Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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"In response to the public outcry over the life-sized 6-foot chocolate Jesus, naked and hanging on a cross, during the Catholic Lent week leading up to Easter, the Roger Smith Hotel has decided to cancel the exhibit."
The artist, Cosimo Cavallaro, has been featured here before.
Update: Be sure to read Digby on this dust up. The key bit: "I'm sorry to have to say this because I am generally pretty tolerant of religion and try to be respectful of others' beliefs. But until the Catholic Church steps up and says that this screaming nutcase Bill Donohue and his band of freaks don't speak for them, I'm going to have to assume that the Catholic Church agrees with his lunatic ravings." Can't argue with that.
Update 2: Cavallaro's website.
Dong Resin wants fat kids next to him on planes.
The Tattooine double sunset is actually pretty common.
"A statutory rape case against a 42-year-old charged as a man took on a different look after a jail shower revealed the defendant is actually a woman."
Jim Henley pegs the modern Republican Party.
New Horizons snapped a cool photo of a volcano erupting on Jupiter's moon, Io.
"Michael Jackson is in discussions about creating a 50-foot robotic replica of himself to roam the Las Vegas desert. [...] It has now been claimed that his plans include an elaborate show in Vegas, which would feature the giant Jacko striding around the desert, firing laser beams. If built, the metal monster would apparently be visible to aircraft as they come in to land in the casino capital."
Surprisingly enough, goldfish can live in a deep fryer.
Lil' Jon's 12-pound Crunk Ain't Dead pendant has been certified by Guinness as the largest diamond pendant in the world. Skeet skeet skeet!
Oh, and speaking of unnecessary things, I've removed the trackback script from the site, since it hasn't recorded any of the real links here since October, but was letting roughly a dozen trackback spams a night through, in addition to the several hundred a night being blocked by the ever-expanding blacklist.
A deep, hexagon-shaped feature lies above Saturn's north pole, newly released images from the Cassini spacecraft reveal. The strange structure appears to be nearly stationary and may be a wave that stretches deep into the giant planet's atmosphere. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft glimpsed parts of the feature nearly 30 years ago, but because of their viewing angle, they were not able to see the whole thing. Now, Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer has captured the entire hexagon for the first time, thanks to a series of infrared images it took as the spacecraft flew over the pole in October and November 2006. The hexagon spans nearly 25,000 kilometres – the width of two Earths – and appears to be a clearing in the clouds that extends at least 75 km below the planet's visible cloudtops.
Here's an animated gif of clouds whipping around the stationary hexagon. On the other end of the planet, the south pole is covered by a hurricane-shaped storm about 2/3 the size of Earth. Currently, the hexagon feature can only be seen at infrared frequencies, because Saturn's north pole is still in its 15-year-long winter, when no sunlight hits it. That will be ending over the next couple of years, though, so Cassini will be able to look for the feature at visible wavelengths.
Following up on the dead squirrels for sex story below, here's a little more Deep South weirdness (link fixed -'r). Did I mention how much I love living in this part of the country?
Lest you think I mock derisively, while I've lived pretty much my whole life in NC, my father's family all still lives in Alabama and both my parents are Auburn grads.
Not quite sure what to make of this.
A Plano resident allegedly sent his male monkey a sexually explicit audio tape while the animal was in custody at the Living Materials Center (LMC), according to LMC staff. Darwin, a Rhesus Macaque Monkey, was confiscated by animal services on Feb. 21 after police found illegal animals in owner Bobby Denton Crawford Jr.'s home. Darwin was released back to Crawford Friday afternoon after being transported from the LMC, where the monkey stayed the past month. Sherry Smith, a spokesperson for Plano Animal Services, said Darwin was given back to Crawford because he agreed to move out of the city.
"Where he is going to be moving, they don't prohibit them there," Smith said. "He is complying with city ordinances by removing Darwin from the city."
Smith declined to comment on where Crawford had moved to. Crawford made at least three visits to the LMC and a handful of tear-filled phone calls requesting Darwin be returned to his custody, according to Jim Dunlap, curator at the LMC. On one such visit, Dunlap said Crawford handed him a box of Darwin's toys. Among those toys was an audio tape player with a recorded message from Crawford addressed to Darwin that was of a sexual nature, Dunlap said. After listening to the tape, Dunlap said Crawford made references to Darwin and himself engaging in mutual stimulation.
