As you probably know, there was a total solar eclipse today,

first darkening the eastern tip of Brazil, and then moving across the Atlantic Ocean to make landfall in Ghana, Africa. It [continued] moving northeast through Niger, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, across the Mediterranean and into Turkey.

The amazing picture above is the Moon's shadow on the Earth as seen from the International Space Station.

Update: I came across this nice gallery of solar eclipse images taken around the world at Cynical-C.

Book of Numbers is a series of Terry Gilliam-esque Flash animations that messed with my head...

Heat Vision and Jack is a Fox TV pilot from 1999 almost too surreal to believe:

Written by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, directed by Ben Stiller, this series was passed over by Fox despite critical acclaim from those who've been lucky enough to see it.

The 30 minute pilot is about an astronaut (played by Jack Black) with a medical secret who is on the run from the evil Ron Silver and the rest of NASA, with the help of a talking motorcycle called Heat Vision (voiced by Owen Wilson).

Someone was kind enough to post the entire pilot episode to YouTube, which you can view in the embedded player below. I had heard of this but never seen it, so this was quite a find...

Brandon Hardesty's Movie Reenactments are extremely cheesy, yet I keep watching them...

Check out the video Harrison Ford: Wife Force One:

An awful lot of Harrison’s non-Lucasian output has been, shall we say, fucking identical to itself. Here’s a mashup of Harrison’s singular acting approach from various movies which serve as a grim affirmation of that old wives tale about how if you keep doing that, your face will stay that way.

I hate to say it, but they might have a point...

The YouTube video Global Politics in 30 Seconds is short, but just disturbing enough that I'll call it NSFW. Watch the video in the embedded player below.

The Movie Timeline is "a timeline of all the events that occurred in many, many films, from 4,000,000 BC to 865,427,810 AD" "taken from one simple premise - that everything you see in the movies is true." There's lots of fun stuff here, like:

Who'd have thought that while Gangs of New York's Amsterdam Vallon was killing Butcher Bill, down the road Abraham Lincoln was being kidnapped by Bill & Ted...

And lucky Al Capone - he was sent to Alcatraz by Eliot Ness just in time to miss King Kong rampaging around New York...

Andy Dufresne was wrongly sentenced to Shawshank a few short months before someone else was framed - Roger Rabbit...

Definitely worth a long visit...

The World Record For Largest Coconut Orchestra was broken last week in celebration of the first anniverary of Monty Python's Spamalot on Broadway.

A recent Worth1000 PhotoShop contest theme was Counterfeit Art, in which "you will take any famous painting or artwork (any period is fine) and alter it in such a way that it is obviously a forgery." One of my favorites is the one above... :-)

In response to South Dakota's recent draconion law banning most abortions, a South Dakota Indian tribe decided to take action:

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," she said [to reporter Tom Giago] last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

Looks like Cartman was spotted in Iraq... ;-)

The BBC has an informative article with details on the upcoming Star Wars TV series, revealing that it takes place in the twenty years between episodes three and four and "will run to at least 100 episodes." I think the success of this series will hinge on whether George Lucas decides to get involved or not. And I'm only half-kidding. ;-p

CrashBonsai is a gallery that should be fairly self-explanatory... ;-)

I know, I know; another Brokeback Mountain mashup?! Sorry, I just found this one too funny to resist The YouTube video Walker, Brokeback Ranger is a mash-up of Brokeback Mountain with Chuck Norris Facts. Too funny...

Print your own lens hoods! If you own an SLR and don't have lens hoods for your lenses, they are definitely worth it to cut down on lens flare in certain situations. However, they can be surprisingly expensive. These cardboard versions are obviously not as sturdy as the real thing, but as the site points out, you can always print out another ;-). Most lens manufacturers are covered (no Minolta for you yet, shaft) with a surprising selection of lenses available.

The animated image above is seen on bicycle wheels via the phenomenon known as persistence of vision, which creates an illusion of motion when a series of images are displayed in quick succession. The Instructables post SpokePOV: LED Bike Wheel Images includes detailed step-by-step instructions on how to build your own POV rig on a bicycle.

SACKS10 held a contest in which artists submitted their interpretations of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Most of the entries were very cool, and the one above is one of my favorites (although not the winner)...

