Star "Porn": "Birthing Stars Tear Into A Nebula With A Fierce Beauty"

"Here's a detail of a new image the Hubble Space Telescope released to celebrate its 100,000th orbit of Earth. It shows the 'firestorm' of star creation in the nebula near star cluster NGC 2074. The three-dimensional image shows off 'dramadramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head 'pillars of creation,' and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation,' says NASA."

In other words, GORGEOUS!

The Best of Bad Fiction: The 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest!

The 26th annual winner of the most awful opening line of a novel (otherwise known as the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest) has been announced!

The winning entry:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped “Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.”

AIIIIEEEEEE!

For more on this venerable, so-horrible-it's-humorous contest, check out the ever-wonderful Neatorama!

Starbucks' Oversaturation?! It's Surreal!

This amuses me greatly... What could be better than a mashup of Escher AND coffee?!

(via Tumblr)

Forgotten Photos!

"MangoFalls is about old photos developed from film from old cameras found in antique stores and Sunday flea markets. A lot of these photos are about [unknown] people..."

(Thanks, Presurfer!)

P.S. That car looks suspiciously like my own first ride... a white 1967 Buick Electra (which got 6 mpg, HIGHWAY. No joke!)

Fawn in the House

Today's "OMG TCFW" Award goes to...

Click on the headline for the full story!

Medieval Food Blogging: Shrewsbury Cakes!

I went to college at William and Mary, where at times you couldn't help but feel that - as a local greeting card once put it - "I'm tired of the eighteenth century... Please send poptarts!"

But make no mistake, perpetually living on the doorstep of Colonial Williamsburg did have its perks.  One of them was a phenomenal eighteenth-century style cookie called a Shrewsbury Cake!

Little did I realize that this tasty little treat (named after the English town and pronounced "shrowsbury") had a much longer history!  This past week, the recipe was blogged (tongue-in-cheek even!) as a post on "Medieval Baking." If you don't plan to hit the Raleigh Tavern Bakery on Duke of Gloucester Street in Colonial Williamsburg anytime soon, here's the next best thing!  Enjoy!!

(P.S. You might find the "official" Williamsburg recipe if you buy the Recipes from the Raleigh Tavern Bake Shop cookbook, but another 18th c. recipe is available online free here!)

Red Army Choir sings "Sweet Home Alabama"... No, seriously!

Once upon a time, after watching a marathon of Monty Python shows, I changed the channel and saw a chorus of stout Bavarian women dressed in lederhosen, line dancing while waving kerchiefs and singing the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman." For a moment, I thought I was still watching Python... but no! It was real, and easily the most surreal thing I've seen on video... until now!

And now, a thing of beauty and a joy forever! With no further ado, I give you "Sweet Home Alabama," as sung by the Red Army Choir backing the Finnish novelty band, the Leningrad Cowboys!

(via Scribal Terror) 

Maine island loses cherished tradition: mail delivery to trash can

This story originally caught my eye in the British newspaper The Guardian's reporting of the Bangor Daily (via Topix's "offbeat news"). The news from Maine's Sutton Island which, as you can see below, is not far from Acadia National Park...

SUTTON ISLAND, Maine: The U.S. Postal Service has ended a decades-old tradition in which mail was delivered... by a private ferry service and left in a specially marked trash can on the dock for recipients to pick up. Postal Service higher-ups got wind of the practice used to serve those living in the island's 25 or so seasonal homes and decided it had to be halted for security reasons. ...

Shea Howell, who lives in Detroit, Mich., during the winter, said residents will now have to make the 2-mile ocean journey to the post office in Northeast Harbor. "That can mean a three-hour trip out of your day just to get the mail," she said.... Howell said having mail service is important, especially for older residents who stay on the island for several months at a time and rely on deliveries to pay bills, stay in touch with loved ones and even receive essential medications.

Security issues apparently don't trouble UPS or FedEx, which will continue to deposit deliveries in the trash can (from "Talk Left").

However, the islanders aren't crazy about changes. After all, just last year they hotly contested and largely maintained even their isle's ban on the use of golf carts to get around! "People like the trash can," said one. "They’ve always liked it. We’re going to explore if there’s another solution that satisfies the Postal Service." So, like most usually phlegmatic Mainers who nevertheless won't accept unwelcome changes lying down, the summertime Suttoners apparently are laboring to save their beloved mail receptacle!

(For more of what's likely to be an ongoing saga - at least until winter and the flight of the snowbirds - you can read the full story at the Bangor Daily News!)

Planet Venice!

A quick search for Venice on Digg turned up this great photography tutorial from nearly two years ago that turns panoramas of cities into "planets" but it's still totally worth posting! Just look at these great Venice Planets, from the island of San Giorgio above, and then Piazza San Marco on the left and the cemetery island of San Michele on the right!! A-MAZING!!

Darn! I *WANTED* To Believe...

Twitter / MarsPhoenix: Reports claiming there a White House briefing are also untrue and incorrect....

Twitter / MarsPhoenix: @ganeshpuri89 That paragraph was referring to the team's June 26 announcement at http://tinyurl.com/5rajef Not same as finding life....

UN Support for Darfur mission urged

I'm not usually political at all on this blog, since I believe strongly in living and letting live...

However, on that note... I was appalled at the news that the UN forces in Darfur are grossly ill-equipped.

The five-year conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has left an estimated 300,000 people dead.

Helicopters are vital to the success of the UN mission to protect the remaining civilians, but so far no country has provided the forces even ONE of the 18 helicopters that the mission needs to protect them.

UN troops' are in fact SO short of necessary equipment that those who don't have a standard issue blue UN helmet have resorted to wearing BLUE PLASTIC BAGS on their heads!

And so I blog... Genocide is unimaginably horrific in itself, and now we essentially send to their deaths the men who desperately try to prevent it. For more, read BBC NEWS | Africa | Support for Darfur mission urged

Italian Police Synchronized Motorcycle Riding from "I Am Bored"!

Synchronized Motorcycle Riding These motorbike riders surely earn the FTW Clip of the Day award. That`s right, I just invented an I-A-B award.

via Mental Floss

UPDATED - Venice: An Aerial View of the City

A photolink getting popular on Twitter... GOR-geous!

"A collection of poorly chosen photos from real estate listings

A kick... Enjoy!

(via Mental Floss)

Famed Roman Capitoline Wolf statue "not ancient"

I first saw the Capitoline Wolf in person just last year at the Capitoline Museums in Rome.

The statue you see today is supposed to commemorate the suckling of Remus and Rome's legendary founder Romulus when they'd been abandoned as babies. Ancient Roman authors Cicero and Pliny the Elder had described such a statue as standing in the Roman Forum back in the first century B.C., and nearly everyone had always assumed this statue was it.

Turns out however that it wasn't. The announcement was just made this week that the statue is neither Roman nor Etruscan, that is, the people who had dominated central Italy before the Romans. Rather, it's over a millennium younger! Carbon dating and other tests (particularly that of dirt that remains in the belly of the wolf) recently have made the controversial discovery that the statue's creation during the Middle Ages, sometime in the thirteenth century A.D.

What unfortunately confirms a lot of stereotypes about the Italian government however is that this very important art discovery was confirmed nine months ago, and Rome's municipal government reserved the right to make the findings public but they only got around to announcing it last week. *sigh*

For more, you can go to BBC NEWS Europe: Famed Roman statue 'not ancient'. The original article in which the news was originally released last Tuesday is here.

P.S. The babies are even younger... It's been well-known that they were added to the presumed ancient statue a couple of centuries later during the Renaissance!