I'm left wondering what the strangest part of this story is:
A) The guy apparently had mutual masturbation sessions with a monkey.
B) He sent a monkey, who presumably doesn't speak English, a wistful audio tape about said sessions.
C) The authorities gave him back the monkey, just as long as he moved out of town.
I'm honestly having a hard time picking a winner here.
Update:The Dallas News reports that Mr. Dunlap said his remarks were meant to be off the record and he's afraid for his job.
Mr. Crawford said he did send a tape for the monkey to listen to, but that he was probably crying when he recorded it and that it contains nothing but comforting baby talk. He said there was nothing sexually suggestive on the tape and called Mr. Dunlap's initial conclusion "ridiculous."
"I don't have sex with my monkey. That's absolute crap," Mr. Crawford said. "Why would I do that? I gave him an audiotape, but it didn't have anything like that on it. It said, 'I'm coming home, I'm coming to get you. Daddy's coming, he's coming to get you,' " Mr. Crawford said.
Mr. Dunlap said that he made a "gross error" and that his interpretation of the tape was just that – his and no one else's.
"I interpreted what I heard and saw in my own way, and I can't say that's correct. It's just me, what I think. I can't argue with Mr. Crawford about what he meant," Mr. Dunlap said. "I took it on surface value about what he said. I just don't want to deal with it anymore. He may be totally honest and right in what he thinks about the way he sounded." [...]
Mr. Dunlap declined to make the tape available, but Plano Police Department spokesman Rick McDonald said an investigator had listened to it. He would not say whether the tape described sexual activity.
"Best we can tell, there's no evidence that a crime has been committed," he said, declining to comment further.
Best I can tell from Google, Texas has no laws governing bestiality, so make of that what you will.
Researchers have discovered a rare type of twins between fraternal and identical.
Researchers have discovered a pair of twins who are identical through their mother's side, but share only half their genes on their father's side. The 'semi-identical' twins are the result of two sperm cells fusing with a single egg — a previously unreported way for twins to come about, say the team that made the finding. The twins are chimaeras, meaning that their cells are not genetically uniform. Each sperm has contributed genes to each child. [...] Such twins are probably very rare. Their existence and discovery relies on three unusual, and possibly unlinked, events: first, that an egg fertilized by two sperm develops into a viable embryo; second, that this embryo splits to form twins; and third, that the children come to the attention of science. [...]
Souter and her colleagues investigated the twins' genetic makeup because one was born with ambiguous genitalia. This twin turned out to be a 'true hermaphrodite', with both ovarian and testicular tissue. The other twin is anatomically male. Genetic tests revealed that each twin contained some 'female' cells with two X chromosomes, and some 'male' cells with an X and a Y. The proportion of each type varies from tissue to tissue in each twin, the researchers report in Human Genetics. The babies, now toddlers, were conceived and born normally, and each twin's growth and mental abilities appear normal.
Had it not been for the ambiguous genitalia of the one twin, their unusual provenance would likely never have been discovered. A researcher from ECU is quoted in the article as doubting any further cases will be discovered.
You'd think it would be too small to notice, but it's enough to cause problems for winemakers.
The smell, which connotes green bell peppers or roasted peanuts, is produced by ladybugs as a defense mechanism. The chemicals they release, in a class of compounds called methoxypyrazines, are found in other animals and plants, but Jacek Koziel of Iowa State University said ladybugs are loaded with them. "Even tiny amounts can be detected by the human nose," he said. [...]
This type of ladybug has been spreading rapidly across the Midwest because some tasty new prey -- the invasive soybean aphid -- has also become widespread. Winemakers report greater concentrations of ladybugs in their vineyards and on harvested grapes. Apparently the bugs are being mixed into the fermenting grape juice by accident.
Quite possibly the biggest choke in the history of UNC basketball. Up 8 with six minutes to go, then they miss 20 some straight shots. Unbelievable.
Identification of the oldest preserved pieces of Earth's crust in southern Greenland has provided evidence of active plate tectonics as early as 3.8 billion years ago...
The new study reveals the geological structure at Isua (FG: in Greenland) contains both seafloor pillow lavas and dikes, or sheets, of basalt that intruded into the pillow lavas after they formed. These features and the chemistry of the ophiolites indicate that the area was formed as the result of seafloor spreading
There has never been good evidence of seafloor spreading prior to 2.5 BYA. Speaking of the sea, we're off to Monterey for an extra, extra long weekend. I'll have a pair of budding young scientists in tow, ages 2 and 7. Anybody know of cool places to visit in addition to the more obvious roadside attractions?
