Dr Crippen is a name that has been synonymous with murder for nearly a century. Notorious for murdering his wife and fleeing Britain on a ship with his lover disguised as a boy, this American doctor was the first person to be apprehended via the aid of wireless communication, in this case radio telegram. He was hanged in 1910 after a British jury found him guilty of murdering his wife, Cora, who had vanished earlier that year, and whose remains were identified as those found under the cellar floor of his London house. Except he was innocent. more inside

Bullets silence one of the South African apartheid regime's most outspoken critics. Peace, Lucky Dube... *sigh*

Trick or Treat! and Stuff Yourself Sick: I-Mockery presents the Ultimate Guide to Halloween Candy, from Oozing Eyeballs to Gummi Ghouls to the infamous Box of Boogers. more inside

A New Little Poo-Flinger! The London Zoo debuts a tiny new primate: a black-tailed marmoset baby no bigger than a wee mousie. Okay, so marmosets aren't strictly monkeys, but they're kissin' kin, and the SQUEEEEE factor is pretty high on this one. Loads of pictures in the main link, plus the usual Page 3 Girl teaser (SFW).

A Kyoto geisha preparing by putting on her makeup. (This and all other links here are YouTube) It's a little long at a bit over 12 minutes, but it seemed a good inspiration for those who might be looking for last-minute costuming ideas for a Halloween shindig. Further inspiration: Low-budge zombie, Budget zombie/ghoul makeup, Showgirl makeup, Flapper makeup, A tiger face, and applying basic latex prosthetics. more inside

Best Latin has some nice resources, including the excellent Audio Latin Proverbs and the strangely pointless Roman Sudoku. They haven't got news in Latin, but you can get that here, here, or (monthly rather than daily) here.

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon is making waves. I was surprised there was no mention of our gibbon comrades. Ubuntu 7.10 was released yesterday, to great acclaim.

Catnapped!

The vital statistics of Asterix. An interview with Uderzo.

Sex, Nazi, burrito and Viagra: Who Googles what?

Clambake! In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show. Some studies speculate on spuds. more inside

The Art of Mourning is a collection of memorial and sentimental jewelery, funeralia, and art, ranging from hairwork to mourning brooches to miniatures. It also has information about the symoblism used in these forms of memorial art. more inside

Naomi Klein on capitalism. ...across the planet, "some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era...were in fact committed with the deliberate intent of terrorising the public to prepare the ground for the introduction of free-market reforms". Where this über-corporate vision has not been imposed by force, it has been imposed by blackmail at a time of crisis. One of the ugliest examples Klein exposes is the use of the tsunami - an almost biblical wave that washed away 250,000 people - as a pretext to impose a Friedmanite vision.

Word play for the hungry more inside

The Artwork Of Katherine Dinger (Lot of pictures, takes some time to load, some are somewhat NSFW depending on your boss) She is amazing! Katherine Dinger creates mostly digital paintings. She keeps a blog. These are absolutely stunning.

The Personal Ads A scene from the play The March of the Kiteflyers performed by the Jobsite Theater. The company is based in Tampa, Florida.

The real Raymond Carver. Tess Gallagher, the widow of Raymond Carver...is spearheading an effort to publish a volume of 17 original Carver stories whose highly edited versions were published in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love"...Carver was credited with popularizing a minimalist style. But...Gordon Lish, Carver’s first editor at Alfred A. Knopf, had heavily edited, and in many cases radically cut, the stories...to hone the author’s voice. At the time, Carver begged Mr. Lish to stop production of the book. But Knopf went ahead and published it...

The Musée du Luxembourg has a Giuseppe Arcimboldo blockbuster. Previously.

Star Wars -- Episode ??: A New Season.

"The Surnateum is far more than a website designed to entertain and enlighten you. It is the virtual front-end for one of the most astonishing collections of authentic magical artefacts and strange stories gathered from around the world by the Collectors and Curators for more than a century." The museum is divided into departments, such as Cryptozoology and Teratology, Sacred and Secular Relics, and Demonology. more inside