USA Today has a Top 10 list of places where vacationers can “go through the looking glass” in honor of the theatrical release of Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” All of these way-off-the-beaten-track attractions are pretty interesting—like the underwater music festival entry—but there is one that’s simply off the hook… “Carhenge.”

“Carhenge” in Alliance, Neb., draws over 80,000 tourists a year. It’s a full-scale replication of Stonehenge… made from cars. From the official “Friends of Carhenge” website:

The artist of this unique car sculpture, Jim Reinders, experimented with unusual and interesting artistic creations throughout his life.  While living in England, he had the opportunity to study the design and purpose of Stonehenge. His desire to copy Stonehenge in physical size and placement came to fruition in the summer of 1987 with the help of many family members.

Thirty-eight automobiles were placed to assume the same proportions as Stonehenge with the circle measuring approximately 96 feet in diameter. Some autos are held upright in pits five feet deep, trunk end down, while those cars which are placed to form the arches have been welded in place. All are covered with gray spray paint. The honor of depicting the heel stone goes to a 1962 Caddy.

Carhenge was built as a memorial to Reinders’ father who once lived on the farm where Carhenge now stands. While relatives were gathered following the death of Reinders’ father in 1982, the discussion turned to a memorial and the idea of a Stonehenge replica was developed. The family agreed to gather in five years and build it. The clan, about 35 strong, gathered in June 1987 and went to work. They held the dedication on the Summer Solstice in 1987, with champagne, poetry, songs and a play written by the family.

“Carhenge” was named the second “wackiest” tourist location in America, and deservedly so. Some see it as “art” others see it as… junk.

Like Fox News, we’ll let you decide.

Cross posting this from Brand X

 
Let’s face it, with all of the many, many entertainment choices we have facing us, every minute of every single day, when it comes to the matter of what we choose to give our precious attention to, music videos tend to rank pretty low on the totem pole. There’s probably a pretty compelling reason MTV is no longer calling itself a “music” channel. So ‘80s, isn’t it? A three-minute music video? Who has the time?

So when you hear about some “cool” new music video — maybe your tweeps told you about it — it had, well, better be good. Chicago-based indie rockers OK Go know this. Their 2006 video, Here It Goes Again, featuring the group doing a synchronized dance routine on treadmills, has been viewed by about 50 million people, so the follow-up had, well, better be good too.

Trust me, it’s great. I could describe for you the Rube Goldberg-inspired centerpiece of the new This Too Shall Pass video, but since their record company finally relented and allowed the piece to be embedded (I mean, what was that all about?), you can simply press play and see for yourself.

Engineered with help from CalTech and MIT, and built by Syyn Labs, the video — and its kinetic sculpture centerpiece — is nothing short of astonishing. Like its predecessor, it’s bound to snag all kinds of kudos and awards. This Friday, March 5, in LACMA’s West Penthouse, OK Go will be having a video release party, where I’m sure they’ll spill some of the secrets of how this mini-masterpiece came to be. If you can’t make the LACMA party, there are some videos on the OK Go website that will enlighten you.

Epic Strega Fail: Check out this bizarre ad for Italy’s center-left political party featuring a befuddled tarot reader. Via Osocio.

Welcome to Pidiello, a magician, a fortune-teller, he predicts your future in his television show. The phone rings and a women ask about her future because her husband can’t find a job because of the financial crisis. Pidiello says: “Pidiello sees and foresees” and the solution he foresee is in the cards he shows with the pictures of Tremonti (the Italian Minister of Economy and Finance) and Berlusconi (the Italian Prime Minister). Pidiello says that the two faces sees it all: there’s no crisis: “it’s as real as long the spotlight could fall on my head…”

At the end, Pidiello’s wife ask him to find a real job and the the ex-magician answered: “impossible because of the economic crisis”.

The tv-spot is from the Partito Democratico, the centre-left political party in Italy.

