Image roundup

Pull for candy.



Pug hates baths.



Fully loaded.



Jamnik - Church of St. Primus and Felician.




Hedwig balloon.



Camels at an oasis in Chad (wallpaper-sized at the link).

Link roundup

1. Looks like the next set of Happy Meal toys will be some totally lackluster Clone Wars toys. Via.

2. Night vision contact lenses. Via.

3. "Noir Afloat" - - vintage photos of the gambling boats that used to float just past three miles from the shore of Santa Monica and San Pedro.

*Buy Happy Meal toys at eBay.

Image roundup

Scary bridge.




Moon wallpaper.




Up wallpaper.



SR-71 (?) wallpaper.



Dramatic cat.

Link roundup

1. io9 interviewed Neil Gaiman about American Gods (only interesting if you've read the book, or are currently rereading it, like me). He's going to be interviewed in about one hour and it's going to be livestreamed.

2. New, cheaper than normal Navy ships have serious design flaw.

3. More negative comments on the new resin "Finecast" miniatures from Games Workshop. Via.

*Learn how to paint miniatures with these tutorials at Toycutter.

Moving the SR-71

The SR-71 in transport between Burbank and Palmdale, sometime in the 60's. (This is an SR-71, btw.)

Image roundup

Fennec fox.



Lightning strike.



Arctic fox and meal.



Soldier after battle.



Wisdom from Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake.




Wire sculpture.



Ferris wheel on a cold winter day.

Obedience to the law is freedom

Obedience to the law is freedom - - apparently at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

Link roundup

1. The makers of Deus Ex: Human Revolution get it. The easy difficulty mode is officially described as:

Tell Me A Story
You play games for their story and experience, not for their challenge or competitiveness. Enjoy the Deus Ex experience!

2. Great photo essay on Hell Week for Navy Seal hopefuls:

One particularly difficult stretch involves a length of time staying afloat in San Diego bay at night, and then laying down, shirtless on a steel pier. From what I was led to believe, while embracing the pier, certain classes have chanted, “The cold steel is sucking the life from my body. The cold steel is sucking the life from my body.”

3. I fear we're not even close to the end of the financial crisis. Unemployment in Spain is apparently over 20%.

Link roundup

1. From an overview of Tyler Cowen's life:

In 2002 he published "Creative Destruction," which argues that globalization created much of the art and music we might consider "native." Reggae in Jamaica, for example, borrowed from commercial rhythm and blues broadcasts that drifted over the water from New Orleans and Miami. The fur trade and the metal knife helped create the totem poles of the Northwestern American Indians.

2. You've seen the flying military drones, now check out the ocean-going versions.

3. Charles Barkley says Nike asked him to stop being critical of LeBron James. Via.

Link roundup

1. The US Army design guide is available for download (top, right). Via.

2. "On Feb. 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber dropped a 7,000-pound nuclear bomb into the waters off Tybee Island, [Georgia], after it collided with another Air Force jet. Fifty years later, the bomb — which has unknown quantities of radioactive material — has never been found." Via these sites.

3. Custom Portal gun.

Illustration roundup

Lots of great (and silly) Thor by Kirby pages in this gallery. You can buy Kirby's Thor collection at Amazon.




This is a dating don't.




Editorial illustration by Tomer Hanuka for the NY Times.





Spider-Man and Daredevil by Moebius (from a gallery of Moebius art). (It's interesting that Moebius is so famous, yet doesn't have a single comic in print at Amazon.) Via.




Pen Ward looking for a drinking buddy the other night.

Link roundup

1. Cory Doctorow has a great short story here about the challenges of building an internet connection between the mundane world and the world of fairy. (Just skip over the technical details if they're as foreign to you as they are to me.)

2. io9 is giving away a tauntaun sleeping bag.

3. No, special forces dogs don't get their teeth replaced with titanium fangs.

Commander Shanti Sethi

If I understand it right, this is Shanti Sethi, commander of the Destroyer USS Decatur. She has a blog. Via.

Link roundup

1. Newsweek has an awfully disturbing article about rape (against men and women) in the armed forces. (I've made a lot of jokes about The Daily Beast, but Newsweek has actually been a really solid magazine since Tina Brown took over.)

2. So is it bad taste if I follow that link with this one on how to win a fight against a much bigger man?

3. And finally, an article about what it's like to work at Games Radar. Key quote: " I realized that only one thing differentiated me from the author [of the press materials], who was obviously far better suited to write the preview. I was unaffiliated with THQ." Via Reddit.

Heartwarming video: Home from Afghanistan, an Airman wakes his brother

Home from Afghanistan, an Airman wakes his brother. Via Reddit.

Image roundup

A few gems from Reddit:


A Japanese home is seen adrift in the Pacific. See it in very high res at the link.



Soldier with kitten.



Baby Wookiee, perhaps?



Mrs. Chiggers wins every staring contest.



Bicycle/unicorn.

Link roundup

1. I like the look of the art for the upcoming all-ages Wonder Woman picture book Wonder Woman: The Story of the Amazon Princess

2. Great article about an SR-71 Blackbird flying over Libya in the 80's. Here's a strange detail about the plane at rest:

Ironically, the plane was dripping, much like the misshapen model had assembled in my youth. Fuel was seeping through the joints, raining down on the hangar floor. At Mach 3, the plane would expand several inches because of the severe temperature, which could heat the leading edge of the wing to 1,100 degrees. To prevent cracking, expansion joints had been built into the plane. Sealant resembling rubber glue covered the seams, but when the plane was subsonic, fuel would leak through the joints.

3. Disturbing article about the increasing number and increasing sophistication of fake commenters.

Bat Bombs

Here's a ten minute video about America's experiment with bat bombs in World War II. Wikipedia explains:

Bat bombs were bomb-shaped casings with numerous compartments, each containing a Mexican Free-tailed Bat with a small timed incendiary bomb attached. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats which would then roost in eaves and attics. The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper construction of the Japanese cities that were the weapon's intended target.

Developed by the United States during World War II, four biological factors gave promise to this plan. First, bats occur in large numbers (four caves in Texas are each occupied by several million bats). Second, bats can carry more than their own weight in flight (females carry their young—sometimes twins). Third, bats hibernate, and while dormant they do not require food or maintenance. Fourth, bats fly in darkness, then find secluded places (often in buildings) to hide during daylight.

The plan was to release bat bombs over Japanese cities having widely-dispersed industrial targets. The bats would spread far from the point of release due to the relatively high altitude of their release, then at dawn they would hide in buildings across the city. Shortly thereafter built-in timers would ignite the bombs, causing widespread fires and chaos. The bat bomb idea was conceived by dental surgeon Lytle S. Adams, who submitted it to the White House in January, 1942, where it was subsequently approved by President Roosevelt. Adams was recruited to research and obtain a suitable supply of bats.

Much more here.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, I just saw this:



Roger Dean's album art for "Nitro Function" by Billy Cox. Via these sites.

*Buy propaganda posters at eBay.

Master of Space Air Force patch

Wikipedia:

The 50th Space Wing (50 SW) is a wing of the United States Air Force under the major command of Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). It was activated on 30 January 1992, replacing the 2d Space Wing, which was deactivated on the same date. The unit is the host wing at Schriever Air Force Base, located east of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Their primary responsibility is to track and maintain the command and control, warning, navigational, and communications satellites for AFSPC. The 50th Space Wing also manages the Global Positioning System.

Via.

*Buy Air Space patches at eBay.

Disney's World War II mascots

This site features a few dozen of Disney's World War II mascots. I used some of them to create the widescreen wallpaper you see above. Via.

*Buy World War II : The Disney Patches at Amazon.