Isolated Building Studies

Flight of the Bumblebee (YouTube videos ahead.) As God intended. On an electric guitar at 201 bpm. On a 7-string bass. On the accordion. On 8 pianos. On the marimba. Played by Europe. Played (in a manner of speaking) by high school students on a banjo, baritone saxophone, an E flat clarinet and an accordion.

SF/Bay Area Meet-uppery Your presence is required in the city of San Francisco, in the county of San Francisco, in the state of California, in the country of United States, on the planet of Earth, third planet from the Sun, which is a yellow dwarf star near the inner rim of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, which floats in space somewhere left of Ceti Alpha V. more inside

"I am now a heavenly body..." An asteroid is named after the fabulous George Takei. (He just keeps getting more and more awesome -- you Americans should make him your King or something...)

Flesh for Fantasy The Living Canvas paints patterns of projected light on nude models. (Images obviously NSFW) Kim Joon fully paints nude models and poses them for some beautiful and amazing photos. (NSFW) At Flesh and Color, Dewayne Flowers also does photographs of painted nudes, in categories like metallic and skinscapes. (NSFW) Tatiana Parcero at Cartographies paints old maps and other images with an old world flavor on her models.

Sam Harris Said WHAT? One of the most famous of those danged "atheist thinkers" has some suggestions that Dawkins and Hitchens ain't gonna like... but it gives me some food for thought that's very - chewy. more inside

First Concert Memories. What people remember is all the stuff around the concert; begging your mom to let you go, sitting next to intimidating weirdos, rocking your concert T-shirt the next week at school, etc. These are the memories that endure. From the blue.

Haunting 101 For some, it's not enough to buy a cardboard witch to hang on the door for their spooky holiday decorating. They're coating armatures (and, accidentally, themselves) in monster mud to build the Grim Reaper or a well. They sculpt tombstones and make glowing water (YouTube). My favorite is the flying crank ghost(YouTube). more inside

Mutating pictures.

The Birotron Keyboard was inspired by the Mellotron but ran via 8-track tape cartridges. The story of it's creation on the cusp of electronica is a great read. And there's a famous musician in it, too. (Not the keyboard.) via, as usual, The Blueotron

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in their rendition of Wuthering Heights (yootoob) more inside

nunfight!!!!

Madman Bush 'Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing' Seymour Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he's talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He's not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You're going to have a Kurdistan. You're going to have a Sunni area that we're going to have to support forever. And you're going to have the Shiites in the South.

Miss Moneypenny dead. So long, Lois Maxwell.

Historic squee as the Zoological Society of London puts its photo archives online.

Learn Chinese through pop music! Or the BBC, if that's more your cuppa. Or the very imaginatively named Free Chinese Lessons. more inside

Welcome to the Monkeysphere The old "One death is a tragedy; One million deaths is a statistic" quote explained in practical terms by a humor website... with monkeys. Gotta love it. (You have no choice)

Gothtober The Gothtober Countdown Calendar is a curated time-release flash-based online museum of 31 works of art by 31 different artists. The official run of the show is from October 1st to the 31st, a new piece being revealed with each day of the month. more inside

Radiohead to release 7th album. In ten days. As a download. For any price you like. more inside

You Convert It is a nifty little tool that lets you convert Documents, Images, Audio, Video, and of course Units into other forms. I find this really useful. (I searched, please don't let this be a double.)