On the odd chance someone does please respond in comments because I forgot my password to the froz@apostropher email embarrassingly long ago.
Scott Eric Kaufman relates the greatest student complaint letter ever.
It may come as no surprise to regular readers of the site that I have a Google news alert set up that emails me whenever a news story containing the word "penis" comes across the wire. I don't feel the need to justify it; that's just how I roll. Though as you might imagine, it often leads to, um, questionable content wrapped up in a respectable-looking news package. And so it was that I came across Maggot Lover at the BME body modification site. Why BME is considered a news outlet by Google remains obscure to me, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.
I'm waiting 'til the end of the post to drop in the link just so everybody has the chance to bail out now. Anyhow, you can file this under N for no matter how imaginative you are, there's a fetish you haven't yet imagined, and of course there's a website. Now, maggots only eat dead flesh, and there's no dead flesh involved here. However, as the caveat at the site warns: "These are explicit photos of maggots on genitals." Why am I even linking this? Hell if I know, but it's the strangest thing I've seen today and that usually makes the cut.
New dinosaur species! The first fossil of a gliding lizard was found in China and the first fossil of a burrowing lizard was found in Montana.
Mars Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System has spotted what are likely seven openings to an underground cave system near Mars' equator.
Two of the seven possible openings found by Cushing have been probed using thermal infrared imaging, which shows that their temperature is pretty constant at any time of day: in daylight, the spots are cooler than the rest of the surface, but not as cool as shadowed areas, and at night the spots are warmer than their surroundings. That helps to confirm his suspicion that they are indeed holes or 'skylights' in the ceilings of underground caverns, Cushing says. The holes don't have sunlit walls or floors, so they aren't simply collapsed pits. And they don't have the rims or sprays of surrounding dust that impact craters have, he notes. The data suggest that the holes are at least 80 metres deep, Cushing told the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in League City, Texas, this week.
Finding such caverns on Mars is important for researchers keen to find a place for humans to build a base on the planet, or for those looking for signs of ancient life. Just as on Earth, caves provide shelter from the elements, particularly dust storms and temperature extremes. On the red planet, they also protect from the rain of micro-meteorites, solar flares, ultraviolet radiation and high-energy particles from space. Such underground caverns might also harbour stable water ice, Cushing suggests.
Other researchers, however, are doubtful about water ice remaining if the caves are open to the Martian atmosphere. The Reconnaissance Orbiter's High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment will look at these openings next, and can image them at an angle rather than straight down, which will provide a better indication of whether these are actually cave openings.
MSNBC: Supreme Court hears 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' case
In case you're wondering which side of this case you're on, one side is being supported by Bill Bennett and represented for free by Kenneth Starr.
If you tried to post a comment and were denied, I apologize. I'm not sure how a blank space got added as an entry in my blacklist log. It sure does keep the spam out, though. Anyhow, should be all better now.
I'll be gone most of the weekend, but do catch Drivl's 25 Worst Division I College Mascots.
Not an impressive performance by UNC. They'd better pull their shit together or they'll be following Duke to the exit door. And speaking of Duke, here's their program in a nutshell. Nice flop, Corky.
Two short video clips simulating low-altitude flyovers of Mars are linked at this article, both constructed from pictures taken by NASA's High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Lots of beautiful photographs of "grand" canyons around the world can be found at this site, along with pictures from a cave containing the largest crystals in the world.
An evolutionary psychologist would argue that humans have an aversion to arthropods on account of the millions of years we've shared the Earth with potentially dangerous insects and spiders. But Occam's razor suggests a simpler answer: humans don't like bugs because bugs do gross things.
Like eat their siblings in the womb.
If your ultrasound came up triplets, and a few weeks later you got a second ultrasound only to discover that you were down two babies and the third had grown suspiciously larger, then you'd be Emblemasoma auditrix, "a parasitoid fly in which about 38 larvae hatch simultaneously in utero."
Weeks later, once mommy has located a suitable host cicada, the sole remaining fly larvae, which has presumably eaten all 37 of its siblings, is deposited deep in the flesh of the target cicada, where it feeds on its guts for five days before hatching. Lovely.
This is the first species discovered that displays this specific behavior.
Update: The first insect species, that is. As noted in the comments, the same behavior (known as embryophagy or adelphophagy) can be found in certain shark species.
