100 Best Non-English Films Ever Made (Edward Copeland, via FirstShowing.net)

Because everyone, apparently, has exactly the same feeling when they’re in one place.

Fold a towel monkey, towel dog, even a towel lobster. (via Lifehacker)

Portal to museum podcasts (via Research Buzz)

“Is your child a tagger?” Coming up next in the series: “Does your child eat ‘candy’?”, and “Is your neighbor building a space ship?” (The first one’s earnest; the latter two, not so much.) (via Ectoplasmosis)

It doesn’t quite have the same menacing connotation as “The Blob”… yet.

LEWISTON - A 50- to 60-foot doughy mass is clogging a sewer line under the city’s main drag, and crews have been unable to budge it.

“We’re not sure exactly what it is,” Public Services Director David Jones said Wednesday. “We’re just trying to get rid of it. We want it to stop clogging up our pipe.“

The Blob’s… er, the Dough’s PR flak on full force days after its discovery, blame for “blockage” is directed elsewhere.

The plot thickens.

(First article via BoingBoing; second article via Sun Journal)

…whatever “back” is.

Technical difficulties are cropping up now and again. You may notice the past rearing its ugly head. Hopefully it will all be over shortly.

You know you want one. Now learn how to make your own, in 15 easy steps!

(The last step — “Display proudly — Enjoy your elephant!” — being, of course, the best.)

(WikiHow: “How to Fold a Towel Elephant”)

…or when they were whatever age it is you put into the form. Some of it depressing, as you’d expect, in that it lists the enormous accomplishments by Historical Figures and Celebrities in their youth(s). Other bits are comical, such as the following two pieces, from which I can hardly pick a favorite:

Jan Birkeland from Norway managed to get to work without hitting a single red light.

Derrick Pallas was horrified to realize he was losing his hair, just like Dad.¹

All of this found at the eponymously-titled web site.

(via MeFi)

¹ Both of these things accomplished by the age of 26, in case you were wondering.

Interesting enough for the subject matter — the mysterious skyjacker who disappeared from a plane¹ with some gracious amount of money, never to be found again (the skyjacker that is; some of the money was found, maybe) — this article from the AP is probably best for the very last sentence:

“Maybe a hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980 to where Cooper landed upstream,” Carr said. “Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle.”

The FBI’s presenting, as they say, “for the first time” to the public, new & exciting information.

In case you do remember that odd uncle.

¹ Which is to say, jumped.

Disclaimer: not actually instructions on constructing warthog.

How about that.

The claim was that it just showed up one day, the idea by its lonesome, and nobody the lesser for it. I could’ve told you it was a lie; did, but you didn’t listen. An idea like that someone doesn’t just “misplace.” It’s only moved by force. By violence.

Visit the Museum of Fantastic Specimens, in English.

(via MAKE)

Mildly frightening robot cat. Just don’t let it eat the robot chicken.

(Somewhat surprisingly, not that robot chicken.)

(via Consumerist)

• Books You Can’t Read, via The Millions. Next installments, foods you can’t eat, cows you can’t milk.
• How easily can you get There From Here? A quick snap-bang-whiz online calculator to give you a “walkability” index for your neighborhood (or the address of your choosing). Based on respectably sensible things like the proximity of grocery stores, parks, public transit, etc. Via MetaFilter, and possibly also PLANetizen.
• Brazilian Psychedelic Groups hawks Oil. A commercial, found courtesy of WFMU.
• Girls Like Pink. Because of Berries. No, really! It’s scientific! Well, it is scientific. Whether or not it stands up as a valid theory is an entirely different issue. Maybe it’s my lack of versing, or maybe a poorly chosen headline, but the whole “may be hardwired” part sets me at a skeptical angle.
• How to destroy bottles. In a very precise, awesome way. Some day this will come in handy. And then you’ll be sorry you didn’t pay more attention. Via MAKE Blog.
• Really? “Cramming doesn’t work in the long-term.” Via EurekAlert.
• Not exactly Ha Ha, but Great. Listen to the latest episode of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on the BBC. (And by latest, well–it’s not like there are new ones being written. Anyway.) Via Crooked Timber.
• Un-Bear-Lievable. Out in California, another giant cargo net saves the day. Assuming one saved the day in the past. Via Snopes. Follow the link for a heart-warming story of animal rescue.
• Still Great, Great Stills. Frame-by-frame comparisons of Simpsons stills vs. the movies they reference. Via BoingBoing.

