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.

Loving the neighbours. // Vilayanur Ramachandran on phantom limb pain. // Levitating lamp. Not a pretty thing. More. (h/t, Microscopics.) // Images, maps and films of Saturn and its moons. // The Giant Impact Hypothesis. How the Moon came to be, probably. // Soviets in space matchboxes. (h/t, Monoscope.) // Google Sky. // Flash Earth. // A layman’s critique of catastrophic man-made global warming theory. More. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Impressive bridges.  (h/t, Stephen Hicks.) // The Millau Viaduct. A personal favourite. // How to move an obelisk. // On the evils of lipstick and infidel fashions: “Our prayers become unfocused and our sleep is often disturbed.” // “In only a minority of institutions – approximately 25 per cent – was radical material found.” // Robert Spencer on “Islamophobia”. // The not-so-secret sins of faded revolutionaries. // “The true social parasites are those who demand collectivism for other people while being themselves relatively protected from its consequences.” // What is typography? // Via Coudal, making spiders from scissors. // Make your own Bumble Bee Transformer. // Chinese toy factory workers. // A range of Tokyo vending machines. // One particular vending machine, photographed repeatedly by Ryuuichi Ikeda. Every day, for two years. More. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // South Park: Imaginationland, part 3. Will Butters save the day? // Aroma advertising. (h/t, Metrolander.) // Aromatherapy pens. // Hitler’s flatulence. // Beef made easy. Loin, sirloin, shank and brisket. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s pork chops and gravy.