The concept of "cousins" is even more complicated than I thought.

[Via 3quarksdaily]

This baby has a tremendously expressive giggle. Utterly charming.

[Via Progressive Gold]

The awful truth about Snopes.

[Via GromBlog]

Canada's Arctic highway sounds ripe for a cold-weather remake of The Wages of Fear:

Located in Canada's Northwest Territories, the road from Tibbitt to Contwoyto is considered one of the most dangerous routes in the world. The Denison's road – as it is also known – stretches 600 kilometres into the Arctic territory and is the main supply route for the giant diamond mines in the North. The main danger is that 85 percent of the road lies over frozen lakes, so ice can break at anytime and swallow the trucks.

The linked article has some photos of the highway, including some of trucks that didn't make it.

Cold War Europe looked very different when viewed from the east.

Photographer Philippe Halsman took an unusual approach when the time came to capture a candid shot of his big name subjects:

This odd idiom was born in 1952, Halsman said, after an arduous session photographing the Ford automobile family to celebrate the company's 50th anniversary. As he relaxed with a drink offered by Mrs. Edsel Ford, the photographer was shocked to hear himself asking one of the grandest of Grosse Pointe's grande dames if she would jump for his camera. "With my high heels?" she asked. But she gave it a try, unshod – after which her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Henry Ford II, wanted to jump too.

The article has several examples of Halsman's work, including shots of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Richard M Nixon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Marilyn Monroe.

[Via Table of Malcontents]

PingMag has a fascinating article about United Visual Artists, pioneers in the field of interactive sculpture:

One of your recent masterpieces called "Volume" is very similar to the "Monolith", isn't it?

Volume is the one we exhibited in November 2006 for 3 months. It was commissioned by Play Station for their Play Station 3 launch event in the UK. We took what we learnt from Monolith and made something visually beautiful, with strong audio. It consists of 46 columns of lights, each equipped with a speaker, so that there are 46 channels of sound. It uses a camera system to track everyone that moves through the installation and responds to him in a different way. We commissioned Massive Attack to do the audio.

I have seen the "Volume" only on photos, but it surely seems to be an unforgettable piece of work. What was the brief from Play Station?

Of course, Play Station didn't want a work that obviously looks like promotion for a particular Sony product. They wanted something that gave people a similar experience you could get from the technology involved with Play Station. It was to be a very emotional experience. So they were quite happy that we gave them something people would remember.

The most amazing thing was that people started taking lots of images. If you go to Flickr and type "Volume", you will see so many photos of the installation. Today, when you walk around as an adult, nothing is really surprising or new anymore. But you can remind people of experiences they had as a child, and that can be very powerful.

The article contains links to movies of a number of UVA's works. Volume is my favourite, but their work on stage visuals for Massive Attack and U2 is also worth a look.

Inspired by the 75th birthday of Cheeta, Tarzan's co-star from the 1930s films, the Guardian's Laura Barton considered the lifespan of pets:

Cheeta is cited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's oldest primate (that should be non-human primate, of course, but perhaps they were confused by his lifestyle). But verifying such titles is a difficult business. Consider the case of Adwaita the tortoise, who once belonged to the British colonial general Clive of India in the 18th century. One Wednesday last month, Adwaita was found dead in his enclosure in Alipore Zoo. His death was not unexpected – his shell had cracked some months before and a wound had developed, and he was, after all, somewhat advanced in life: West Bengal officials said records showed Adwaita was at least 150 years old, but other evidence suggested he was more like 255. It will take carbon-dating of his shell to determine his true age. At 255, Adwaita would beat Harriet the Galápagos tortoise, who was reportedly collected by Charles Darwin, and died aged 175 in 2006, and Tu'i Malila, the radiated tortoise given to the royal family of Tonga by Captain James Cook, and who passed over aged 188 in 1965.

Anchorman 300. Ron Burgundy is King Leonidas!

[Via Oliver Willis]

Talking of people with fanbases overseas, it appears that Nancy Friedman's weblog is massive in Moldova. Who knew?

I find it fascinating and mystifying that according to Alexa, which tracks such things, 25 percent of Away With Words' readers log on from a little landlocked country between Ukraine and Romania. That puts Moldova, population 3.4 million, in second place among my readers, behind the United States (40.6 percent) and well ahead of the United Kingdom (9.4 percent).

(Not that I want to rain on Nancy's parade, but I'm going to take a wild guess that Alexa is as bad at differentiating between individual sites hosted at typepad.com as it is at recognising subdomains of demon.co.uk.)