(Osocio: Magic in Italian Politics)

Numbers stations (click here to listen to a sample) are shortwave radio stations that broadcast weird-ass strings of numbers, voices, and other randomly generated effluvia. Messages from aliens? Spies? Sock gnomes? The dinosaur-men who live in the center of the Hollow Earth…? None may know…

Numbers stations (or number stations) are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a spelling alphabet), tunes or Morse code. They are in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, though sometimes male or children’s voices are used.

Evidence supports popular assumptions that the broadcasts are used to send messages to spies. This usage has not been publicly acknowledged by any government that may operate a numbers station, but in 2001, the United States tried the Cuban Five for spying for Cuba. The group had received and decoded messages that had been broadcast from a Cuban numbers station. Also in 2001, Ana Belen Montes, a senior US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, was arrested and charged with espionage. The federal prosecutors stated: “Montes communicated with the Cuban Intelligence Service through encrypted messages and received her instructions through encrypted shortwave transmissions from Cuba”. In 2006, Carlos Alvarez and his wife Elsa Alvarez were arrested and charged with espionage. The U.S. District Court Florida stated: “defendants would receive assignments via shortwave radio transmissions”. In June 2009, the United States similarly charged Walter Kendall Myers with conspiracy to spy for Cuba and receiving and decoding messages broadcast from a numbers station operated by the Cuban Intelligence Service to further that conspiracy.

It has been reported that the United States uses numbers stations to communicate encoded information to persons in other countries. Numbers stations appear and disappear over time (although some follow regular schedules), and their overall activity has increased slightly since the early 1990s. This increase suggests that, as spy-related phenomena, they were not unique to the Cold War.

(Wiki: Numbers stations)

(The Conet Project: Numbers Stations 4-CD Compilation)

 

 

 
I may be late to the ManBabies.com craze, but I sure had a good laugh at a few of these images. Kinda sums it all up, huh?
 
(via HuffPost)

 
Or one final screwing before you go completely.  A new U.S. patent was granted yesterday for the above “Easy Inter Burial Container.”  According to the patent application for the EIBC, the reasons for such a vessel are three-fold: space, time, and cash are all at a premium.

This invention relates to conserving land area and easy to install burial containers which can be pressed, agitated, screwed, self bored or by other means set into earth or other receiving materials and do not require a large amount of land area or a large pre-dug rectangular hole with subsequent refilling after the placement of the burial container.

(via Neatorama)

 
(via Arbroath)

 
I read about the beta-launch of something called Chatroulette this morning on a German blog I frequent called Nerdcore and something tells me this thing is gonna be HUGE. As in huge, huge. Facebook huge.

First off, it’s super easy to use—hit the “start” button, and you’re off. The people you’ll meet are from all over the world and Chatroulette works in real time (like Skype) and there’s audio, too.

What makes this thing so exciting/addicting/cringeworthy all at the same time is easy to summarize: You never know WHO you’re going to get when you click that button. My friend and I tested it out today. Our first interaction was with a male in his mid-20s. He said he was from China. Fifth go around we got the Jonas Brothers. No shit, it was the real Jonas Brothers. “Are you guys the Jonas Brothers?” They said they were in New Jersey. It looked like they were in an airport.  There was a lot of starring and smiling going on. They asked if I was a fan of theirs. I said nothing. Awkward moment. Screen went black, we lost contact.

But seriously, there is lots of WEIRD shit going on here. Lonely guys jacking off in front of their computers, couples having sex and waving at you, monster mask pole dancing, obese women masturbating, lesbian orgies, guys eating pizza watching football, folks wearing clown masks, wholesome families waving at you, people smoking joints, teenagers yelling “show me your tits!’... it’s endless.  I was truly shocked by what I was seeing, but that’s not to say we weren’t laughing so hard we were crying for several hours.  Aside from teen pop star siblings—I mean, what are the chances?—we also encountered a hillbilly mom and her son who looked at us on her screen and murmured “They must be ‘hipsters.’ I’ve heard all about them” as well as a man… and his dog, let’s just say, and leave it at that…

This isn’t going to end well. Not at all.
 
