Via.
I don't know Italian, but this song is beautiful.
The lyrics are available here.
Here you can see how your country measures up in terms of it's 'carbon footprint,' overall life satisfaction, and life expectancy.
Via.
650-pound virgin loses 410 lbs in about 2 years, and there is a made-for-tv movie coming out about it.
Via (with video clips).
Wes and I went down to a little ice cream shop here in the city center, and they had Arugula ice cream. I thought it was so bizarre, I had to get a sample. Sure enough, it did taste like Arugula. They apparently won a contest at the store for creating the flavor. The guy behind the counter told me that I shouldn't have it on a cone, though. It is made for a kind of ice salad. Go figure. Well, even after having tasted the Arugula ice cream, I am still perplexed by this slideshow of the world's strangest ice creams.
The place that sells this one has over 900 flavors, including tuna flavor!
This one is sometimes eaten with a knife and fork. From the site: "Turkish ice cream, or dondurma, is made with goat’s milk and an ingredient called salep—which translates, literally, to “fox testicle.” In reality, it’s a flour ground from wild orchid tubers, which presumably bear some resemblance to a fox’s family jewels. The resulting cold treat is pretty much an only-in-Turkey delicacy, since the wild orchids technically can’t be exported. You can buy it at cafés and street carts, especially in Istanbul."
This one looks pretty normal, but guess what flavor it is... It ain't vanilla--that is Garlic. See the whole slideshow here.
I love this picture.
Via.
Business lessons acquired from Dungeons and Dragons:
1. Feed the DM. (treat those in power with extra kindness)
2. One spell, used well, can be more powerful than an entire book full of spells.
3. It's better to out-smart an orc than to fight one.
4. "I'm the DM. I'm not there." This is the point of all those tedious "diversity training" exercises from your HR department; perhaps the message would get across better if they talked about the apparently-weak wizard and the bard with those amazing negotiation skills.
5. Simple and internally consistent is more fun than random.
6. You create your own traps.
7. Treasure is not always what you expect it to be.
8. You don't have to read all the books, but a modest description of the beast you are about to face is better than facing a daemon and trying six dozen spells before finding the right one. (If you live that long.)
9. When selecting a weapon or tool, bigger is not always better.
These are just synopses of the good article. Go to the link to read the whole thing.
Via.
This cracks me up; it's a fanny pack for your head:
Buy one here.
And I just can't believe that Harry and Pepper, the famous gay penguin couple are breaking up!
Tron is back as an online sitcom:
Via.
This is also pretty funny. Maybe our kids are getting fatter, but they're also getting trickier: Children taking part in a study to measure how much exercise they do fooled researchers by attaching their pedometers to their pet dogs. Read about the failed study here.
I wish we had more efficient highspeed railways in the U.S.!!! Especially after having lived in Europe, it really hits you how nice it is to 'park and ride'! It seems like having a national railway system would solve a lot of problems. For one, people are afraid of planes, but not as afraid of trains, especially after 9/11. Second, you can always take the train. Fog and rain and snow will not slow down the schedules. Third, (I'm not sure about this one), but I think that they can be more easily produced with "green energy". And, it would create a lot of jobs to have a project like that. After all, that is why our interstates were built.
Via.
Also check out the new London transportation bus that is designed to encourage using public transit.
Giant jellyfish in Japan:
Via.
More links:
Neat architecture art.
Slideshow of world's most spectacular tasting rooms.
Japanese rice paddy crop art.
Science Fiction's greatest legal minds revealed. Yes, Harvey Birdman made the list.