Way, way back in the day, when Froz and I had dropped out of college and were barely paying rent on our crappy basement apartment with our minimum wage jobs, we bought generic everything, except for two items: toilet paper and hot dogs. We also had a hot dog cooker with two rows of spikes upon which you'd impale your franks, which were then heated by zapping electricity through them. Coolest appliance I've ever had in a kitchen, but that isn't the point of this story.
Anyhow, a good hot dog is one of nature's finest-- wait, hot dogs don't appear in nature. Still, a good hot dog (and I take Hebrew Nationals as the baseline here) is hard to improve upon, though HN has some recipe suggestions. BUT! The on-hiatus GaijinBiker mailed me one recipe that truly takes hot dogs to the next level. Hollow them out, fill them with spray cheese, wrap them in bacon, then deep-fry them in beer batter.
I may have to go buy a FryDaddy this weekend.
After identifying what are likely hydrocarbon lakes on Titan, Cassini may have found the seas.
Scientists have been looking for seas or oceans of methane on Titan since NASA's Voyager mission 25 years ago found evidence of a smog-choked atmosphere around the moon. There must be some source for the hydrocarbon muck surrounding the planet, they theorized, or else the atmosphere would have disappeared billions of years ago.
Scientists originally speculated that there must be a global ocean of methane. But Cassini and its Huygens probe, which landed on the surface of the moon, found nothing resembling large bodies of liquid. Huygens took bizarre pictures of ice balls strewn across an orange landscape — but no liquid.
Some radar images indicated the possible presence of lakes, but nothing large enough to fill Titan's skies with hydrocarbon aerosols. As the hunt progressed, some scientists began wondering whether the methane was coming from volcanic eruptions. Perhaps, they reasoned, Titan was a refrigerated sand dune with a gooey center like a candy bar.
In recent weeks, however, Cassini focused its radar and infrared mapping instruments on Titan's north pole. Vast dark regions started unfolding. One of the spacecraft's cameras, which can take pictures of the entire moon, found a large, irregular dark feature corresponding to the radar image. It stretches over an area 600 miles across.
The next close fly-by of Titan takes place in May, and scientists are refocusing the radar to get a better look at the potential sea. Also, interesting new data on the icy moon Enceladus and its puzzling internal heat consolidates its position as one of the most tantalizing targets for extraterrestrial life.
Waaah waaah waaah. Eric Boehlert:
The cheese has really fallen off the cracker at Fox News over the Nevada Democratic Party's decision to break its presidential debate partnership with the cable news channel because the outlet is not seen as being fair. On Saturday night, Beltway Boys co-host Morton Kondracke completely lost it while discussing the snub and compared Nevada Democrats to communist propagandists. On Monday night, Fox News talker Bill O'Reilly went one better and likened the "radical" Nevada voters to Nazis.
The bizarre outbursts were just the latest in long line of wild-eyed Fox News denunciations that always come whenever there's a high-profile, albeit logical, observation that Fox News broadcasts a conservative-friendly version of the news and that the partisan news operation does not always employ the traditional checks and balances of mainstream journalism. In fact, Kondracke's own flare-up closely followed a name-calling press release in which Fox News itself denounced Nevada Democrats for being controlled by "radical fringe" special interest groups.
Of course, a real news organization wouldn't issue a nasty statement like that, nor would it give the statement exclusively to Matt Drudge, which Fox News did. And Kondracke's wild on-air denunciation of Democratic activists simply proved the activists' point about Fox News and its purposefully slanted programming. (See FoxAttacks for details.)
More importantly, the latest confrontation simply highlights the fact that Fox News can't take a punch. Then again, isn't that always the case with bullies?
Not always, no, but in this case, definitely. Read the rest of the article for more Fox News freakouts over this. Look, there's simply no reason for any Democrat anywhere to deal with Fox News ever. They aren't a legitimate news organization; they are part and parcel of the Republican message machine. Witness how they handled the last Democratic debate they sponsored. When a Democrat next takes the White House, they should do to FNC journalists at press conferences exactly what the Bush White house did to Helen Thomas, and just don't ever call on them until they start behaving like an actual news organization instead of a slicker and better-funded WorldNetDaily.
You may remember a post here last year about Jonathan "The Impaler" Sharkey, who ran for the governorship of Minnesota as a "satanic dark priest" and the leader of the "Vampyres, Witches and Pagans Party," on a platform of executing certain criminals on the steps of the state capitol by impaling them. Despite that sound and sensible platform, he somehow didn't make it to the governor's mansion.
