Scientists reduce Mona Lisa's smile to another damn formula. Or pie chart, really.

The Blog Herald's 10 most interesting people in the Blogosphere. Q: Does the fact that they used the word blogosphere somehow make it less interesting? A: Yes.

A nice, difficult collection of 4x5 sliding block puzzles including Quzzle, the most difficult slider.

Merry Christmas from the Jive

The creepiest Radio PSA ever recorded. An ultraconservative jailbird warns his grandson about liberals. (from FMU's bizarro list)

Off in the Christmas Cosmos. Obscure vinyl Christmas tracks to download.

The strange and beautiful art of L.A. painter Camille Rose Garcia.
Like a more sinister Gary Baseman, with excellent background patterns and texture.
Gallery page here. My favorite.

I've heard about wooden mirrors but never seen one in action before. The mirror operates by filming the subject, then tilting arrayed wooden tiles to represent shadow and light. Awesome.

[I think I smell a Darwin for this guy] While the dangers of drinking and driving have been known for some time, the dangers of drinking in a tiger's cage were uncertain. Until now.

You've seen those polar bear clubs where attention starved people jump into icy water, pretend its nothing, then sprint out when the cameras turn away. This guy actually swims distance in Antarctic water

Heaven is only going to suck 15% less than the living world.

Sen Reid: US Congress most corrupt in country's history. Painfully obvious, but at least it's getting some press.

How to hack a WalMart Santa, and make him say the most unSantalike things. Video.

"Yer Blues" (google vid) with John Lennon, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, and Mitch Mitchell from The Stones' R&R Circus

SFGate's most bizarre stories of 2005

Episode 2 of the Ricky Gervais podcast is up on Guardian

Echizen kurage is not an extraterrestrial invader, but a giant jellyfish that is devastating the livelihoods of fishermen in the Sea of Japan. Nomura’s jellyfish, as it is known in English, is the biggest creature of its kind off Japan and for reasons that remain mysterious its numbers have surged in the past few months.

Bass Banjo

I'm pretty sure that this guy is a muuuch bigger wrestling fan than you are.

Bob Dylan to DJ XM's Deep Tracks

Some pretty amazing footage of the Honda Asimo robot running at 6mph. Eerie.

More Bush-in-the-Bubble coverage (Newsweek)

Expanding Universe: The religious right's orbits of influence

Slugbot: So has the world been crying out for a robotic snail? "One can easily argue that snail locomotion is slow, slimy and inefficient," admit the researchers in their paper. But they also point out that because gastropods have only one foot, it is much easier to build mechanical analogues of snails than of two-footed people or four-footed animals.

Oklahoma Taliban Family Day

The Other ID: An interview with Don Wise, the creator of "incompetent design"
No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us. All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution's way of modifying something or else it's just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student. Look at the teeth in your mouth. Basically, most of us have too many teeth for the size of our mouth. Well, is this evolution flattening a mammalian muzzle and jamming it into a face or is it a design that couldn't count accurately above 20?

Google Print hacked to expose entire book contents.
Update: Google appears to have blocked this and implemented a 20% max content hard-lock on book content.

Tell your representatives that there is no reason to condone torture and secret Gulags. These tactics subvert and undermine justice and due process, and are morally demeaning and unacceptable in any circumstance.
Tell Congress to support a motion to stop the Bush Administration's complicity with torture and political kidnapping.

Listen to Ricky Gervais's mp3blog from the Guardian. Hysterical... Worth it for the Monkey News alone.

Hip-hop lingo is out. It's time to pepper your speech with Antarctic slang.

Interesting Blog editorial on Signs of a Bubble from TNL.net

A model car with square wheels. from slashdot.

ReTag subverts logos by altering medium, placement, and application, but without changing the logos themselves. Interesting.

ReTag wants to help. When your logo has reached full market saturation, a team of ReTag representatives will come to your place of business and recycle the logo for you by re-affixing it to your own property. Think of it as a race around the world, which you have won. Your logo has penetrated every consumer base, been blazened across every conceivable surface, and now the only place left for it to go is home. Once your logo has been "retro-actively distributed," you need no longer worry about its being attached to anything else. It is officially universally recognized and you have done your job.

Baby Love situates human and its baby clones in a perpetual spin of fairground teacup ride. Tea and sympathy, love and ME-motion. Love songs, uploaded by the public and transmitted via 802.11 wireless network by the public are coded as ME-data in the cloned locker babies. Revolt against mirrored self, the clone babies reprocess the networked ME-data during the joy teacup ride. By taking a teacup ride with the babies, the ME-data are retrieved, played back, shuffled, and jumbled. A gentle ride turned fast spin, the data jams and jammed, we are left to sort out the ME with the babies in the storming teacups. The crash would eventually happen. Upon the carsh when the teacups bump into each other, the clone babies exchange ME data and broadcast the remix on the web.

Finland's Virtual Air Guitar Project uses wired gloves to provide the sound to your guitarless vapor-shredding. Features videos, natch.

[We will Rock You in Da Club] If you liked the Grey Album, you'll like the Q-Unit - a mashup of Queen's Greatest Hits and 50-Cent, available in its entirety here.

Q: When schlock bands Creed and 311 get into a fistfight, who wins?
A: Everybody