UPDATE: I was punked! Chat Roulette With The Jonas Brothers
 
If you want to know more about Chatroulette, read The Human Shuffle: Is ChatRoulette the future of the Internet or its distant past?
 
Chatroulette (NSFW)

 
From our very own Los Angeles treasure, food writer Jonathan Gold’s current column in response to a reader’s question: “Is there a food equivalent to a snuff film? “

Dear Ms. W:

Zhou dynasty gourmands enjoyed rat, which they called “household deer.’’ I have heard of a bean, grown in Indonesia, that is so delicious its fanciers are willing to endure the inevitable three days of excruciating liver pain that follows the feast. My friend Ruth was telling me the other day about the strips of jellied water-buffalo skin she enjoyed in Laos, available with or without fur. None of those is available here, although as it turns out I did once try a version of that water-buffalo skin in a long-deceased Little Saigon cafe. There is a place in the Wilshire District that looks a little like the back office of a disorganized accountant really, no tables or cooking smells, where you sit for a while on worn vinyl chairs and are eventually, or possibly, or rumored to be able to be, brought the bosintang you have come there for. Takeout only. Allegedly. And I have heard that lately, it is strictly BYOD. Either way, I have never managed, or even been tempted, to try the goods. Goat stew is an acceptable equivalent.

In Little Tokyo, you once could get braised bear paw, at an absolutely bowel-clenching price, until the Chinese restaurant that served it was shut down. Hamhung in Koreatown once featured a dinner of barbecued tiger, lion, elephant and antelope, all legal oddly enough, until the ‘92 riots and the Japanese recession stanched the flow of rich Tokyoites to that part of town. (Hamhung still does have very good buckwheat noodles with seafood, which you should keep in mind when the weather gets warmer.) Meat smuggling from Europe has been substantially more difficult lately thank you, underwear bomber!  but if you ask around at better cheese stores, you should be able to find the raw-milk cheeses you desire. As for endangered species practically all sea fish seems endangered at the moment, at least in the long run. In season, Urasawa will sell you fugu, the kind that can kill you if it’s indifferently prepared, and charge you as much for it as you paid for your first car. But even in Los Angeles, as far as I know, you will find neither primates, nor human flesh, nor coelacanth. And we’re all better off for it, I think.

 
(via BME)

 
“I put some pressure on it and cut them, to remove them by force.”  To avoid cheating on his sex-refusing wife, Luis Alfonso Sanchez found the decision to castrate himself an “easy” one to make.  And, since he’s already castrated pigs, cats and dogs, what’s three days of healing time?  The stunt sent Sanchez to the hospital where his wounds grew infected.

 
Bonus: Castration Squad’s A Date With Jack (Kennedy)

(via BIOTV)

 
I’m absolutely certain that the tale (below) of Guatemalan orphan, Aury, is a harrowing one.  What’s far less persuasive?  The Christian Broadcast Network‘s decision to translate Aury’s voice using English that’s as chirpy as it is stereotypically choppy!

What’s creepier here, of course, is that the English-speaking “voice” of Aury was most likely that of a professional actor directed to “translate” that way, so as to better play upon the sympathies—and wallets—of the CBN faithful.

 
(via Sociological Images)

 
You’ll never have to fear your cellphone running out of juice again as long as you’re near a 7-Eleven or a vending machine, thanks to brilliant London-based designer Daizi Zheng. But maybe “juice” is the wrong word; Zheng has produced a cellphone that runs on Coca-Cola. Or Mountain Dew or Pepsi or whatever sugary, fizzy beverage you happen to have handy. Yes, you read correctly, this is a cellphone that runs on soda. It’s the call that refreshes!

As Zheng explained to Tree Hugger:

“Through my research, I found that phone battery as a power source, it is expensive, consuming valuable resources on manufacturing, presenting a disposal problem and harmful to the environment. The concept is using bio battery to replace the traditional battery to create a pollution free environment. Bio battery is an ecologically friendly energy generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst. By using bio battery as the power source of the phone, it only needs a pack of sugary drink and it generates water and oxygen while the battery dies out. Bio battery has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries and it could be fully biodegradable.”