But not to worry, he's running for president.
The American Secret Service have launched an investigation into one of the candidates for the presidency in 2008 – after he pledged that as President, one of his first acts would be to impale President George W. Bush. [...] Sharkey's pledge to impale President Bush, he makes clear, will only come into effect if he is actually elected to office. But that has still triggered action by the Secret Service, who say they have a duty to investigate any threats against the president. Sharkey, 42, says that agents from the service visited him at home with his 19-year-old wife, Spree, to investigate his impaling pledge.
Sharkey told The Columbia Chronicle about the visit: "They were telling me, when they were interrogating me, that their job was to protect Bush even after he's out of office. I'm looking at them like, 'Oh, you're going to defy me when I become president?'" [...]
Sharkey, meanwhile, seems unconcerned about the investigation. If anything, he feels that the Secret Service may not be taking him seriously enough. "They never even asked to see my impaling stick," he complained.
That quote might just be the funniest thing I've read all month. Sharkey's campaign website is here, and here's the Wikipedia page about him, which includes the following:
Sharkey lived for a time in Florida under his wrestling name of Rocky Hurricane Flash. While there, he also used the assumed name Kathleen Sharkey and claimed that this Kathleen Sharkey was either his half-sister or his wife. He filed reports with the Federal Election Commission which listed Kathleen Sharkey as a member of his campaign staff. Eventually, a letter was filed with the Federal Election Commission, purportedly by Kathleen Sharkey, which implied that he had died. Documents from a lawsuit filed in the Indianapolis District Court mention that Sharkey attempted to commit suicide. It has been suggested instead that he attempted to fake his own death.
And you know what's truly amazing? He'd still make a better president than the clown currently holding the office.
Selected items from New Mexico's Rio Grande Sun Police Blotter. (via Small Town Misfit)
February 22, 7:45 am: A man at the emergency room said a doctor stuck a finger in his anus and it hurt.
February 22, 5:01 pm: A Cadillac Lane caller said she found an ear in her bathtub. She was not sure how it got there.
February 24, 8:59 pm: A State Road 68 caller said her sister was assaulting her. She kept jumping on her while she was in bed, the caller said.
February 25, 7:06 pm: A Calle del Pajarito caller said a heavy-set blond woman has been yelling at people all day. People are beginning to throw rocks at her, the caller said. Police spotlighted the area but found no criminal activity.
February 25, 8:30 pm: A Calle del Pajarito woman said a man was soliciting sex and using his power. She said they were using the children in the housing area and are somehow involved with the mortuaries.
Despite having very little in the way of new content here, I had a big spike in visits (well, big for this site) over the past few days. Usually this means some heavy duty traffic mover like BitchPhD or Pharyngula has linked to something here. But looking through my referral logs, I see that it's almost all people arriving here from Google Image Search at this not-quite-flattering picture of Eddie Van Halen from a year-old post. Apparently he's gone into rehab, scuttling the reunion tour. Just no telling what brings people 'round this place. Sadly, I seem to be simultaneously losing ground in Google's rankings for Barack Obama antichrist, mostly to sites that link to that post or the related one at Unfogged. This will not do. No justice, no peace!
Remember the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he thwarts a construction worker's attempts to blast him out of his burrow so a highway can be built through it? How about Dr. Seuss' story of The Zax? Here's the real-world version, courtesy of China.
Maybe I'm just unimaginative, but why would you pick this over the tried and true overdose-on-pills method?
Atlanta police said two men survived after attempting suicide by using a circular saw to sever their arms from their bodies. While the men did manage to cut off three of their arms below the elbow on Friday, their apartment manager contacted authorities in time to save the men's lives, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said. [...] Both will undergo psychiatric evaluation once they recover, the newspaper said.
Yeah, I'll bet they will. Yikes.
The movie was called Jackass. The amateur spin-offs will be titled Dumbass.
Attempts to do a movie stunt landed one man in the hospital with burned genitals and another facing criminal charges. The men were trying to do a stunt from one of the "Jackass" movies, in which a character lights his genitals on fire. Jared W. Anderson, 20, suffered serious burns to his hands and genitals, according to the criminal complaint. Randell D. Peterson, 43, who sprayed lighter fluid on Anderson and lit him on fire, was charged with felony battery and first-degree reckless endangerment Tuesday in Eau Claire County Court.
