Am I the only one who thinks that the Naica Mine looks like a warm-weather version of the Fortress of Solitude from the Richard Donner Superman films?

The Naica Mine of Chihuahua, Mexico, is a working mine that is known for its extraordinary crystals. Naica is a lead, zinc and silver mine in which large voids have been found, containing crystals of selenite (gypsum) as large as 4 feet in diameter and 50 feet long. The chamber holding these crystals is known as the Crystal Cave of Giants, and is approximately 1000 feet down in the limestone host rock of the mine. The crystals were formed by hydrothermal fluids emanating from the magma chambers below. The cavern was discovered while the miners were drilling through the Naica fault, which they were worried would flood the mine. The Cave of Swords is another chamber in the Naica Mine, containing similar large crystals.

Seriously, even if you don't care for the comic book allusion, the pictures of the cave are quite spectacular.

[Via Pruned]

The trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End looks like more of the same. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending upon your thoughts on the first sequel.

I thought the second film felt a good half an hour too long and repeated too many riffs from the first film, but I was acutely conscious that we'd seen only half of the story so I was prepared to give the closing instalment a chance to impress me. Having see the trailer, I reckon I'll be taking a look on opening weekend. The pull of Johnny Depp's eccentric turn as Captain Jack Sparrow, Bill Nighy's magnificent performance shining through despite all those computer-generated tentacles, a plentiful sufficiency of spectacular action scenes¹ and hordes of pirates from the four corners of the world (all of whom Captain Jack owes money to, apparently) is just too hard to resist, dammit.

¹ I can but hope that the big action scenes the trailer promises will serve to divert my attention from Orlando Bloom's charisma deficit this time round.²

² I liked Bloom just fine in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, because Legolas wasn't even in the top dozen characters I cared about. It's when he moves to centre stage that the problems arise.

[Via Ghost in the Machine]

I wonder just how often this sort of thing happens:

Paul Trinder, 54, a businessman from Brackley, Northamptonshire, spent more than £3,000 for a first-class ticket from Delhi. He awoke during the flight to find that cabin staff were propping up a dead woman almost next to him. "The stewards just plonked down this body without saying a thing," he said. "I remember looking at this thin, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill."

I can't help but wonder what else the cabin crew could reasonably have done with her body: stow it in the overhead baggage compartment? Make an emergency landing? I think they should have woken Mr Trinder to alert him to what they were doing, just in case he was utterly freaked out by the idea, but for my money this isn't a case of the British Airways cabin crew acting badly.

The ground staff, on the other hand, really dropped the ball by treating their passenger as a nuisance and not immediately offering their passenger a refund on his fare. Are they worried that passengers might start murdering one another to qualify for a free ride if they give one guy a freebie?

[Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath, via Progressive Gold]

A Fox Hunt.

[Via The Obvious!]

I challenge you to read more than one paragraph of Space Ark! – A Futuristic Science Fiction Space Odyssey without your head exploding or your brain liquefying. I swear, it makes The Eye of Argon look like Hugo-calibre material.

[Via Dave Langford, via James Nicoll]

The Smoking Gun has details of complaints lodged with the Federal Communications Commission about Prince's Superbowl half-time show performance:

Complaint Summary:
It was obscene to show Prince, a HOMOSEXUAL person through a sheet, as to show his siluette (sic) while his guitar showed a very phallic symbol coming from his below-midriff section. I am very offended and I would preffer (sic) not to have showed it to my 4 children who love football. One of them has hoped to be a quarterback and now he will turn out gay. I am actually considering to check him for HIV. Thanks CBS for turning my son GAY.

Please, someone reassure me that this is a joke. People this ignorant aren't actually bringing up children, are they?

[Via Anil Dash]

Time Out's list of London's 50 best unsung museums is definitely going to come in handy next time I'm in the capital with some time to kill:

18. Kirkaldy Testing Museum
This purpose-built space housing a massive nineteenth-century hydraulic machine, designed to measure the strength of industrial materials, was discovered by chance in 1974 by civil engineer Dr Denis Smith. Realising its historical significance, Smith managed to secure the four-storey building as the HQ of the Greater London Industrial Archaeological Society. Anyone can visit on the first Sunday of each month.

Best exhibit The Machine. Designed in 1866 by Scotsman David Kirkaldy, it was one of only two such devices ever made (the other disappeared in Belgium). The machine could be used to test the strength of everything from bricks and concrete to aluminium and steel. It can be temperamental, but if you're lucky, you may see it in operation.

99 Southwark St, SE1 (01372 722989) Blackfriars or Southwark tube. Donations appreciated.

[Via Kevan Davis]

Over at Progressive Gold, a collection of images of butt-ugly cats. (The fourth one is particularly horrifying. Is that really a cat?)

The 30 Strangest Deaths in History:

Death by Conductor's Cane

While conducting the hymnal Te Deum for French King Louis XIV in 1687, Jean-Baptiste Lully was so focused in keeping the rhythm by banging a staff against the floor (this was the method before conductor's baton came into use), that he struck his toe hard but refused to stop.

The toe developed an abscess, which later turned gangrenous, but Lully refused to have it amputated. The gangrene spread and killed the stubborn musician.

Ironically, the hymn he was conducting was in celebration of the recovery of Louis XIV from an illness.

