Uniqlo Grid. Play on the grid. Go quietly insane. (h/t, Coudal.) // The worst fight scene in film history. // Originals versus remakes. Spartans, spooks, body snatchers. // Airplane prangs. // Cowscapes. (h/t, 1+1=3) // Supervillains of the Old West. // Jack Kirby on gods and monsters. // Could Thor kick Superman’s ass? Kryptonian do-gooder versus bombastic Viking with magic hammer. // Chris O’Shea’s X-ray torch. Video. // Via Norm, the hidden genitals of the NHS. // The 1907 Breguet-Richet gyroplane. (h/t, Things.) // Project Echo. // Apollo 17 panorama. (1972) // Biodegradable cutlery. Made from potatoes. // Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens. // Michael Weiss on Ibn Warraq. // Norman Geras on John Pilger. // Julie Burchill on Tesco. // Aaiii!! It’s the Zionist earthquake machine. According to Hamas. // A map of this week’s earthquakes. Most not caused by Jews. // A map of the Lost island. // Virtual Lego. // Modelling the brain may take some time. // Arthur Benjamin and his feats of mental calculation. // Scared of Santa. He knows if you’ve been naughty. // A festive ensemble. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Big Joe Turner.

Incidentally, TypePad now has a new, and more zealous, spam filter. If anyone has problems posting comments let me know by email. I may have to train the software not to bite everything that approaches. Bad dog.

Behold the oddly resilient Japanese pig toy.

$2.50. More. And. Via.

Evil Dead: the Musical. // Wheelbarrow racing. Wait for the cunning manoeuvre. // Human marvels. Including Stefan Bibrowski and the two-headed boy of Bengal. // Natural phenomena of note. The Catatumbo lightning and the rain of fish. // The big-eared thingamajig. Video. // Photographs of the Iron Curtain. (h/t, Things.) // Fareed Zakaria interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “In Europe, when radical Islamic movements use freedoms to destroy freedom, they seem to get away with it.” (h/t, Cookslaw.) // Efraim Karsh and Rory Miller on Edward Said. “Said’s substitution of politics for scholarship in the name of ‘speaking truth to power’ has spawned scores of students, professors, and journalists who seek to emulate his path to fame.” // Oliver Kamm on Stockhausen. // Deogolwulf on the Feminist Association of Iceland. // Radioactive condoms and beauty cream laced with radium. // Pepsi: Ice Cucumber. The goodness of Pepsi with the taste of cucumber. // “Sometimes a cigar is [not] just a cigar.” (h/t, Maggie’s Farm.) // How to spot a cylon. // Concealed hearing devices of the 19th century. Canes, hair-bands, the acoustic beard. // Aaron Duffy’s film of wool and forbidden love. (h/t, 30gms.) // Chris Cunningham’s video for Aphex Twin’s Monkey Drummer. Looks fun, sounds like a pile of arse. // The design work of Kashiwa Sato. (h/t, Coudal.) // More Japanese vending machines. Beetles, porn, toilet paper. // Shaolin: Temple of Zen. // How to be a ninja. // Superman and Jesus. Together at last. // The good bit of Superman Returns. // Map of space in Star Trek. Some dimensions not shown. // How to explode a star. // Ray guns we have known and loved. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Ray Anthony.

Original Planet of the Apes trailer. (1968) “An upside-down civilisation!” // Worryingly detailed Planet of the Apes timeline. (h/t, Coudal.) // Jeff Wayne versus the Martians. Armed with lasers and a big string section. Oh, and a virtual Richard Burton. // War of the Worlds book jackets and illustrations, from 1898 to 2007. // Tom Cruise escapes being vaporised. // The Watchmen movie is coming. A fan starts to obsess. There’s more, of course. // Images of Europa. // George Monbiot makes belated bid for Turner Prize. “I am sitting on top of an excavator the size of a house, dressed as a polar bear.” // UN climate change conference has inadequate parking for delegates’ private jets. // Californian tree hippies. Hand me the gun. // Bruce Thornton on academic free speech. “The political prejudices of the professoriate start at liberal and end at radical leftist.” // Mary Jackson spots resonance in The Arsonists. // Aircraft silhouettes. // German educational charts. The innards of things. (Circa 1950s) // New York subway maps. (h/t, Things.) // A map of the apocalypse. // Tallest buildings of the Old World. // Unspeakable meats. // Places to hide things. // Volcano webcams. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // Photograph yourself. Because now it’s even easier. // Kraftwerk: Das Model. (1980) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Miss LaVerne Baker. 

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.

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.