PC Gary Pettengell of Norfolk Constabulary has fans in faraway places:

As the seafront beat officer in the kiss-me-quick resort of Great Yarmouth, Gary Pettengell built up quite a local following, sorting out lost kids, checking teenage high spirits and pointing holidaymakers in the direction of ice cream, cash machines or loos.

But it isn't until you see him out and about in the small Baltic nation of Lithuania that you understand where his fame really lies. The modest, happily married PC from Norfolk constabulary has been voted the country's personality of the year. [...]

What he did to earn the award makes for a lovely little story.

I can't help but note that PC Pettengell has moved on to a new job now; I wish the article had mentioned whether his good work is being carried on now he's moved on.

[Via Progressive Gold]

Subterranean Press have made an audiobook of Kage Baker's Rude Mechanicals available as a free download. The story is part of Baker's 'Company' series, describing the adventures of the operatives of Dr. Zeus Incorporated, a company that uses time travel to visit the past and acquire artefacts that won't be missed to auction off in the future. At any rate, that's the plan…

I read and thoroughly enjoyed a number of the short stories and novellas earlier in the series, so I'll be interested to hear another instalment. If audiobooks aren't your thing, several of Baker's stories are available quite cheaply as ebooks at Fictionwise.

[Via Blog of a Bookslut]

So a PC, Mac, and Linux walk into a bar…

[Via GromBlog]

Best. Funeral. Party. Ever!

Prospect's competition for history's starriest pall-bearers has gone to the wire. In the red corner is Joshua Reynolds, who met his maker on the shoulders of three dukes, two marquesses, three earls, and a viscount. In the blue corner is tap dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, taken away in style by the talents of Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, Bob Hope, Joe DiMaggio and Irving Berlin. The winner? It has to be Robinson, who, we suspect, had one of history's hottest wakes. Thanks to Lars Anell and Michael Prodger.

The latest trailer for Spider-Man 3 looks highly promising.

[Via Ghost in the Machine]

If Planets Were Countries… A clever way to illustrate the relative sizes of the planets.

That didn't take long:

Talking CCTV cameras accuse wrong person

Britain's talking CCTV cameras are to issue their first apology for embarrassing a blameless passerby on the day the government announces plans to extend the anti-vandalism scheme to 20 town centres. [...]

[Previously: see here and here, or see here for other posts about CCTV surveillance in general.]

[Via Charlie's Diary]

The lead writer of Life On Mars brings us The Answers:

WAS he mad, in a coma, back in time, or all three?

Millions of viewers saw the stunning finale to Life On Mars last night at the end of a two year TV rollercoaster ride.

In an exclusive first interview, lead writer and co-creator Matthew Graham spoke to me about both the conclusion of the BBC1 drama and the new spin-off series Ashes To Ashes.

I'm not 100% convinced that Ashes to Ashes is a good idea, but I did enjoy our last look at Sam Tyler's life. I very nearly fell for the bit of misdirection they threw our way twenty-odd minutes in when Sam had his little stroll through the graveyard, but I certainly didn't see the ending coming at all.

I'll be fascinated to see how the David E Kelley-produced American adaptation of Life On Mars turns out.

[Via feeling listless]

From the Cat Macros LiveJournal community, I bring you motivational cats!

For what it's worth I reckon the last (Thriller) is the best, but Captivity, Endcat and Kittens run it close.

[Via Anita's LOL]

When I posted some six months ago about the idea of CCTV systems equipped with speakers so miscreants could be scolded by disembodied voices I somehow missed the crowning detail: "children's voices are to be used initially to make the encounter less confrontational".

You might think that this is a really, really terrible idea. I might think this is a terrible idea. Enter Charlie Brooker to make it all right:

[It's] not yet clear whether the children's voices will address miscreants using formal language ("Attention, citizen: you are committing a felony; you have 20 seconds to desist") or in "kid speak" ("You're a bad man and I'm telling on you and my dad's going to tear your head off"). Perhaps they could also allow kids to control the cameras and decide what constitutes a crime. And, rather than mounting the cameras on poles, why not make them mobile and more kid-friendly by placing them inside full-size, remote-controlled Daleks, which can patrol the streets dishing out near-fatal electric shocks to those who disobey?

Actually, using the Daleks would be a masterstroke. Everyone loves Doctor Who – who wouldn't be thrilled by the sight of a real-life Dalek squadron rolling down the high street, glinting in the sun? The sheer excitement would genuinely make the accompanying loss of liberty seem worthwhile.

Just imagine: life on the streets of Britain turned into an extended cut of the trash-talking Dalek scene from the season 2 finale. Genius. Sheer genius.