Trek Passions is:

A 100% free online community and SciFi personals site for science fiction lovers, including but not limited to lovers of Star Trek and Star Wars. Find others who share your passion for Sci Fi. Meet people who read Isaac Asimov, Ben Bova, Robert A. Heinlein, Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke & more. Grok!? Whether you are just looking for like-minded friends, or maybe more, Trek Passions is here for you.

Not sure what to make of this, but I am not in the mood to explore too deeply right now...

This video of Celine Dion impersonating Madonna is only slightly less disturbing than my previous post in which she impersonated Michael Jackson. View at your own risk... ;-)

Check out the American Prospect Online article The New New Gore:

Five years ago, Al Gore was the much-mocked pol who blew a gimme with his stiff demeanor and know-it-all style. Today? C’mon, admit it: You like him again.

The article examines what Al Gore has been up to for the past couple of years. You might be surprised...

Visit Hoth2014.com and "join our alliance in a bid to have the icy site of Episode V host the XXII Winter Games." Great idea, but the site is a bit scant on content so far...

McSweeney's Internet Tendency's latest list Parallels Between My Living Through Two Years of Middle School and the Two Terms of the Bush Presidency hits the nail on the head...

The Borowitz Report reports that the U.S. has launched Operation Incomprehensible Program in Iraq:

In an effort to confuse Iraqi insurgents, the Pentagon announced today that the U.S. had begun bombarding insurgent positions with copies of President Bush’s Medicare prescription drug plan.
...
Defense Secretary [Rumsfeld] said he was hopeful that Operation Incomprehensible Program would leave the Iraqi insurgents totally baffled, but he hinted that the Pentagon had other tactics up its sleeve: "We are fully prepared to bombard them with copies of my press briefings."

News.com reports that Google has launched a beta version of Google Finance. Early reviews of the new site seem to contend that it is not as comprehensive as competing sites like Yahoo!'s, but the way in which stock charts and news are handled is somewhat unique. Stock charts are zoomable and scrollable left to right, with hyperlinked news stories attached to the chart when they were issued, showing any effects they had on the stock price. Definitely worth checking out, but for now maybe not yet as good as it could be...

There are a couple more developments with respect to my previous post about Isaac Hayes quitting South Park. As some of you may have noticed, the scheduled rerun airing of the controversial South Park episode Trapped In The Closet, which satirized Scientology and Tom Cruise in particular, was preempted with another episode. It is widely rumored that "Tom Cruise threatened to cancel all publicity for Mission Impossible 3 if Comedy Central aired the episode that satirizes Scientology and mocks his sexuality again." Although Cruise denies this, I can definitely see him doing something like this. In fact, I really think that Tom Cruise got to Isaac Hayes, especially considering the sudden change of heart he seems to have regarding South Park, going from defending the show in January and then abruptly quitting just before the re-airing of the episode.

For their part, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker issued a somewhat unusual (but hilarious) statement "filled with references to Scientology and the science-fiction writings of church founder L. Ron Hubbard, suggesting Scientology was behind the scheduling change":

So, Scientology, you have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for Earth has just begun. Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!

Stone and Parker were recently on Late Night With David Letterman, where they also addressed Isaac Hayes' departure as well as talking about how they came up with South Park; here's the video.

Tell Comedy Central that you won't stand for this kind of censorship by signing the Chef Gate Petition:

We, the loyal viewers of television's South Park, do hereby protest against the removal of the episode "Trapped in the Closet." We demand that Comedy Central put this episode back on the air and show it as soon as possible: we want everyone, including Tom Cruise, to know that censorship is wrong.

To that effect, we also will refuse to see any movies featuring Tom Cruise, most especially Mission Impossible 3, until this episode is once again shown.

In the meantime, you can view the controversial South Park episode in its entirety at YouTube. I also suggest viewing this Jimmy Kimmel sketch in which Isaac Hayes does the voice of Tom Cruise on Oprah. :-)

By the way, the South Park Season 10 premiere episode is entitled The Return Of Chef and is set to air Wednesday night, "marking the 'triumphant homecoming' of lusty school cafeteria cook James 'Chef' McElroy to the show." I can't wait... :-)

The Ezprezzo.com gallery Overloaded has a bunch of pictures depicting overloaded vehicles.

AskOxford's Frequently Asked Questions is a "database of some of the questins sent in to the Oxford Word and Language Service Team." There's a lot of neat trivia and information to browse through...