That's by no means the strangest entry on the list, believe me.

[Via LinkMachineGo]

According to a paper by Costas J. Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi vampires can't possibly exist: they've done the maths (PDF file) and "if vampires truly feed with even a tiny fraction of the frequency that they are depicted to in the movies and folklore, then the human race would have been wiped out quite quickly after the first vampire appeared."

Basically, Efthimiou and Gandhi assume that if vampires feed once a month and if they turn each victim into a vampire the simple geometric progression will ensure that the growth of the vampire population will outstrip the human birthrate very quickly, with catastrophic consequences. Their conclusion:

Apparently, whomever devised the vampire legend had failed his college algebra and philosophy courses.

So it's bad luck Buffy. Nice try, Professor Van Helsing. Beware the awesome power of the geometric progression.

Or possibly not. Clive Thompson reckons that he's spotted a way to resolve the situation. He's calculated that there's a sweet spot at which it's just about possible for a determined slayer who never takes a holiday to keep the vampire population at a manageable level.

I can't help but think that the real reason we're not knee deep in vampires is much simpler: we're obviously living in a universe where turning into a vampire requires that the victim not only be bitten, but that they in turn drink the blood of a vampire. (See, for example, Ann Rice's Lestat novels. But do yourself a favour and stop after The Vampire Lestat or The Queen of the Damned: do not, on any account, read The Tale of the Body Thief or any of the later novels in the series. Trust me on this.)

Or, alternatively, the vampires – conscious of the need to avoid depleting the stock of cattle too far – can subsist on animal blood for long spells. Such creatures would 'turn' a victim only very occasionally, perhaps when they met a particularly delightful potential companion.

I don't think I'll be buying a Banclock:

[There's...] nothing worse than an alarm clock on Monday mornings! So imagine now an alarm clock that won't stop ringing every morning until you give it some money!

Making you pay for the privilege of being woken up is a truly evil idea.

[Via EBT, via Japundit]

Dr House 'plays' Baba O'Riley. House giving the air piano all he's got: a classic moment.

Every time a season of House M.D. shows up I go through the same cycle, watching a few episodes before I get bored with the patient falls ill/House tries something/the patient nearly dies/House tries another treatment for a terribly rare ailment/the patient nearly dies again/House tries an even more left field treatment/this time the patient (usually) lives cycle. But then we get nice little moments like the clip I linked to, or funny little moments like House's clinic sessions, and I tell myself that I really should watch for Hugh Laurie's performance even if the weekly medical drama is pretty uninvolving.

With season 3 starting on Channel 5 this week, I wonder if I'll get fooled again…

[Via meish dot org]

Now that the fanboy wankery over the casting of Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation is kicking into a higher gear, Kent M Beeson has posted a suggestion at Nerve's ScreenGrab Blog that I'm quite taken with:

I think Greg Grunberg (Heroes) would be perfect as Nite Owl. Grunberg's excellent at conveying both vulnerability and courage under fire, but I suspect they're looking for a bigger star.

Somebody should make this happen, IMHO.

NASA's STEREO-B satellite was undertaking some instrument calibration routines and happened to capture a lunar transit of the Sun in ultraviolet. The still image is pretty: the movie (see the 64KB, 2.1MB, or 8.5MB Quicktime movie files) is downright spectacular.

[Via kottke.org]

Developers always have the last laugh.

[Via GromBlog]

I'd never thought of the Amazon as a surfer's paradise:

Twice a year, between the months of February and March, the Atlantic Ocean waters roll up the Amazon river, in Brazil, generating the longest wave on the Earth. The phenomenon, known as the Pororoca, is caused by the tides of the Atlantic Ocean wich meet the mouth of the river. This tidal bore generates waves up to 12 feet high which can last for over half an hour.

[...]

The wave has become popular with surfers. Since 1999, an annual championship has been held in São Domingos do Capim. However, surfing the Pororoca is especially dangerous, as the water contains a significant amount of debris from the margins of the river (often, entire trees).

Timesearch – the brainchild of Bamber Gascoigne, no less – is a search engine that presents a timeline as a basis for your search. Pick a theme and a geographical area and enter a year and you get a timeline with links you can use to launch relevant searches of the BBC site, Wikipedia, Answers.com or Google.

I don't think a timeline-based approach would be useful for about 95% of the searches I do, but if I had a history essay to write¹ I can see how it could be useful to have some sort of structure to put the item I started out searching for in context.

¹ Thankfully, those days are long behind me.

[Via Guardian Technology Blog]

Sometimes getting a good picture is just a matter of finding the right angle.

[Via The Daily Dish]

The summary of this Reuters story tells us almost all we need to know:

• Man cuts his house in half with a chainsaw to settle his divorce
• Loads severed building onto forklift truck
• Wife "not happy"

I wrote "almost all we need to know" because there's one little detail even the full story fails to reveal: what do you do with half a summer house?

[Via Cruel.com]

I do believe I may have come across the worst baby name of all time. Worse than Jermajesty Jackson. Worse than Moon Unit Zappa. Worse than Audio Science Sossamon-Clayton.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

Urhines Kendall Icy Eight Special K

[Apparently the first word is pronounced "Your Highness". I have no idea what's going on with the rest of it.]

[Via Cruel.com]