Hand held fireballs. Caution advised. // MIT sketching. With gravity and marbles. // Octopus amour. // 100 beauties of Tokyo. A bevy of geisha. (h/t, Coudal.) // A hitchhiking photo-diary. New York to Alaska. // World’s smallest dice. // Online craps. // Tank mishaps. // Rebecca Bynum on Yvonne Ridley. // Andrew Bostom on European anti-Semitism. “Muslims are responsible for half of the documented Anti-Semitic incidents on the European continent.” // Ibn Warraq on why the West is best. // Robert Bussard on inertial electrostatic confinement fusion. (h/t, Samizdata.) More. // Birth of the microwave oven. // Why Study Science? (1955) // “Cloverpuppy want to live!” // Cloverfield synopsis. // Science fiction versus the Statue of Liberty. // Manhattan, unmolested. By Matthias Sanne. // A compendium of science fiction timelines. // Turkey, seen from a height of 1000ft. (h/t, Dark Roasted Blend.) // Industrial culture photography. (h/t, Mick Hartley.) // Plants and typography. Together at last. // Alarming bugs. // Bugs that fight. // Canned cheeseburger. A miracle breakthrough. // How to get an egg inside a small bottle. // Derren Brown’s subliminal advertising. // And, via The Thin Man, there’s witchcraft afoot.

Panorama of an Airbus A380 cockpit. Just don’t touch anything. (h/t, Coudal.) // “It’s really just a big thing falling on the ground that we want to make sure we’re prepared for.” // Domo-kun cooks, sweats and emits green gas. The rest is hard to fathom. // Croatian food company issues annual report in oven-bake form. 100ºC for 25 minutes. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // Just drying my octopus.  As you do. // Impressive drill bits. // How to build a Lego geodesic dome. // Light-emitting wallpaper. // More remarkable bridges. // Cut-away car illustrations. // Robot calligraphy. // Robert Hodgin’s Magnetic Ink. More. And. // “A 25 letter message can be up to 20 miles long, seen for 400 square miles, and written in as short as 2 minutes.” That’s skytyping. More. // The virtual typewriter museum. // A collection of typewriter ribbon tins. // Furry pencils. // Post-it note projects we have known and loved. // Balaclava with beard. £135. // How to make a kimono. // Pimp my sewing machine. // Marijuana vending machine. Medicinal use only. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // Warping negative space. (h/t, Stephen Hicks.) // A map of religion in the U.S. // Andrew Bostom on Hitler and Muhammad. // The L Ron Hubbard audio collection. // And, via The Thin Man, Dinah watches the skies.   

The Stalinmobile. It’s post-ironic, I think.

Related: Stalin’s actual cars and other personal items. And.

Michael Jack has a fine collection of vintage transistor radios, mostly circa 1957-63.

Via Coudal.

The Red Russian Army Choir and the Leningrad Cowboys are happy together. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // Dr Strangelove transcript. (h/t, Coudal.) // Stanley Kubrick: The Invisible Man. (1996) Excellent documentary. Part 2. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Film directors, directing. // Tarkovsky bloopers. Oh, how we laughed. // The passage of time may not be what it was. // Hinode telescope footage of the Sun’s chromosphere. More. // Volcanic plume on Io. // Bearded men of the 21st century. (1939) “The man of the next century will revolt against shaving.” // Mark Steyn on the wrongs of Canada’s Human Rights Commission. // And on the right kind of imperialism. // Mr Eugenides on Seumas Milne. // Norman Geras on double standards. // Why Martin Luther King was a Republican. Discuss. // The H-Bomb and You. (1954) // BSG season 4 preview. // Everything you need to know about Lost in 8 minutes 15 seconds. // Dante’s Cove. What Torchwood wishes it was. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Jerry O’Connell does Tom Cruise. Wait for the laugh. // Scientology documents. “Between 38 trillion years ago and present time a lot of off-beat implants can be found.” // Reconstructing shredded Stasi documents. “We all knew they could know everything. But we didn’t understand what that meant until that moment. Suddenly it was palpable.” // How to peel potatoes. (h/t, Grow-a-brain.) // A toilet seat for cats. $109.95 // And, via The Thin Man, it’s all about appearance.

