What's inside your cellphone?

Ever wonder what demonic creature is unleashed when you stick your cellphone into a microwave oven?

Watch:

Weirdest f**king thing I've seen

And why I love the Japanese.

Comedian inside a giant blue balloon on stilts attempts to reach a glazed donut.

Skip the Prius, get a used car instead.

From this blog post on Wired, which suggests that you can really pump up your green enviro-cred not by buying a new Toyota Prius, but by buying a used fuel-efficient car instead.

Toyota Prius get great gas mileage but it takes 113 million BTUs of energy to make one. Since there are about 113,000 BTUs of energy in a gallon of gasoline, the Prius has consumed the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline before it reaches the showroom. Think of it as a carbon debt - one you won't pay off until the Prius has turned over 46,000 miles or so.

Maybe you'd be best off if you could find a used Prius, but I think from a dollars-to-mpg ratio, a used Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla might be a better option. You get almost as good fuel efficiency as a hybrid, for a fraction of the cost of owning one. Unless you buy a total lemon that needs to spend time in the shop every month. Also don't forget that a new car will almost certainly cost more to insure than an older jalopy.

Makes me feel justified for hanging on to my 96 VW Golf (28 mpg, 135,000 miles), that's for sure.

[Image from Wagonized]

Right wing talk show host shows his ignorance on Hardball

On Hardball with Chris Matthews, blowhard radio talk show host Kevin James sought to attach the "appeaser" label to Barack Obama. Trouble is, he doesn't know what the term meant.



This just confirms and puts to rest what a lot of people have known for a long time about these conservative attack-dog talk show hosts. By using tactics that include hysterics and excessive decibel levels, not permitting the other side any time to respond, they distract from their ignorance of the subject matter at hand. Even if the other side does somehow get a chance to defend themselves, their arguments are tossed aside and any attempt to bring it back to the table is drowned out with an even louder and abrasive repetition of their slogans. Eventually their opponent gives up out of disgust.

That's not an open debate. It's a deplorable practice, they shouldn't be able to get away with it for as long as they have been. It's good that once in a while someone calls their bluff and puts their idiocy to shame.

Freestyle Trial

What is it about the French that makes them do crazy (albeit in a spectacular kind of way) stuff like this? From the people that developed freerunning or Parkour, Freestyle Trial is what you get when you combine Parkour with a motorbike.

This guy Julien Dupont is freaking awesome.



Here is Jean-Yves Blondeau, another crazy Frenchman with his awesome body roller suit.

Via Fresh Creation

Audiosurfing the classics

This ad promoting the Zurich Chamber Orchestra transforms the lines of sheet music into the rails of a roller coaster:



This so reminds me of the awesome indie game Audiosurf, where you turn your MP3 songs into a playable, gem-collecting obstacle course. Well worth the $10 purchase price, in my opinion. Here's a clip of a guy playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor in Audiosurf:

7382 used chopsticks

That's how many chopsticks were used to make this canoe.



City hall worker Shuhei Ogawara spent two years collecting spent chopsticks from the cafeteria. Perfectly good wood that would otherwise have gone to waste, instead were glued into strips to form the canoe shell.

Kwytza Kraft has also found uses for recycled chopsticks.

Asahi via Pink Tentacle