The NYTimes has a strangely compelling article on the topic of U.F.C. and its sudden rise in entertainment currency:

“Do you know why people die in boxing all the time?” he said. “Neurological damage. In boxing my goal is to hit you in the head and knock you out, or hit you in the head more times than you hit me in the head. That’s basically all there is. And with the boxing glove they have actually created a weapon for repeated brain trauma.”

He leaned over the aisle and make a quick, athletic flick of the shoulders. “You know what would happen if I punched you in the face right now?” he said. “Yes, it would hurt you, but since I’m not wearing a glove, I would probably break my hand. But in our sport there are 500 different ways I can win without hitting you in the head; boxing basically requires it.”

Ultimate Fighting Championship participants use light, fingerless gloves that are meant to protect the hand but not enlarge the striking area or increase the weight of a punch.

Another key difference relating to safety seems to be the culture of the two sports. A boxer who gives up before the referee stops the fight (as Roberto Duran is famously reported to have done, against Sugar Ray Leonard, in the 1980 “no mas” fight) is considered psychologically weak, if not a wimp. In the U.F.C. a fighter who submits, or “taps out,” generally seems to get credit among his peers for recognizing an impossible situation. (There are no female fighters in the U.F.C., though there are scantily clad “Octagon Girls.”)

(NYT: “Getting Your Kicks on Television,” by Seth Schiesel [1 Sept 2007])

Me neither, but thanks to This to That, now I know the answer. (Answer: Hot glue.) And you can find lots more practical joinings, too.

(via LifeHacker)

A music video by Jan Svankmajer, the fellow who brought us people-eating tree stumps and animated skeletons with Santa hats. What’s not to love?

(via MeFi)

(via The Guardian: “Back to the present for DeLorean,” by John Sterlicchi [30 Aug 2007])

You want ice?  You need black cherries. (via LifeHacker)

Loneliness is bad for your health.

Bikes “aren’t transportation.”

“Our findings suggest that consumers who are focused on the future are so preoccupied with finding ways to improve their situation that they become overly sensitive to information that points to such opportunities — and lose sight of the relative advantages of their current choice,” the authors explain.

For example, Meyvis and Cooke asked study participants to choose among three stores on a series of simulated shopping trips. After each trip, they were shown the price charged for a product at their chosen store and the prices charged at each of the other two stores.

After going on a series of shopping trips, participants were then asked to indicate which store was the cheapest and whether they would want to switch to another store for a second set of shopping trips.

Notably, the investigators found that when participants were told in advance that they would make a second set of shopping trips, they were less likely to prefer the store they initially chose and more likely to switch to another store after the first set of trips. In addition, they also thought the store they chose was the most expensive fifty percent more of the time. This phenomenon was replicated in later studies even when the chosen store was less expensive than the other two stores.

In contrast, participants who did not expect to have to make a second choice accurately recalled an equal number of trips on which the chosen store was cheaper or more expensive.

(EurekAlert: “The grass isn’t greener.” [7 Aug 2007])

I don’t know exactly how it works, nor do I want to:

MyProgress.com is a set of powerful Personal Progress Management (PPM) tools with built-in intelligence to automatically observe and analyze all essential aspects of your life. With MyProgress, you can watch your progress and discover your productivity at any period, any time, any place. Read More…

Watch your financial progress

Track your personal finance with MyProgress while intelligent technologies calculate your ranks (by occupation, age, and location), grant titles, build forecasts and provide analytics for you.

Track your skills & knowledge

While spending time on your passions and pastime, you can hardly realize how good your skills really are and how much experience you obtain. Track your time with MyProgress and get your ranks and titles, watch top, lowest, and average statistics of MyProgress community.

Figure your wealth progress

MyProgress will calculate how wealthy you are using actual currency exchange rates and compare it with the average database figures by global, local, age, and occupational categories.

(Emphasis added.)