And the least surprising detail of the story:
Witnesses told police that Anderson, who was drunk, volunteered to do the stunt Sunday after watching the movie, the complaint said.
The article goes on to say that Anderson told police at the hospital that "he didn't want anyone to get in trouble because of the stunt," which seems fair enough, given that everybody was a willing participant. So I'm left wondering why exactly the older guy is being charged with felony battery. Also, I'm going to be really disappointed with everybody involved if nobody even recorded this on their cell phone.
There hasn't been much here recently, and with the basketball post-season getting underway, that state is likely to persist. I'm distracted. But for now, here come the links.
Meat tastes best barely cooked. This is a scientific fact, so don't try to argue with me about it. However, the health police say that eating rare pork carries a significant risk of giving you parasitic worms. Now, certain highly qualified pork experts might tell you that's nothing to be concerned about, but I know you people simply won't listen to reason. So, if you're really all worried about that, just pour some Coke on it to remove the worms. Problem solved! (Update: Snopes says this video is a spoof.)
From the Better Safe than Sorry Department: "Serbian vampire hunters have acted to prevent the very remote possibility that former dictator Slobodan Milosevic might stage a come-back - by driving a three-foot stake through his heart. According to Ananova, the politically-motivated Van Helsings, led by Miroslav Milosevic (no relation), gave themselves up to cops after attacking the deceased despot in his grave in the eastern town of Pozarevac." (h/t: McManlyPants)
Yes, yes, it's completely juvenile, but this dog's special talent doubtlessly makes him the envy of the pack. Good thing the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon is a myth. In related news, giving handjobs to elephants is dangerous business.
"British scientists have embarked on a mission to study a huge area on the Atlantic seabed where the Earth's crust is mysteriously missing and instead is covered with dark green rock from deep inside the planet."
You're familiar with the Chick-Fil-A ad campaign with the cows advising people to "eat mor chiken," right? Well, there's no better way to sway people than leading by example. "The local vets said the cow was probably suffering from a disease but others said Lal was a tiger in his previous birth."
First, congratulations to the UNC women's team for winning the ACC tournament and the men's team for winning the regular season with a sweep of Duke. And speaking of which:
With the Blue Devils obviously inferior to the Heels, their only chance to win this game and derail Carolina's ACC title hopes was to junk the game up and win on effort. [...] In the end, Henderson clearly took the physical play thing too far. Took it all the way to the locker room and an invitation to wear street clothes in Tampa on Thursday night.
So Duke wakes up Monday with a fresh black eye and a fourth loss to Carolina in the past five meetings. For the image-obsessed Blue Devils, it gets no worse than being bad and being dirty.
Henderson's lucky to only get a one-game suspension. If this were the NBA, he'd be looking at several games plus a big fine. When these two teams meet again, whether in the post-season or next year, I wouldn't recommend Gerald Henderson try to drive the lane.
Update: Despite initial reports, Hansbrough's nose is broken and he'll need a root canal after the season.
Henry Winkler wants to talk to you about your winkie. I want an mp3 of that song.
Annalee Newitz wanted to see how easy it would be to game the Digg system.
How did I entice the Digg crowd into promoting something ridiculous? I used the scientific prank methodology, which is to say I conducted a controlled experiment and was something of a smartass about it.
I spent several days creating a blog intended to be as random and boring as possible. Built from templates, My Pictures of Crowds exhibits all the worst aspects of blogging. There's an obsessive theme -- photographs of crowds -- but no originality and absolutely no analysis. Each entry is simply an illogical, badly punctuated appreciation of a CC-licensed picture taken from Flickr. Also, there are a lot of unnecessary exclamation points!
Once I had created a blog destined to be least popular in the 'sphere, I opened a Digg account under a pseudonym. Then, at 8 Monday morning, I posted a story linking to the blog. My brilliant headline was, "Why Are People Fascinated By Photographs of Crowds?"
She did it through good, old-fashioned vote-buying and then it started creating its own momentum. It's an interesting story but honestly, the website is a pretty funny read. "I said before, that a crowd can be violent. But mostly they aren't!" Also, the most recent picture is of the NC State Fair.
Update: And it's more devious even than it first seems: "Digg Should Sue Wired".
"A pair of four-week-old Sumatran tiger cubs have become best friends with some baby orangutans while sharing a room at an Indonesian zoo."
Update: Video from Associated Press.
