Friday Links: July 22

This explains a lot about Arizona. [link]

Father and son at the first and last shuttle launch. [link]

Final shuttle launch seen from a student balloon project. [link]

The video coat. [link]

Home Depot trip run by a 4 year old with a project in mind. [link]

Weird trees. [link]

Cuba does a horror film. And it's a zombie flick. "Juan of the Dead" trailer.


The finale of the 2011 RoboCup Adult Size competition. Robots playing soccer always beats women playing soccer in my book.


Teller of Penn & Teller talking about the psychology of magic.


Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern doesn't know The Onion is a joke. [link]
But I give her props for bothering to check other sources.

Longish article about a scale model of the Mississipi river basin that was used to predict flooding and test the value of dams and overflow basins. [link]

Sarah Palin threw a movie and nobody came. [link]

How to switch off a cat.


Otherwise it'll be up all night fighting your apples.


More creepy pictures on Post-Its. [link]

"If we can't win on quality, we shouldn't win at all." This is why I love the guys at Google. [link]

Heritage Foundation tries to claim that poor people aren't actually poor because electronics are cheap and easily available. [link]

Larry Flynt gets to call Rupert Murdock scum. [link]

Creepy ventriloquist dummies. I mean more creepy than usual. [link]

A proposal on how news websites should look and function. He does kinda forget that a site needs advertising. [link]

10 unusual bookstores. Number 10 is my favorite by far. [link]

A collection of electron microscope images. [link]

Borders has given up. [link]
Sucks for them, but hopefully it's good for smaller book sellers.

Great leaping Borneo Rainbow Toads! I ain't seen one of them varmints in 87 years. [link]

Another article about the virus that was attacking Iranian nuclear centrifuges. This one focuses on the detective work. [link]

NPR had a report about this a few months back. These guys figured taxes would be more acceptable if we knew how they were being spent. They got Obama on board with making receipts. The paper receipts may or may not manifest, but you can see how much of your taxes go where right now. [link]

China managed to revive the illegal ivory trade and elephant poaching. [link]

My new favorite auction site. [link]
OK, so my brother and I went there to look at farm equipment, but there's stuff that you're still gonna wish you could drag home. Stuff like this

Iced tea stand on the honor system. [link]

Harry Potter babies. [link]

The secret origins of phone numbers. [link]

Kinetic sculpture that uses actual wave data from a specific location as it's motion commands. [link]

China makes counterfit stores, too. [link]

Math + fairy tales = [link]