Three to four times longer than a lithium battery? Sounds good to us. Now all Zheng has to do is come up with a way to run a cellphone on booze, for a sort of unholy cellphone/hip flask hybrid.
 

 
Cross posting this from Brand X

 
SEPULVEDA UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST SOCIETY ?��Ǩ��� ?��Ǩ?�THE ONION?��Ǩ�� 9550 Haskell Avenue
Frank Ehrenthal (1964) The Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society sanctuary, widely known as ?��Ǩ?�The Onion?��Ǩ�� for its unique, bulbous shape, was designed by Frank Ehrenthal, a student of Richard Neutra. The contoured wood beam building features a circular shape with a flat point at the highest peak of the roof, resembling the tapered end of a giant onion. In February, 1966 The Grateful Dead along with Ken Kesey and various Merry Pranksters staged an Acid Test here !
 

 
KNOLLWOOD UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 12121 Balboa Boulevard
Hal C. Whittenmore (1966) The ultra-modern Knollwood United Methodist Church is defined by its swooping, asymmetrical white walls, including a soaring fin-like tower that evokes a traditional Mediterranean campanile (bell tower).
 

 
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF NORTHRIDGE 9659 Balboa Boulevard
A. Quincy Jones and Frederick E. Emmons (1962) Built as a pyramid, this church?��Ǩ�Ѣs sanctuary appears infinitely solid on the outside yet equally light and airy inside. The interior?��Ǩ�Ѣs exposed beams soar to a skylight at the apex, while hanging cylindrical light fixtures float throughout. Walls of glass integrate outdoor gardens with plantings along the inside perimeter. A below-grade entrance and garden wall minimize street noise. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the building was deemed one of the safest in the San Fernando Valley.
 
(thanks L.J.Williamson !)

 
Why oh why does this exist?  From Gizmodo:

Researchers from the Machine Perception Laboratory at UCSD have developed this baby robot to simulate the development of a 1-year-old. And clearly, they’ve become somewhat attached to the little automaton with a gigantic head.

The robot baby is named Diego-San, and aside from joy, he’s bundled with a high resolution camera and 6-axis accelerometer. And while his coordination is limited to standing from a chair and holding a bottle, Diego-San’s face has 20 moving parts to convey emotion without speaking?��Ǩ���the engineering of which probably necessitates the freakishly large head.

Hush Little Baby Robot
 
(via Nerdcore)

 
Entrepreneur and computer engineer John Lee, in Sonoma, Calif., thinks the medical marijuana business has reached a tipping point in terms of its social (and legal) acceptance, and his 5-month-old start-up, PlainView Systems, wants to be the Amazon.com of the burgeoning industry.

Potheads, let’s face it, have never been known for being the most organized people, and many of them have the business instincts of a T-shirt seller at a Phish concert. For some dispensary owners, the ever-shifting rules, regulations and decrees set forth by the various municipalities in the state are confusing. So too are the changing accounting standards that are required of the industry.

Sensing an opportunity, Lee and his team at PlainView have created a business-to-business turnkey solution to the day-to-day managerial and bookkeeping needs of California’s cannabis culture. But it’s not just a stoner version of QuickBooks. PlainView has created an online marketplace for marijuana growers to interface with the dispensaries. The idea is to keep everything totally transparent ?��Ǩ��� hence the name PlainView ?��Ǩ��� and for all parties to have organized receipts and records, which they will be increasingly called upon to provide to state and federal tax collectors.

It’s a smart idea, and one whose time has clearly arrived. The state of California’s cannabis yield is worth an estimated $14 billion ?��Ǩ��� forget corn; pot is by far the state’s largest cash crop ?��Ǩ��� and there is news about cannabis legalization daily. To grab just a sliver of that market share could be valuable indeed. Lee told CNN, “Just in the state of California alone, according to my calculations, medical cannabis is a $200 million market. As that market grows, we want to have a small but significant part of it.”

Cross posting this from Brand X

 
Consider this a bookend to last week’s adventure in tattooing!  Oh wait—adventures!

