Friday links

Lots of info on leap years.

Full-scale tank built from more than 5,000 egg cartons and 26 litres of glue.

8 creepy mystery ingredients in fast food.

Rare photos of the old and the dead.

Asian Cinema's 20 Greatest Fight Scenes.

Flies Get Drunk to Kill Off Parasites.

ead more here: http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/#storylink=cp

UK tax dollars at work

Goats 'can develop their own accents'.

Lliberal dilemma: taxpayer funded solar power vs kit foxes

$825 Million Solar Loan Going to Waste.

First Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter trailer

Honest Abe versus bloodsuckers.

Bye Bye Jar Jar

A dream come true.

Monday links

Interactive Animation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Man breaks into South Bend home, vacuums and folds laundry

Gallery:  The World's Weirdest Volcanic Crater.

Ultimate Tazer Ball  - soccer with stun guns.

Mysterious ‘manure foam’ causes pig farms to explode.

History's most famous explosions, reproduced in cauliflower.

Read more here: http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/#storylink=cpy

Greatest Note Ever Left On a Dented Car

Must read.

Who’s paying Occupiers to disrupt CPAC, and how much?

Short answer:  1. AFL-CIO, 2. $60.

Protesters at Friday’s “Occupy CPAC” event, organized by AFL-CIO and the Occupy DC movement, told The Daily Caller that they were paid “sixty bucks a head” to protest outside the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

Toilet Bowl XLVI

Toilet use spiked a staggering 13 percent in NYC in the moments after New England’s dreams of Super Bowl glory went down the drain with Tom Brady’s failed last-second Hail Mary toss, according to Department of Environmental Protection.

I worked at AOL during the 90's, during the dial-up access days, and the hardest hit to the system during any given week always came at the end of Monday Night Football.  We used to kid that toilet use preceded that hit by ~90 seconds.

A Tribute to The Mead of Skyrim

If you play Skyrim, you'll appreciate this.

UK tax dollars at work

The "Ponytail Shape Equation", when calculated using the Rapunzel Number and a measure of the curliness of hair can be used to predict the shape of any ponytail.

California's oppressed government employee community

Parking attendants at the DWP average $74,408 a year; nationally, the average salary for this position is $21,250.

Advice Goddess says, "I'll be working in a donut shop at 90 to pay the parking attendant's pension."

via @iowahawkblog.

WV - Three Coal Plants Closing Due to EPA Regs

Follows an announcement last month that six plants in OH, PA, and MD would also be retired.

Mark Steyn: The Church of Obama

Obama goes Henry VIII on the Church’s medieval ass.

"The Obamacare bill contained 700 references to the secretary “shall,” another 200 to the secretary “may,” and 139 to the secretary “determines.” So the secretary may and shall determine pretty much anything she wants, as the Obamaphile rubes among the Catholic hierarchy are belatedly discovering.  In my latest book, I cite my personal favorite among the epic sweep of Commissar Sebelius’s jurisdictional authority:

“The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance.”

Before Obama’s Act of Supremacy did the English language ever have need for such a phrase? “Tooth-level surveillance”: from the Declaration of Independence to dentured servitude in a mere quarter-millennium"