Big Bang
Fireworks are hardly all fun and games. Almost four years ago in the town of Enschede in the Netherlands, a fireworks depot caught fire and blew up. Twenty two people were killed, hundreds were injured and an entire residential district was razed to the ground. Here's a survivor's testimonial and a collection of mind-boggling videos of the disaster (look under MOVIES/Explosions to the left). with a tip o' the fork to snarkymalarkey

Serial Killer Art

The Hole-In-The-Wall: an experiment in Minimally Invasive Education.

What The Better Barbies Are Throwing Up This Season. Super-Small Snacks For Super-Small Super-Models.

His love for America shines like a rainbow in the dark... and he's giving something back by running for President. more inside

Busted Wonder. A weblog of very good pictures, by Charity Larrison. (Via diepunyhumans)

Chinese -- a better second-language choice? Foreign investment in China last year was $57 billion, and its exports to the U.S. totalled $170 billion. Yet American educational TV and public school curricula remains focused squarely on Spanish as the foreign language of choice, a view that has remain largely unchanged since the 1970s. Some suggest that a shakeup is needed and that kids need more opportunities to learn Chinese to find success -- and for the sagging economy to remain competitive.

Four-Word Film Reviews

Eep! eep! neigh! neigh! (MonkeyPony) Dear Tracicle, Can you please expand the number of HTML tags we can use? I'd especially like to use the font tag; using a small tag instead makes me die a little inside. Also, the tt tag would be nice. fond regards, Loyal monkey #305, boo_radley

I got it. I got it. (I got)I got IIIITT! Some guy's trying to sell the phone number 867-5309 on ebay, in the 212 (New York) area code no less. Some amusing background, with a mention to the ebay auction.

Curious George: Civil Disobedience - Related to the thoughtful and flame-free discussion regarding gay marriage, I was curious what the qualifications are for civil disobedience? Is there a standard that says it's okay to disobey the law if...? What would those standards be? I'd like to get people's ideas and opinions without getting a lecture on how I should have read my Thoreau (no snarkiness intended). What do YOU think?

137Mb for only one monkey joke Nine-minute short film, or very expensive audition piece? Download KING KONG: DON'T MESS WITH THE MONKEY and decide. (Skip the first six minutes to cut to the chase, so to speak.)

Ben Chandler Raises $45,000 Off Blogads In less than two weeks, Democratic candidate Ben Chandler has raised $45 thousand off of internet blogads. He bought two thousand dollars worth of ads on the blogs of such people as Atrios, Josh Marshall, and Daily Kos.

Valentine's Day may have come and gone, but you can still send a late Happy Tree Friends E-Card to that special twisted someone. Say it with mindless violence.

Spooky Ventriloquist Dummies From Your Childhood, Eager To Invade Your Dreams Again... Let's get this straight: Charlie McCarthy WAS the spawn of Satan.

Goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City Here I Come: A lazy man's tour of The Toy and Miniature Museum, located in Kansas City, offers two floors of childhood relics for the curious to investigate. more inside

Women in Afghanistan are still widely oppressed, opium production is flourishing, and Kabul is running out of money. Afghanistan is still a mess.

More gripping than CSI. But also a lot more dangerous. Fredy Peccerelli's family have been forced to flee from Guatemala to the United Kingdom by his work - unearthing the forensic evidence associated with the mass killings of previous murderous regimes.

Harvard Dialect Maps Do you swim in a creek or crik? Do you like carr-a-mel or car-mel in your candy? Harvard Computing Society has done a neat survey where American dialect variations are mapped out. The geographical bias in the maps are not normalized, and some results are rather homogenous, so use at your own risk!

Curious, George: Which of these kung fu movies must I see? more inside