium in the world, set to music. They actually have whale sharks in this exhibit.
How many of these false things do you "know" before going into election day?
The next time you go see the world’s dullest sport, you can take along this pack of gum. They’re hot dog, peanut and beer flavored.
Stuff you should know: How bedbugs reproduce.
Tuesday coonhound blogging: The cobia is only three inches and maybe four months old. In a few years it will be six feet long and weigh over 100 pounds. Here are some people slaughtering some for fun.
Albino Monday: Chipmunk.
What colors were dinosaur feathers is today’s long read.
The geometry of pasta.
Andrew Sullivan has an interesting chart up, contrasting the American population, Muslim population, Muslim-American population and Al Qaeda.
Thinking errors are those thoughts that hit us during times of stress, anger or depression that actually make us feel even worse. They should be avoided, and these lessons may help.
Big cats destroying halloween pumpkins (via Hans).
Morford: I am outraged! Are you not outraged?
This week’s Green Thing is the Postcarden, a pop-out card that folds out into a living garden.
Meet Jean Meslier (1664 - 1729), a Catholic priest who was discovered to be a life-long atheist after his death.
Did you know that lemurs on Madagascar have two tongues? I didn’t either, until a boiled Japanese bean told me. There’s a whole bunch of other bean-delivered trivia at the mameshiba website. (Mameshibas are dog/bean hybrids, in case you’re wondering.)
I think you’ll like these photos taken in unique locations.
Movie Rating: Before watching Boondock Saints II, I read up on the pillorying critics did to it on Rotten Tomatoes. I like the first one, and liked this one even more, with a feeling of watching a ballet of violence that surpassed anything John Woo could come up with. Although the real star of the original was Willem Dafoe, and he was barely used here. 4 starfish out of 5. Here's Ebert's dissing of it.
Saturday’s slide show is a short series about solar eclipses.
Cool site of the week: Science news for kids is a great resource for parents and teachers.
Words that shouldn’t be allowed to wither. I’m especially fond of being an example of a chaetophorous person.
For the first time since 1951, a new cloud formation has been discovered and named. The Cloud Appreciation Society is calling it an asperatus cloud.
Geek Stuff: Best birthday cake ever.
iPod shuffle:
Best BLT ever.
Animal of the week: Goes to this wolf pup.
Seven points for Mustang Sally for yesterday's trivia. You're now up to 64 bp's. It's a Rose of Sharon.
Meet Big Al (scroll down just a bit), the Colorado black bear comes back.
The shockwave effect is one reason why freeways come to a stop.
Tuesday coonhound blogging: Exploring more of the back jungle.
You should keep up with the short interviews at Brave New Conversations. It’s an offshoot of Truthout.com, and features brief chats with intelligent progressive activists and icons.
Capitalism would have killed the Chilean miners.
Now we’re cookin’: Food expiration dates don’t mean a thing.
Dolphins in Australia have learned how to hunt elusive fish by collecting conch shells.
Albino Monday: A rare albino swimming crab. I'm a big fan of crabs in general, but this guy's ugly.
Today’s sort of long read: The return of debtor’s prison.
Watch an onion seed germinate.
The cost of health care reform is outrageous.
Photo montages of pets and famous people.
This week’s Green Thing is the City Respiration Skyscraper. It’s an algae-powered tower that filters air from polluted cities.
Morford: Sympathy for the wretched politician.
Written a year before he died, a letter by Einstein makes it pretty clear what he thought about religion.
Today’s niche blog is about hauntingly beautiful hubble images.
The mystery of what happened to the Neanderthals may have been solved. They were killed off by volcanoes.
Some guys rappelled half a mile down a crater to get footage of an active volcano, and it’s pretty incredible.
Saturday’s slide show is of giant bonsai trees. Click the image to move it along.
This is the Caristales River, the most colorful water body in the world. And it is neither photoshopped nor caused by pollution.
Animals of the week: Sparrows with morbid curiosity.
Fafu got this week's trivia. It's the Earth and the moon from 114 million miles away, taken by the Messenger deep probe.
The liberal myth of global warming threatens Arctic ice cellars.
If, like me, you’ve always been a little confused about the concept of thread count in bedding, Panda Pascal can explain it for you.
Trivia (10 Biomes points): What’s this?
Why do leaves change color?
Someday I’ll get to see the Aurora Borealis. It’s on my bucket list.
I’ve never thought of a reverse bucket list, but here are some places not to go before you die.
Hump day musical interlude: Frostie shakes his tail feather to Ray Charles. There's always paneling in these animal videos.
Tuesday coonhound blogging: Protein shake photobomb, with Creole in the back jungle. Click the image and spider monkeys may appear.
Ancient Digger has an overview of the life of the Hutterites, an isolated group of people living on the North American prairies.
Now we’re cookin’: You can bake a cake in the microwave in only three minutes using a coffee mug.
Watch comedian Steven Wright's When the Leaves Blow Away. It’s good, but it’s 78 minutes long if you’re up for it. It may take a while to load on YouKu, but YouTube doesn't have it.
Stuff you should know: Octopuses are excited by high-def TV (thanks Derryl).