What does a food stylist do? What are the career prospects? How hard is it to replicate what they do at home? more inside

BBC's 'The Sky at Night' is 50. The longest-running show on the beeb, presented by the fantastic Patrick Moore reaches its 650th show. more inside

The National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame

Happy Beethoven's Birthday! more inside

Jonathan Glazer's Motorola Red ad faces chop. Jonathan Glazer, famous for creating conceptually and visually [YouTube links] stunning music videos for Radiohead and engendering controversy with his film Birth, has created a hauntingly beautiful TV spot [YouTube] for Motorola Red [embedded wmv] as part a global corporate campaign against AIDS. The response from Motorola? "[It will] never see the light of day." more inside

Gentlemen: Soy beans are making you gay and shrinking your penis. This public service message brought to you by Jim Rutz, nutritionist, chronicler of the miraculous, and former Amway distributor.

Elephant Serial Killer, nicknamed Osama bin Laden, shot in India. There is, however, a suspicion of mistaken identity. Pictures of the late pachyderm. more inside

Nope, that's not a typo. From the Elder Days through assorted other ages Tolkien's work, brought to life (or undeath, not trying to be vitalist) as Sims.

Salgado in Sudan [Flash required]: photographs of the Dinka tribal group of southern Sudan. Here is a site with more pictures (sadly not Salgado) of Dinka life. more inside

An amazing first: the Giant Moray eel & the Roving Coral Grouper collaborate to hunt, the first example of coordinated hunting seen in fish, and apparently the first known instance of cooperative hunting between species seen outside humans.

Police arrest a 5 year old girl The fraternal order of police finally does the job we all want them to do. Now you can do your part. more inside

Ben's, 1908 - 2006. Ben's Deli in Montreal is no more. One of the giants for smoked meat sandwiches along with (the better) Schwartz's and The Main, Ben's fell victim to the first strike in its history, where workers of 20, 30 and one of even 52 years' service were trying to get a forty-cent raise over just above Minimum. more inside

Rape Is Not A Compliment Melissa McEwan (Shakes) received this comment at her blog. "No one wants to rape you, Shakes. Sorry to inform you." I have my reservations about giving nutcases a platform, but Shakes has several good points about warped perceptions about rape. Some men think it's only the pretty girls. Someone should tell that to the men raped in prison, elderly women or children who are raped each year.

50 Pages of Neat Lots of cool stuff, which is apparently some design-minded person's blog, and is perfectly designed for wasting lots of time. There's some excellent stuff there though, and something on the linked page looks familiar . . . Oh, and via BunnyCorp

Danger Will Robinson! Someone has mass-produced the robot from Lost in Space. more inside

Baka Pygmies Culture, music and rites of initiation in the Central African rainforest.

Curious George: Tokyo Meetup 24/25/26 January? Don't make me go to metafilter.

100 things we didn't know this time last year more inside

Maury Povich helps a guest overcome her fear of pickles. [ifilm video I found via this]

StumbleUpon (previously) has been the single biggest threat I've ever seen to any chance I had at being a productive human. They have now launched the second biggest threat. I think I have to unplug my computer now.