As seen above, The Economist explores the rapid increase in the number of blades on razors, predicting that by 2100 we could see as many 14 blades on razors! The article actually sounds serious, but I can't take it that way after seeing eerily similar satirical stories in The Onion... ;-)

The YouTube video Videogame Theater depicts the rise and fall of Pac-Man, a cautionary tale of squandered fame. Future episodes will spotlight Donkey Kong and Mario, Frogger, and Q-Bert. :-) Play the video in the embedded player below:

ABC News reports that "A nanotechnologist has created the world's smallest and most plentiful smiley, a tiny face measuring a few billionths of a metre across assembled from strands of DNA." Cool, but a little freaky too...

flickr Leech allows you to see a huge amount of flickr photos at once, sorting by "interestingness," user name, photo set, group, and other search terms. It's definitely hard on the bandwidth (and was down briefly after landing on digg's front page), but you get to see lots of cool stuff on one page...

Michael Crichton's New York Times (registration required, link will break soon; sorry) op-ed piece This Essay Breaks the Law makes an appeal for common sense in patent law. Too bad common sense rarely prevails in such situations...

As if the limitations of DRM-crippled music weren't annoying enough, Boing Boing reports that the extra computations cycles necessary to decrypt DRM can actually drain your battery:

Playing DRM-crippled music will shorten the battery life of your music-player. Listening to DRMed iTunes songs on an iPod shortens the battery life by eight percent; playing back WMA-crippled files on a device from Creative Labs can knock 25 percent off the life of your device's battery. The extra battery-drain is attributed to the computation necessary to decrypt the files and verify their licenses.

The full article at MP3.com goes into detail about battery life claims of mobile music players.

TuneFind is "working to become the Internet's comprehensive list of music and songs appearing in television and movies."

del.icio.us is finally offering private bookmarks:

Because many of you have asked for it, we have just rolled-out a beta of our private saving feature. To try it out, go to "settings" and click on "private saving" to activate; you’ll then see the new option whenever you save a page.

Check out the Google Video Tomcat Tribute, which includes five minutes worth of awesome footage of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat.

As many of you may know, the F-14 is nearing the end of its active service life, being phased out in favor of the McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) F/A-18E/F Hornet. I'm quite sad to see it go...

OK, so some geeks modified a Roomba so that it could be controlled with a laptop via Bluetooth. One green t-shirt and several drinks later, and we have Roomba Frogger on the streets outside. Poor thing never had a chance... ;-)

Check out this aircraft carrier made entirely with legos, incorporating a below-deck hangar and pretty authentic-looking aircraft...

First of all, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Most Guinness purists scoff at the idea of drinking it from a can, even if it does include a widget designed to replicate the delicious creamy head the stout is known for. Well, now the Guinness Surger (looks like the links to the official Guinnesss site are down at the moment) may yet make converts of those purists, as the stand sends ultrasonic pulses into a glass of Guinness Draught Surger Beer, supposedly doing a decent job of imitating a good pour. Seems this is only available in the UK right now, so I can't attest to its effectiveness, but it sounds pretty neat...

And now to celebrate with some good Jameson's... :-)

Damn Interesting's post Shortness of Dark puts forth the interesting theory that man's invention of the light bulb may serve to counteract some of the benefits of the circadian rhythm:

Before the incandescent bulb began to proliferate in the early twentieth century, human sleep schedules were largely governed by the Earth's day and night cycle. But once humans possessed the technology to ward off an appreciable chunk of nighttime, we soon extended our usable waking hours by an average of 13%. Some researchers believe that this modern convenience, credited with bringing the human race in from the dark, may also be responsible for numerous ills.

Check out the hilariously awesome prank played on a USC basketball player by University of California-Berkeley. This takes heckling to a whole new level, but I must salute the effort put into organizing this...

As you probably (hopefully) noticed, I've redesigned the layout for DrikoLand. One impetus for change is the recent 1,000,000th hit on my '80s Site (woo hoo!), which is spurring me on to revamp a lot of that site (still working on that; more news soon, I hope). However, the blog has also become a little stagnant, I think, so I'm finally implementing some of the ideas I've been jotting down for a while now.

I've tried to keep the main elements of the site the same, like the overall color scheme and the logo. I may yet change some more, but this is it for now. Here's a summmary of most of the changes, and some rationales for them if you're interested. If not, skip on down to the end...

