The advantages of learning English. // Egg vending machine, Japan. More. // 1000 frames of Hitchcock. Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, the whole shebang. (h/t, Coudal.) // Bid for this bear. He’s called Muhammad. // Animals preserved in formalin. // Kim Keever’s aquarium art. // Shark versus octopus. // Underwater babies. // Animated short by Christoph Grosse Hovest. (h/t, Savage Popcorn.) // Remote control air ray. // The early aviator. Zeppelins, fantasies, aerial combat. // Aero-medicine. Part 2. (1956) // Planet Earth: plaything of sci-fi. // Batman by Dostoyevsky. // Batman Mystery Club: The Monster of Dumphrey’s Hall. mp3 (1950) // Mary Jackson on vegetarianism. “Vegans are whey-faced, cadaverous lunatics, but they are consistent.” // Devil’s Kitchen on liberty, property and the evils of Socialism. Discuss. // Peter Hitchens visits Pyongyang. “The sensation of living in an enormous institution, part boarding school, part concentration camp, is greatly enhanced by the sound of mass alarms.” // Wim Delvoye’s gothic machinery. Yes, it’s him. // Metal shutter houses. // The panoramas of Will Pearson. // A minor history of miniature writing. // Jean Pierre Lepine’s ergonomic pen. Stationary hell. // Assorted drafting templates. (h/t, Vitruvius.) // The museum of reel-to-reel tape recorders. // Rome’s museum of ancient art. // The museum of high-heeled shoes. // Robert Full on cockroach legs and robotic feet. // And, via The Thin Man, Your Feet’s Too Big.

No, not a fearsome extraterrestrial STD. Meet Kent “Toast” French, the world’s fastest clapper. 12 claps per second? 721 claps per minute? No problem.

So, does ultraclapping count as a super-power? Via Coudal.

Dr Zeus and his musical Tesla coil. More. Video. // The sound of Durex. // Live webcam sunsets. Follow sunset around the globe with 280 webcams in 52 countries. (h/t, Discarded Lies.) // The Shakespeare Country Park, with duck pond, maypole and stocks, in Maruyama, Japan. // Thames Town, China. “Authentic British-style town.” (h/t, Things.) // The global incident map. Terrorists, doomsday cults and suspicious goings-on. (h/t, Maggie’s Farm.) // “Transgressive” artists keep quiet about radical Islam. “I would be lying if I said we would show something like the Danish cartoons.” // Taking pictures from your window seat. // Atomic flight not entirely successful. More. // Nuclear tests, French Polynesia, August 24th, 1970. // Burnt offerings. Cigarette paraphernalia. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // Playing card architecture. (h/t, Coudal.) // Further to this, pencil sculptures. // The pencil museum. (h/t, The EQ-ualiser.) // Via 1+1=3, a minor history of giant spheres. // The Big Bounce. (1960) // Conversation clock. // Teeth. Not for the squeamish. // Comic book movies that must be stopped. // Bat Thumb. (h/t, Protein Wisdom.) // The Hulk goes shopping. // Massimo Silenzio’s 10,000 globes. // Tattered posters on the Paris metro. // WWII propaganda posters. // New Labour, New Liberty™. // Jonathan Kay on anti-racism dinosaurs. “Challenging the received pieties of identity politics renders you a presumptive racist.” // Christopher Hitchens on Martin Amis, discrimination and the Guardian’s Ronan Bennett. // Burble. // Pig Olympics. // Ten space videos. Rockets, meteors, the Hubble Deep Field. // And, via The Thin Man, the mighty Herb Alpert.

Karate Monkey. // TV detector vans. “It’s in the front room… and they’re watching Columbo.” (h/t, Biased BBC.) // Climate change and the alignment of the planets. No, really. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Tunguska revisited. // Space History. (1962) “Red spacemen keep coming!” // Is my starship bigger than yours? Death stars, cubes, birds of prey. // The Islamic car. // The bicycle vending machine. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // 5000 London Transport posters. // 25 photos taken at exactly the right time. (h/t, Stephen Hicks.) // Origami insects. // Robo-bug. // Marvel digital comics. // Unintentionally amusing comic strips. Mary Worth, angel of death. (h/t, An Insomniac.) // The world beard and moustache championships 2007. Including the partial beard freestyle. // The art of Travis A. Louie. // Terminal thrill-seeking. // New hate crime discovered. “Research suggests that you are four times more likely to be a victim of blogosphere satire if you are a Socialist.” // Leftwing novelist wants to “de-Europeanise” Paris. “To make space for dissident voices.” (h/t, The Thin Man.) // The world’s longest underwater pipeline. 746 miles. // Wind dam. // Calculator watch prototype. (1970) // A brief history of LED calculator watches. // Via Coudal, the slide rule resource centre. // The museum of horology. // 100 movies, quotes and numbers. // The golden age of the boombox. // Dance like James Brown. Hot damn. // And finally, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Johnny Cash.

Tan and shower simultaneously. “Will revolutionise the experience of showering.” // Avalanche-retardant clothing. If the mountain should attack. // Bacon popcorn. // Bacon chocolate. // The Museum of Ham. // Humanoid shelving unit. // More Japanese manhole covers. // Cube games. // Christophe Huet. More. // Are You Ready For Marriage? (1950) The folks don’t approve. // The Moon in HD. Video. // Google Earth flight simulator. // A gallery of car parks. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // Professor Bob Carter on carbon dioxide, climate change and gross credulity. Part 2, 3, 4. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Deogolwulf on fuzzwords. Warm impressions, meaning unclear. // Alan Dershowitz on interrogation. “Would you authorize the use of non-lethal forms of torture if you believed it was the only possible way of saving lives?” (h/t, Cookslaw.) // Robert Spencer on “creating dialogue.” // Christopher Hitchens on whose fault it is. “Perhaps it will be admitted, however grudgingly and belatedly, that there is something sui generis about Islamist fanaticism: something that is looking for a confrontation…” // Councillor opposes Tablighi Jamaat’s plans to build “mega-mosque” in London. Video “obituary” appears, featuring councillor and his family. More on Tablighi Jamaat. And. // The United States of Islam. And then the world. // Racing robot cars. // Iron Man teaser. // John Carpenter’s The Thing retold in Lego. // Via Coudal, a short history of TV science fiction. Captain Video, Time Tunnel, Rocky Jones: Space Ranger. // Aerosol pancakes. A miracle breakthrough. // Winsor McCay’s Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Indigestion fantasies. // And finally, via The Thin Man, Miss Dinah Washington.