Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These are both quite old but new to me:

Steve, Don't Eat It! at The Sneeze.

Top 176 Star Wars Lines Improved By Replacing A Word With "Pants" from The Keeper of Lists.

Last one via A Tiny Revolution.

(Australian) Birds In Backyards

Daniel Lainé's "Kings of Africa"

Via Neatorama.

When Youtube featured the "girl takes photo of self each day for three years" video, PZ Myers remarked that, being so young, she doesn't visibly age in the thing. This guy does.

The Youtube "community" are already in a tizz about "Noah takes photo of self each day for six years", with a number of commenters complaining this idea was already done. Don't these numbed-arse basement-dwelling losers have anything better to do with their time?

Timelapse films at Youtube:

tlapse
timelapseman
Or, hell, you could just search for "timelapse". Whatever - just be sure to watch tlapse's film of the 2006 Reno Balloon Race.

Via Drawn!, the paper cutting art of Peter Callesen.

Apropos of a less than entirely successful search for sites relating to the history of the design of chairs, the following:

The Corning Museum of Glass

University of Dundee School of Design Chair Museum

A Legacy of Invention
A US Library of Congress exhibition on the work of Charles and Ray Eames.

Furniture related links at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The Bauhaus Archive Museum of Design

Walking the Wall
A blog about a trip along the Great Wall of China, sponsored by the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

"Why were you...?"

Don't ask.

A twelve minute video of various Heath Robinson devices (or Rube Goldberg machines, if you prefer) known in Japan as Pitagora Souchi (Pythagorean Devices). Apparently these originally ran as filler on the NHK children's show Pitagora Suicchi (Pythagorean Switch).

Google Earth images of African wildlife.

Via Gromblog.

Japanese Maps of the Tokugawa Era at the University of British Columbia Library Digital Resources.

Wikipedia's Lamest Edit Wars

Some highlights:

Nikola Tesla

Born of Serbian parents in a part of Austria-Hungary which is now in Croatia; so was he Serbian? Croatian? Austro-Hungarian? You decide! But don't forget to leave an edit summary saying how pathetic it is to choose any other version...

Her Late Majesty

Must a queen deceased for over a century still be styled here "Her Majesty", an epithet conventionally reserved for the current monarch? This weighty dispute (pale reflection of warring here), filling talk pages and edit histories, has spilled over into other British monarchs, other royals and titleholders, several countries having or having had a monarchy, claimants and other royal pretensions, and even hundreds of holders of the papacy, where popes centuries dead are endorsed as “His Holiness” here, losing and regaining the endorsement with blinks of eyes. Ongoing debates deal with the format of dates, and the used or unused, existing or non-existent surnames family names house names former fiefs (some inherited names, but very few are sure what they precisely are) of monarchs and relatively unfamiliar variants of those (as well as the putative name of the horse of her late majesty's husband's family), with most edits being extremely trivial. Involved parties vouch for only aiming at accuracy, and certainly some argumentation goes deeper than believed humanly possible. This even created an edit war over whether it could be mentioned here. A truce, seemingly imposed by a Royal intervention that dragged in innocent bystander Prince Michael of Kent, Scottish accents and snail slime, appears to be holding, though occasionally some new fallout is being generated.

e (mathematical constant)

An editor who self-admittedly knows little of mathematics disputes the status of e as an "important number", preferring the term "special number". When a number of mathematically inclined people disagree, he argues that e is not in fact a number.

Orange (colour)

A cut-and-paste move to the American spelling "color". A move back, and statements that Canada, Australia, and the rest of the colour-spelling world didn't matter because the United States spelled it color. Other attempts follow, with one attempt to move it to simply Orange to end the war.

Beelzebub

Edit war in December 2005 over whether the picture at the top should be on the left and face left, or be on the right and face left, or be on the left and face right, or be on the right and face right. Image was eventually replaced with a higher quality version.

Missionary position

A revert war between two versions of the line drawn illustration, one incorporating a teddy bear and one without. Some people claimed the bear was distracting, or believed it implied the woman to be under age. Other people found the bear adding atmosphere since the couple is ignoring it.

Cranky Kong

Was Cranky Kong the original Donkey Kong? Could it be the character in Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games is actually his son? Or perhaps his grandson? Should we trust offhand comments made by a video-game character? Does being licensed by Nintendo make Rareware publications "official"? How official is the "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? To some people, these questions are a matter of life and death.

List of numbers that are always odd

The number 3 was being considered as possibly being not odd. Page protection was needed to halt the heated debate. User:Wik's correction of a misspelling of hypochondriacs was re-reverted no less than 3 times. Supposedly as a means to illustrate the ludicrousness of the subject, various examples such as "the atomic numbers of gold and silver, but not their sum" and "the number of days in a year (except leap years)" were added to the list. Later in the edit war, no less than two thousand five hundred numbers of debated oddness (every second integer from 1 to 4999) were added and removed, four hundred ninety eight of them repeatedly before the edit war was solved by the article's deletion after a VfD vote. An ancient mirror out on the Net still had a version available, though, so it's been rescued for posterity: User:ConMan/List of numbers that are always odd.

List of virgins

Dispute about whether or not Britney Spears belonged on the list, eventually resolved in a definitive manner. Eventually maintenance of the list proved impossible and it was deleted.

WNRI

Should we mention the fact that the station's broadcast power drops to a ridiculously low wattage at night? Yes, it's a fact. No, I could LOSE MY JOB.

Cauliflower

Is cauliflower nutritious? Is specifying what parts are usable POV?

Grace Kelly and Cher

Edit wars over whether each is a gay icon.

Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars ever

Edit wars over which edit wars are allowed to be on this page, or over how specific entries on this page should be worded (oh, the irony). See Recursion; see also tail recursion. Examples have included William of Orange, Her Late Majesty, List of virgins, Template:User admins ignoring policy and this entry itself. These have also resulted in two attempts at VfD (now WP:MFD), which were soundly rejected.

Snail slime?

Via Crooked Timber

WMMNA and the boings mentioned the Detroit Demolition Disneyland a while ago, artists who have been painting derelict buildings in that city orange, but here's three lovely winter photos from Paul Kotula of some examples.

The Sashimi Tabernacle Choir

If that title doesn't intrigue then I don't see how a potted description will help.

Opacity

Photography of urban ruins.

Spice of Life

Photography-weblog from Kyoto.

Also via the Prof., the Inner Life Of A Cell video.

Oh, and via the soon-to-be-deleted Wikipedia article on PYGMIES + DWARVES, via Myers on Wiki, via Myers, yadayada, the art of Jim Pinkowski at the Flaming Fire Illustrated Bible site. Check out this one of angels killing a T-Rex. And dare I say: Paging Dr Freud!

WalMart apparently has a policy of not stocking obscene books. Someone makes the obvious gag.

We make this request after careful consideration, having examined numerous passages in the Holy Bible that are repulsive, stridently offensive and/or illegal. The following five examples reveal the obscene nature of this book and help you to understand why we are making this request.

1) The Holy Bible demands that readers murder hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees.

In Exodus 31:15 the Holy Bible demands: “For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death.” This demand is repeated in Exodus 35:2: “For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death.”

Mr. Scott, you are in a unique position to understand how dangerous these statements are. Hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart's employees work on the Sabbath. The Holy Bible demands their murder. This threat to employee autonomy and safety should be both repugnant and highly offensive to Wal-Mart’s senior management team as well as Wal-Mart's employees.

Via Mr Kinney, via Prof. Myers.