The astronomy picture of the day, as brought to you by the folk at NASA. Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Pirate Riddles for Sophisticates - Q: What's a pirate's favorite aspect of computational linguistics? A: PARRRsing sentences. I know this is too late for Talk Like a Pirate day, but it made me laugh all the same.

Dear Santa...

The Mojave Desert Phone Booth The sad, cautionary tale of a phone booth that became too popular for its own good. However, I have heard of another...

Old People Are Funny!

Butterflies on Japanese crests Japanese family crests contain numerous designs based on butterflies.

a guide to very eclectic australian sound and noise makers including a guy who plays record players (as opposed to a guy who plays records on record players) The mind numbing mediocrity offered up by the global- music-mart can't be avoided; but while using this archive it can temporarily be ignored

The Texas Camels
No, it's not a new MLB expansion team; wild herds of camels can be spotted along US Hwy 287 in the vicinity of Wichita Falls, Texas. What are camels doing roaming Texas pastures? While this lot is apparently there for mesquite control [scroll down to bottom of page], importing camels into the Lone Star state dates back to 1835.

ZooperStars Shaquille O'Seal, Harry Canary, Shark McGuire and Clammy Sosa dancing and clowning for your family entertainment. more inside

Activism, Old Ladies, and Funny Hats. The Raging Grannies emerged in the late 1980's to bring attention to pressing peace, justice, and environmental issues. Their goal was to create a more humane, just and non-violent world for their grandchildren and for all the world's people. Hint: The Seattle Chapter has the best songbook by far.

MAD SHOUT OUT TO NOKIA N-GAGE!
This website, which spoofs the n-gage mobile game deck made the rounds a bit ago, but I wanted to share it with those of you whom may have missed it

The truth behind a bizarre tradition more inside

Step lightly Be sure to welcome your new kitten overlords.

Want to buy Jaws' jaws? A NZ fisherman who expressed "remorse" last week after catching a 7-metre pregnant great white shark is trying to sell the shark's jawbone - but only if the price is right. Unable to get $20,000NZ for the jaw, he's asking $10,000NZ. Any takers? And, by the way, is it reasonable to profit from accidentally killing an endangered species?

Filter 2.0 I think that MoFi gives us a great opportunity to not just replicate Mefi, but to improve on it. How would you make the concept of the Filter better - radically, not just incrementally better? How can we recombine the concept with other technologies, mutate it, or maybe even strip something away to radically improve it? Or maybe, simply, you do want MoFi to be the same old Filter. Either way, let's discuss it here.

"Hit Song Science," an application that can analyze a song and determine it's "hitability." The company's website is worth poking around in as well. Does this scare anyone else?

I say we mutiny! Wouldn't it be interesting if once MeFi started "inviting" new members from Monkeyfilter... we all just said, "Oh, no thanks, we're having fun over here by ourselves." And then we close Monkeyfilter membership to anyone from MeFi. Heh.

Mappalujo. A story/writing experiment by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard. Created using these rules.

Through the eye of a Mac browser Deprived of a Mac? See how your site looks in Safari.

The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos This link goes to an abstract from the totally legit Netherlands nature journal Deinsea. The actual article can be found here (warning: .pdf), or at the Google cache. more inside