1. Fashion EXPLOSION 2005! I especially like the one on the right, which looks like the poster for Office Space.
2. Surprisingly, improvised Russian alcohol beverages aren’t very good for you. I remember reading in Spy in the 80s about a Russian method for getting high, which was: 1) spread shoe polish on some bread 2) leave bread on the radiator all day so that aromatic substances permeate it 3) scrape as much of the polish off the bread as possible 4) choke down bread. This produced some sort of high.
3. Happy Halloween. Here’s where to buy skulls!
4. And now, the actual graphic FEMA uses to represent its activities. I guess this was on a Daily Show I didn’t see. It’s the eternal mandala of incompetence!

   

5. Flickr presents camera tossing!
6. Years after I stopped living in L.A. I am delighted to see that one of my favorite local madmen is still in action: The Robertson Dancer.
7. You’ve seen these photos mislabeled as “Katrina” or some other well-known storm probably; they’re everywhere and poorly attributed. The real photographer’s gallery has all of these amazing stormchaser pictures properly labeled.
8. This is some totally freakin awesome robot art.
   

1. Way, way too many evolution fish emblem things. Most of them are dumb Supercilious Atheist stuff, but I really liked the lutefisk and gefilte ones, and the skeleton fishy. Courtesy springheel_jack.
2. Only in the O.C.: “The Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department, Forensic Science Services Division (Santa Ana, California) recently received two separate tablet submissions, both suspected MDMA. The first submission consisted of four off-white tablets with an “LV” (Louis Vuitton) logo, average net mass 240 – 250 milligrams.” Via the DEA’s Microgram report.

   

3. Camel WHAT. Thanks to wearescott.
4. HOWTO make a head in a jar.
5. Thanks for the spyware, Blizzard! (via Bruce Schneier).
6. JESUS HAD A PUPPY

1. How to deliver a really crappy talk.
2. Edward Burtynsky has amazing pictures of the new industrial China.
3. There’s a ton of cheese deep underwater in Quebec’s Saguenay Fjord, and no one can get it out. Favorite quotes: “Last month, a commander of the HMCS Chicoutimi, on a local visit, said perhaps the Canadian Forces submarine could locate the cheese.” and “Undeterred by the apparent failure of this year’s underwater cheese experiment, Mr. Boivin is trying again.”
4. The kids can give their hair that special glow now.
5. Car Culture brings us the 12 second minivan.
6. New York has a Burke and Hare problem, without the murders. Well, as far as we know.
7. It’s a marketing technique but it feels more like one of those recent Japanese horror movies: YOUR FACE ON A MANNEQUIN AAAA AAAAAAA.

1. Amazing photo of supermarket shelves from above (via robotwisdom).
2. Also via robotwisdom, oops, paintstripper chemical is also a date rape drug. (Why did they report this?)
3. Kite’s eye view of a guy bouldering (Flickr)
4. The creepiest club in Orange County is in Anaheim. Happy Oktoberfest, and don’t mention the War.

1. In 2008, there is only one choice that makes sense.
2. Here’s a fascinating 3D graphical recreation of the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna. The gallery of images is at this url in case you have trouble finding it.

   

3. Ikea does The Matrix.
4. Now that she’s not a freaked-out teenager, Fiona Apple is getting really beautiful, I think.
5. Google has an RSS reader now.
6. The Ring: Nigerian edition.
7. Hurray! There’s a wiki now for swear words!
8. Budgie diapers? Flight suits for pet birds?
9. Technology professionals wanted for international nonprofit organization. Must have strong video and design skills, back-end Web programming experience, and fanatical devotion to radical Wahhabi Sunni Islam. This is a fast-paced environment requiring excellent multitasking skills. The ideal applicant will be a suicidally fanatical Muslim with 5 or more years experience managing video production and high-traffic websites while the world’s only superpower attempts to destroy him with all available resources. Benefits include full health, dental, vision, and suicide benefits including a Paradise of lithe and luscious houris. No phone calls or women.
10. Flu week continues with are we ready for a bigass pandemic?
11. I for one welcome our new robot prostate surgeon overlords.

1. The eBay auction for the dumb hippie vacation thing was oddly successful, it seems.
2. These Arcane Fractals are beautiful.
3. From Wonkette, HOWTO make money off graft.
4. From Radar: HOWTO write crappy chick lit.
5. Aetiology has a nice analysis of the 1918 flashback flu virus recreation.
6. Pardon me, but we own the music of your phone number.

1. Band name: Everclean. Music DVD name: “Sons of Provo”. Actual DVD in case: “Adored: Diary of a Porn Star”. Result: COMEDY GOLD. That’s what they get for being a Mormon boy band.
2. In the tradition of Regrettable Foods, a photogallery of very special company potluck food, most of which is orange cheese.
3. The government wants to make sure that even information about the weather is censored.
4. Meanwhile, the annual flooding of the Amazon makes the earth sink three inches.
5. If you’ve heard about the “We Found Ithaca!” story, you might be interested in this rebuttal from the Times Literary Supplement.

1. Wow, these people slowed light down to 245 meters per second. (PhysOrg)
2. Lithium batteries that last 12 years may be pricy, but when the device is inside your skull who wants to keep popping it open? (PhysOrg)
3. A French schizophrenic carved sad, fearful rants into his floor. The 24×9 foot oak object is now being exhibited at the National Library (sample here and wider view here), and some people are pretty upset about it. For aficionados of French schizophrenia the entire text is here.
4. The Slacktivist wishes us a good St. Francis of Assissi Feast Day.
5. Various maniacs have attempted to create a vocabular for describing interpersonal relationships.
6. And to top it all off, have some extremely unfortunate books and records (Flickr photoset).

Carbonated what? Peripherally linked from boingboing.

Also from boingboing, they totally lost their shit about a doom asteroid coming to hit us, and then had to correct themselves after people pointed out that they had old bad information that could have been corrected with Google and Wikipedia. I know they’re not a newspaper, but at that level of popularity they should at least check their stories against the the toolbar options that came with the browser.

Meanwhile, O.J. Simpson appeared at NecroComicCon and signed autographs, making a punchline unnecessary. A long jail sentence would still be good, though.

I hope you’re all celebrating Pandemic Flu Awareness Week! Come with me on a magical journey through the scary-ass statistics from the history of influenza. Check out especially the life expectancy graph with the big ol’ notch in it around 1918.

1. The Nobel Prize in Medicine very properly went to the researchers who proved that stomach ulcers are caused by infection. Not too many people seem to know about this one, but it was a huge discovery and their tenacity in defending their results changed uncounted lives for the better.
2. Good piece on plagues and pestilences here. Warning: scary and kinda gross in bits.
3. My favorite headline of the day: Pheromones may be used to herd alien fish.
4. “All it will take is a cross-continental array of submillimeter telescopes to effectively create a single telescope as large as the Earth. ” Ah, well that’s no problem then!
5. I want to balance rocks on each other for a living too!