Vintage colour photographs of American cities. Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans. (h/t, Grow-a-brain.) // Radical cosmetics. Stem cells, skull lifts, harvested buttocks. // Micrograph beauty contest. Behold the nanotoilet. // 80 million tiny images. // A gallery of psychics. But you knew that already. // Virtual TR-909 drum machine. // Sandstorm, Khartoum. // Plantage. // The politics of Doctor Who. // 2007: a year of BBC impartiality. // Alan Johnson upsets Guardian readers. “The left takes its cue from what it is against rather than what it is for.” // Ophelia Benson on the difference between civility and respect. // Philip Carl Salzman on Muhammad’s tribalism. “Most accounts of Islamic history… glide over these conquests, as if they were friendly takeovers.” // Andrew Bostom on Steven Coughlin. // Jonathan Fine on terrorism and beliefs. “Downplaying religious inspiration for terrorism… is both inaccurate and dangerous.” // Deogolwulf on dreams of a world government. // On Hollywood bad guys. // Masked hoodie. Fight crime, scare the elderly. // A fan obsesses over the Spider-Man theme tune. Lousy cartoon, groovy music. (h/t, Coudal.) // Heroes action figures. Man bags, brains and a Japanese Elvis. // Still life foodscapes. (h/t, the EQ-aliser.) // The world of Spam. It’s a versatile product. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // A small house made of meat. // Jackie Gleason meets LSD. // And, via The Thin Man, the agonies of youth. Lovely.

Original Star Wars trailer. (1977) “The story of a boy, a girl and a universe… A billion years in the making.” // Life-size beer brewing Bender. Bite his shiny metal ass. // Cannibalism in Texas. (h/t, Ace.) // Tintin redubbed. Caution: salty language. // A magnificently cheesy moment from Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon. (1980) Sydow to the max. // The art of Syd Mead. // The race to the Moon, told graphically. // New solar cycle begins. “This upcoming cycle will be one of the most intense ever measured.” More. // Soyuz TMA-11, Kazakhstan. // Oliver Kamm on Oliver “laughing boy” James. // Deogolwulf on Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, mistress of rigour. // Andrew Bostom and Matthias Kuntzel on Islamic anti-Semitism. // John Rosenberg on Obama not being “ideologically black.” // Five dangerous things you should let your kids do. “They’re young. They heal fast.” // Tokyo’s traffic control centre. (h/t, Coudal.) // Inverkip power station. (h/t, 30gms.) // The science projects of Johnny Chung Lee. Low-budget EEG, the $14 Steadicam and new things to do with your Wii remote. (h/t, The EQ-aliser.) // 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. // Tetris, played well. (h/t, An Insomniac.) // Snow flakes. // Harlan Ellison: Dreams with Sharp Teeth. (h/t, Savage Popcorn.) // Punishments of 19th century China. // 79 versions of Popcorn. (h/t, Dan Collins.) // And, via The Thin Man, a tale of improper passion.

Via the Bureau of Communication, some helpful tools for self-expression.

For instance, on the airing of grievance.   

Or, apology made simple.*

*See also, statement of gratitude. 

More.

Now here’s a thing. Aniket Chindak holds the unofficial world record for ‘limbo-skating’, a feat that involves trundling under low bars and a range of other obstacles – say, 57 parked cars – while sprawling so that no part of the anatomy is more than eight inches above the ground.

“The hardest thing is to go fast enough before I bend down, because that’s how you can skate under so many cars at once,” the six-year-old explained. Needless to say, Aniket has rivals to contend with, among them, seven-year-old Zoey Beda, aka the Roller Limbo Princess.

More ephemera tomorrow.

The Amazing Adventures of Little Batman. Jump to 5 minutes in. Wait for the Batmobile. And the Scooby Snacks. // “Real life superpowers.” Lion taming, mental feats, alarming dislocation. // Comic strips of the 1930s. // Lichtenstein deconstructed. // The pyramids. (h/t, Maggie’s Farm.) // Earth’s mightiest rollercoasters. // The thermochromic toilet seat. “The object retains the heat memory of a previous user and displays it as a visual marker for the next user to assess.” (h/t, Coudal.) // The Asian squat. And how to do it. // Solar flare, flaring. April 21, 2002. (mpg) // The Milky Way in motion. (h/t, Centripetal Notion.) // Elementary astronomy, circa 1876. (h/t, Coudal.) // Medieval cookery. From candied horseradish to venison custarde. // The museum of air sickness bags. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // Airship hangers we have known and loved. // A directory of Japanese sound effects. // Outlandish loudspeakers. // Stapling machine. // End papers. (h/t, Drawn!) // John W Campbell’s Who Goes There? (1938) A little science fiction chiller. // And, via The Thin Man, a warming winter ditty.