"Hi, it's me, I've had a terrible car accident and I'm unexpectedly pregnant. Will you give me money?" Despite the fact that I'm a complete stranger, that is.

chlorophyll as a photographic medium "...the idea of actually using the green pigment of chlorophyll to make extraordinary photographic images in grass..."

I was stalked at Amazon.com - Author Allison Burnett had her Amazon.com ratings tampered with by a personal enemy or an unsympathetic reader. The result, along with a lot of personal anxiety, was a tangible drop in her rank and sales. Given the very real possibility of reputation and financial damage, should Amazon put tighter controls on comments and ranking or is this just sour grapes? more inside

Emotional jewellery 'Moi, a PhD student at the Royal College of Art, London, has over the last four years developed prototype jewellery that does not merely exist beautifully on the body. It also interacts dynamically with the wearer by indicating emotional changes in the wearer's mind.' (via Beverly Tang)

Guess the gender! Those crazy Europeans and their gender-specific languages! If a native English speaker was confronted with, say, a pair of scissors, what gender would we assign them? See if you're with the majority.

Got 'arf a quid, darlin'? American woman has a stroke, wakes up English. Explains everything, doesn't it? I knew there had to be a reason the English played such brain-dead rugby...

Stephen King wins National Book Award for Lifetime Acheivement. Previous winners include Saul Bellow, Eudora Welty, Arthur Miller, Phillip Roth. Should King's work fall under the same category as writings by these authors? (I realize this information was released in Sept. but I just heard about it this morning on NPR.)

Northwestern University hate crime never happened Xander Saide reported to police he was held at knifepoint by an attacker who used a racial slur. Other incidents on campus were reported this year, so a student rally was held last week. On Monday, Saide was arrested for filing a false police report. University officials and police say the communications major confessed to lying about the attack to "initiate dialogue about race relations." (via TMN)

This story made my eyes water. Now you too can exercise those ducts. Bonus! Clears blocked sinuses!

Maps and territories An occasional blog by an amateur map lover

Amazing street art by Kurt Wenner. These paintings are incredibly three-dimensional.

One-minute vacation - "Take a one-minute vacation from the life you are living. One-minute vacations are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else."

Two bloggers go on honeymoon in Bali. They take beautiful pictures of animals. (Okay, I really linked this for the monkeys.)

"Body sushi" is "performance art." A Japanese restaurant in Seattle serves sushi on the bodies of naked women. [Via Yahoo.]

Andrew Northrup lays it down (Although I don't know if Lars von Trier's numbers were that good.) (On preview -- where's my title, dude?)

Tampon Art: Not as scary as I thought it would be. Possibly NSFW. [Via memepool.]

"My wife and I intended to make our exit together but had very limited time to do so." Is euthanasia an acceptable way to deal with severe mental or physical illness? Shouldn't we respect someone's right to die, if that is what they want? Maybe the easiest way is just to kill ourselves - the Church of Euthanasia would appreciate it.

Traveling in comfort In 2002, two intrepid cyclists rode a human powered couch through Maritime Canada. [via Presurfer]

Mathowie is working on getting new people into MetaFilter.

Testing, testing, etc. There's a test metaphilter mofi up. Please go ahead and try it out, let me know what bugs you find, what you think of the colour scheme, and so on. more inside