• The most obvious change is a move (back) to two columns from three, with a fixed width. I decided on a fixed width of 800 pixels so that the site should look pretty much the same to anyone with a screen width of 800 pixels or more, which is about 95% of you, according to my site stats. This allows me to better visualize the addition of large images in posts, as I now know exactly how things will look to everyone. Although I will point out that M$ Internet Explorer still doesn't render some things like it should, which caused me to tear my hear out over several spacing issues that worked perfectly in Firefox.
  
• With the switch to two columns, I deleted and reordered several of the elements in the previous two sidebars.
  
• Two search boxes in the right sidebar are now a single search box that just searches the DrikoLand blog, versus the WWW or the entire driko.org domain. I never used the Technorati search box, and the new Google Blog Search is at least as good. I may want to add back a means to search the entire site, though.
  
• I got rid of the "Useful Links" section that was in the left sidebar altogether. Although nostalgic in that those pages still retained design elements from the mid- to late-'90s, they were rife with broken links and I don't think anyone really visited them. I plan on slowly adding working links from those pages and from my extensive personal bookmarks into del.icio.us, so the categories in the right sidebar will probably grow as I add those in. That will allow you (and me) to access all of my bookmarks (and post links) from any location, which will be kind of nice, I think.
  
• I moved the navigation bar up top to below the logo, as I think it helps the logo stand out more. I debated getting rid of the navigation bar altogether, but since I find myself using it, I decided to keep it around.
  
• I changed some formatting, like making blockquotes surrounded by a shaded box so they stand out better. There are some minor font changes that shouldn't be all that evident except that I cleaned up the underlying CSS.

The next step will be to move away from a table-based layout to one that utilizes CSS, which will make future changes much easier and will also help me to standardize formatting across the entire site. One step at a time, though... :-)

Please let me know what you think! If you actually used something that I got rid of, let me know and I'll see if it can be reincorporated. If you have any other suggestions for additions or changes, I'd appreciate them as well.

Must Love Jaws is another funny movie remix, this time editing up a trailer for Jaws that makes it out to be a sentimental love story between man and shark. Check out the video in the embedded player below:

Groupr allows you to easily see new photos in all of the different flickr groups you belong to.

The Knockoff Project collects and displays "album cover spoofs, goofs, tributes, send-ups, near-misses and coincidences."

T'bone's SWU has a lot of interesting Star Wars trivia and media content, including a bunch of cut scene videos from all six episodes.

Boing Boing posts about Sony BMG's settlement over the destructive rootkit it added to music CDs without consumers' knowledge or consent:

The settlement process has begun in EFF's class action lawsuit
against Sony BMG for the flawed digital rights management (DRM)
that Sony BMG released in millions of CDs over the last several years.

Music fans who bought the affected CDs can submit claims for clean music.

Many customers are also eligible for extra downloads or a small cash settlement.

Might be worth checking out if you bought any CDs from Sony BMG recently...

KeepVid allows you to download streamed movies from Google, Youtube, iFilm, Putfile, and a whole bunch more. As I mentioned before in a post about how to do this with Greasmonkey scripts, you may need to add an .flv extension to the target file and an FLV player to view it.

Sean Gordon plays an awesome unplugged guitar version of The Simpsons theme. Check out the video in the embedded player below:

Check out the awesome Flying Spaghetti Monster billboard spotted in Baltimore! :-)

Following in the footsteps of Google Moon, Google recently unveiled Google Mars, an extremely detailed interactive map of Mars that includes elevation, visible, and infrared views. Very cool...

A three-alarm fire at Solomons Island yesterday afternoon destroyed two landmarks, the Lighthouse Inn and Bowen's Inn. The cause of the fire is currently unknown, but yesterday's gusting 45 mph winds made the fire quick to spread and hard to bring under control.

I'm quite sad to hear this, as I live only 10 minutes away and have been to both restaurants. Although the Lighthouse Inn was a bit upscale for dinner, it was worth it, and it was also known for its good happy hour specials. Bowen's Inn was decidedly unpretentious, but I can attest to the amazing fried chicken special on Sundays.

Hopefully they'll be able to rebuild, but at this point rebuilding plans of all parties are unknown.

Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, among other things, wrote an interesting essay back in 2002 entitled Why Grammar is the First Casualty of War that was recently posted on Common Dreams. Here's an excerpt:

What really alarms me about [W]'s "war on terrorism" is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? It's rather like bombing murder.
...
Saying "We will destroy terrorism" is about as meaningful as saying: "We shall annihilate mockery."

Although the essay is tongue-in-cheek, it is only partially so, as underneath the satirical humor there is a definite message to be pondered...

