my.bicycle

( TV in Japan )

( G4 podcast )

In April 2000, brothers Juan and Pedro Sanchez were drilling a new tunnel when they made a truly spectacular discovery. While Naica miners are accustomed to finding crystals, Juan and Pedro were absolutely amazed by the cavern that they found. The brothers immediately informed the engineer in charge, Roberto Gonzalez. Ing. Gonzalez realized that they had discovered a natural treasure and quickly rerouted the tunnel. During this phase some damage was done as several miners tried to remove pieces of the mega-crystals, so the mining company soon installed an iron door to protect the find. Later, one of the workers, with the intention of stealing crystals, managed to get in through a narrow hole. He tried to take some plastic bags filled with fresh air inside, but the strategy didn't work. He lost consciousness and later was found thoroughly baked. The Fortress of Solitude found “for reals”? Check out this ginormous freaking crystal cave . (thanks, TimK!)

Towers of Silence : Zoroastrians consider a dead body - as also cut hair and nail-parings - to be nasu , unclean. According to tradition, the purpose of exposure is to preclude the pollution of earth or fire (see Zam and Atar respectively). Corpses are therefore placed atop a tower and so exposed to the sun and to birds of prey. Bodies are arranged in three rings: men around the outside, women in the second circle, and children in the innermost ring. The ritual precinct may only be entered by a special class of pallbearers. Once the bones have been bleached by the sun and wind, which can take as long as a year, they are collected in an ossuary pit at the center of the tower and/or are eventually washed out to sea.

Tim advises, “In case you’re bored today, the first seven issues of Marvel’s Civil War series, re-written with much much better dialog....” start and just keep reading until the end (thanks, TimK )

Friend of this blog, and colossal perv novelist M. Christian and his brother are blogging The Extra Kewl Stuff over at meine kleine fabrik . Go check it out; if you are in to history and weirdness, there is gold there. They also bring the Japanese weirdness, like this .

Dylan Hears a Who! - a collection of faux Bob Dylan tracks, singing classic Dr. Seuss works. Not quite a mashup, it reminds me of Louis Armstrong’s “original” version of Oops, I Did It Again! and Matthew’s Celebrity Pixies Covers . (thanks, the other michael )

Wired News is providing help for the masses with a new The High-Def FAQK : Is HD equipment expensive? Oh, heavens, no, not compared to other forms of entertainment. For instance, renting out an entire movie theater so you can watch Scary Movie 4 with a couple of your friends would cost nearly a third of what it costs to set up a decent high-definition home theater, and that's only for one movie! And a trip into near space may be fun, but it costs appreciably more than replacing all your home theater equipment. Have some perspective!

Kotaku’s got several articles up that cover the anime-styled characters that are the personification of gaming hardware, and the epitome of fanboy lust. There’s PSP-tan , above. Also Xbox-tan , Wii-tan, and PS3-tan (not for the feint of heart ), and even a chubby little DS-tan (maybe based on the non-Lite model?). Now they can join the ranks of the Mac girl and Win-tan . Moe-moe .