UPDATED: It appears this may be a bit of viral advertising for RayBans.  You got to hand it to ‘em, though.  I imagine they made the guy’s tat just off enough from a real pair of RayBans to make it look more plausible/less suspicious. 

 
(via Gawker)

 
“I do not have a single constructive proposal.”

This is hilarious. It’s poetry, too. This man is a genius. Give him his own TV show!

Here’s what it says about him on WIkipedia:

Koichi Toyama (?������?�����?��ł��?��?�Ǩ, Toyama K?֬�ichi?, , born July 26, 1970) is a Japanese street musician, an “anarchist-fascist”] political activist who was a candidate for the governor of Tokyo in 2007. He was born in Kagoshima Prefecture, and lives in Fukuoka. He gained notoriety with his fervent election speech, which was posted on the American based website YouTube. Out of fourteen candidates in the election, Toyama placed eighth with 15,059 votes (0.27 percent of total votes cast).

Described by the announcer as an “Extreme Left Anti-Establishment” figure, Koichi began his controversial statement by denouncing Japan as a “horrible nation” and rejecting any possibility for reforms. Declaring most of the voters to be his “enemies”, Koichi calls upon a minority to rise up. He closes his speech by calling for the overthrow of the Japanese Government and making an obscene gesture toward the camera.

Another Koichi video, from 2008, saw him giving a monologue in which he claims as the United States has a global hegemony, it is an injustice that despite being a citizen of what he calls one of America’s “51st states” (“America”, he claims “literally encompasses the entire world”), he is not eligible to vote, let alone stand as a candidate, in the election.

 
Here is his official website.

Thank you Lucien Conrad!

 
Here’s a Japanese television reenactment of a Usain Bolt running victory.  Watch and try to not have your head explode as you tease out the possible cultural meanings of the “runner up’s” wearing of what appears to be a Michael Jackson mask.

 
(via JapanProbe)

 
This is one of the most insane things I’ve ever heard. Talk about bravery! (To say nothing of a steady hand). In 1961, a Soviet surgeon named Leonid Rogozov, then 27 years old, and a member of the party of the 6th Soviet Antarctic expedition felt lower abdominal pain. What happened next is probably fairly obvious from the photograph!

In 1959 Leonid Rogozov graduated from the Institute and was immediately accepted to the surgery clinical residency. However, his studies at the residency were broken off for some time due to Leonid?��Ǩ�Ѣs trip to Antarctica in September, 1960 as a doctor of the 6th Soviet Antarctic expedition to Novolazarevskaya station.

During this expedition there happened an event that made a 27-year old surgeon world-famous.

In the 4th month of the wintering, in April, 29th, 1961, Leonid showed disturbing symptoms: weakness, nausea, fever and pain in a right iliac region. The following day his temperature got even higher. Being the only doctor in the expedition consisting of 13 people, Leonid diagnosed himself: acute appendicitis. There were no planes at any of the nearest stations, besides, adverse weather conditions would not allow to fly to Novolazarevskaya anyway. In order to save the sick member of a polar expedition there was needed an urgent operation on site. And the only way out was to operate on himself.

At night, on the 30th of April, 1961, the surgeon was being helped by a mechanical engineer and a meteorologist who were giving him the medical instruments and holding a small mirror at his belly. Lying half bent on the left side, the doctor made a local anesthesia with novocaine solution and made a 12cm incision in the right iliac region with a scalpel. Either watching in the mirror or by touch he removed an inflamed appendix and injected antibiotic in the abdominal cavity. In 30 or 40 minutes from the beginning of the operation there developed a faint and giddiness andthe surgeon had to make pauses for some rest. Nevertheless, by midnight the operation lasting 1 hour and 45 minutes was over. In five days the temperature normalized, in two days more ?��Ǩ��� the stitches were taken out.

In the St. Petersburg Museum of the Arctic and the Antarctic there is an exposure of surgical instruments that Leonid Rogozov applied for this uneasy operation.

Leonid Rogozov ?��Ǩ��� a hero-surgeon (English Russia)