Former game show host Peter Tomarken died on Monday when a plane carrying him and his wife crashed off the California coast. Best known as host of the '80s game show Press Your Luck, Tomarken also hosted several other game shows and had roles in a few TV shows and movies.

When you watch the three-ball juggling act of Chris Bliss (Google Video), you might think it's pretty cool. However, if you check out Jason Garfield performing the same act with five balls, satirically using the same music and audience reactions, then you'll realize he has good reason to "diss Bliss."

Check out Cerado's Web 2.0 or Star Wars Quiz, in which you look at a list of names and have to choose whether it represents a "Web 2.0" application or a Star Wars character. I got 41 out of 43, which is cool and a bit sad at the same time... ;-)

Yahoo! News reports that Isaac Hayes quit South Park:

Isaac Hayes has quit South Park, where he voices Chef, saying he can no longer stomach its take on religion.

Hayes, who has played the ladies' man/school cook in the animated Comedy Central satire since 1997, said in a statement Monday that he feels a line has been crossed.

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.

"Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored," he continued. "As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

South Park co-creator Matt Stone responded sharply in an interview with The Associated Press Monday, saying, "This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology... He has no problem — and he's cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians."
...
Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker "never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin."

As much as I like Isaac Hayes, I've now lost some respect for him. His belief in Scientology aside (and that's a pretty big thing to ignore), I can't believe that he doesn't realize how patently hypocritical his actions are. As Matt Stone pointed out, South Park takes great pains to satirize (and offend) just about every religion, race, and creed imaginable (with the notable exception of Scientology), so if Hayes really believed what he is now preaching, he should have quit a long time ago. Instead, he tries to cover the fact that he is suddenly personally offended after a single episode (Trapped In The Closet, which aired in November 2005 and satirized Scientology) with a blanket intolerance statement that just doesn't hold water. Very lame...

Update: Of all places, The Soup had some interesting information that further enlightened me on this matter. Just two months ago the New York Daily News interviewed Isaac Hayes, asking him about his role on South Park. Here is his response:

Oh, yes. We're now in our 11th season, would you believe it? I love the humor in it, the audacity of Matt (Stone) and Trey (Parker). They have the b-s to do what they do. Nobody is exempt from their humor. They're equal-opportunity offenders (laughs out loud). Don't be offended by it. If you take it too seriously, you have problems.

OK, now I've lost all respect for him.

In case you hadn't noticed, I was away for most of the week on travel in California, specifically Point Mugu NAWS about an hour north of Los Angeles. I spent more time shuttling between both coasts than I did actually working, unfortunately, but them's the breaks sometimes...

Thankfully, I did have a chance to do some sightseeing on Tuesday after I finished my meetings and aircraft surveys. I started with some interesting static displays of aircraft and missiles outside one of the gates at Point Mugu NAWS; it was nice to see both a Tomcat and a Phantom II in one place. :-)

After that, I headed down the 101 and explored one of the canyon roads (Kanan-Dume Road) between the 101 and the Pacific Coast Highway. That ended up being a neat way to cross the Santa Monica Mountains, although I'll admit that as expected I was a little white-knuckled in spots because of the nice, expansive views and very windy conditions. By the way, just east of this canyon road lies Malibu Creek State Park, where much of the M*A*S*H TV series was filmed. I didn't get a chance to explore the park, but apparently some parts of the set remain on the premises. Looking at the surrounding mountains, I could definitely see the resemblance to scenery from the show.

The canyon road ends on the coast at Malibu, and from there I explored the Pacific Coast Highway heading back north, stopping at some beaches and overlooks along the way. In particular, I was trying to scope out a good spot for some sunset photography, which was a little tough considering that the coast travels almost east-west along that stretch. Still, I eventually found a pretty good spot at Point Mugu itself, which presented a nice backdrop to a pretty decent, albeit somewhat cloudy, sunset (as seen above in one of my favorite photos of the bunch). I will state now that I froze my ass off taking dozens of pictures, as it was extremely windy, dropping a good ten degrees while I waited there patiently... ;-p

I've posted some pictures from my meanderings to my Photo Gallery (separated into a Point Mugu Missile Park gallery, with the rest of the pictures in a Point Mugu travel gallery) as well as to my flickr page. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

NASA reports on "OVAL BA" AKA "Red Jr.," another storm on Jupiter that looks like a smaller sibling of the Great Red Spot.

The Google Video Ukulele Gently Weeps showcases Jake Shimabukoro's amazing performance of the song While My Guitar Gently Weeps on a ukulele. Brilliant.

The trailer for X-Men: The Last Stand (embedded QuickTime video), supposedly the third and last X-Men movie (yeah, right) looks intriguing...

Check out the YouTube video The Real Life Simpsons, in which actors reenact the opening credit scenes of The Simpsons. You can also watch it in the embedded Flash player below:

DARPA is researching means to create "stealth shark spies":

Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark's brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal's movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.

That team is among a number of groups around the world that have gained ethical approval to develop implants that can monitor and influence the behaviour of animals, from sharks and tuna to rats and monkeys. These researchers hope such implants will improve our understanding of how the animals interact with their environment, as well as boosting research into tackling human paralysis.

More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted.

Although I can't quite figure out how DARPA "gained ethical approval" for all of this, foremost in my mind, unfortunately (or perhaps fittingly), is one thing: "sharks with frickin' lasers!" ;-)

Scott Granneman of Security Focus has an informative article entitled The Big DRM Mistake:

Digital Rights Managements hurts paying customers, destroys Fair Use rights, renders customers' investments worthless, and can always be defeated.

The article cites many different forms of media that are adversely affected, specifically mentioning the recently-released complete works of The New Yorker on DVD.

Wikipedia has a "list of full length copyleft/public domain songs available on Wikipedia or the Commons." The works are primarily classical, but there's a lot of neat stuff available for free download in the .ogg format (open source alternative to mp3).

In case you're thinking about piloting a helicopter without being qualified to do so, you may want to see the possible consequences in this YouTube video. Dumbass...

Update: Looks like the video was remove by YouTube... :-(

CBS News recently aired an inspirational story on 60 Minutes entitled Autistic Teen's Hoop Dreams (Google Video):

When the autistic team manager of a high school basketball team got his chance in the spotlight, he shattered everyone's expectations...

Very cool...

The flickr set The Twelve Olympians presents the gods and goddesses of the Greek Pantheon as Lego figures.

The upcoming Electronic Arts game Spore looks like it could be very cool. Check out the Google Video of creator Will Wright demoing the game at the recent Game Developers' Conference.

Check out this video of an amazing curling shot (embedded YouTube video) from the Olympics last week.

Peter Griffin of Family Guy made a visit to Late Night With David Letterman to deliver his list Top 10 Things Peter Griffin Wants to Tell America (embedded QuickTime video). Hilarious as usual...

Are Your Cats Old Enough To Learn About Jesus? I love The Onion... :-)

It's funny but true. More "Phake Photo Phun" iPod images here...

A Cello Rondo is an amazing video performance by Ethan Winer:

I thought it would be a fun project to write and record a pop tune using nothing but cellos, then make a video of the performance. The original goal was to keep everything entirely acoustic, with no recording studio effects or other processing. I quickly abandoned that idea to get more variety of sounds, but everything you hear was played entirely on my cello. There are 37 separate cello parts recorded on 23 tracks using 37 plug-in effects.

Well worth viewing/listening...

Shock Absorber is ostensibly a site promoting a new line of sports bras. However, the "Bounce-ometer" interactive demonstration of how different-sized breasts move during varying levels of exercise straddles a somewhat tenuous line between neat physics and voyeuristic titillation. Not that I'm complaining... ;-) (obviously NSFW)

Google Video has collected a whole bunch of National Archives videos and documentaries. Very cool...

The Google Video A Meditation On the Speed Limit chronicles "an extraordinary act of public obedience" in which four college students take to an Atlanta highway and occupy all four lanes while driving the 55 mph speed limit, demonstrating the fruitlessness of most current speed limit laws. Hilarity/road rage ensues...

Check out the Cormorant, a design concept from Lockheed Martin's famous Skunk Works:

The Cormorant, a stealthy, jet-powered, autonomous aircraft that could be outfitted with either short-range weapons or surveillance equipment, is designed to launch out of the Trident missile tubes in some of the U.S. Navy’s gigantic Cold War–era Ohio-class submarines. These formerly nuke-toting subs have become less useful in a military climate evolved to favor surgical strikes over nuclear stalemates, but the Cormorant could use their now-vacant tubes to provide another unmanned option for spying on or destroying targets near the coast.

The article goes into some more detail, including some of the engineering challenges facing such an unusual design.