Swarovski's crystal-themed museum

The entrance to Swarovski's crystal-themed theme park Kristallwelten/Crystal World features a giant head/fountain. Via.

*Buy Swarovski crystal at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. "The Inuit of Arctic Canada take huge risks to gather mussels in winter. During extreme low tides, they climb beneath the shifting sea ice, but have less than an hour before the water returns." Via.

2. Zero Punctuation reviews Minecraft. (I've never been tempted to try it, and his positive review hasn't changed my mind.)

3. Spoke Art added a bunch of prints to its webstore, including many I've posted in the past.

It's like a Super Mario board in real life

Video of a high mountain path. Via.

Link roundup

1. "Camp Century—aka 'Project Iceworm'—was a 'city under ice,' according to the U.S. Army, a 'nuclear-powered research center built by the Army Corps of Engineers under the icy surface of Greenland.'"

2. If these estimates regarding Apple employee salaries are accurate, then the employees are either totally fungible, or suckers. Via.

3. Illustrator Dan Santat talks about turning down a recent job offer from Google.

*Buy military patches at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Funny American Elf strip (I mean, I'm assuming it worked out).

2. I'm really enjoying the video game reviews at Action Button. Here's part of a lengthy review of Mass effect 2:

The first thing I notice when I’m playing the second time is that interactions aren’t decisions — they’re social monsters that need to be killed to pass quests. When they die, you get experience toward paragon or renegade levels, which allow access to higher level conversations, which are basically social dungeons. The second thing I notice is, once you know, for certain, that someone won’t add any interesting new information to their initial, perfectly clear summary statement of their role in the story and your expectations regarding them, the game gets alot shorter. Except for when these people are expositing about some shoehorned summary that seems completely out of context, unless you pumped them for redundant information, earlier.

3. Hang Ken is an enormous cave in Vietnam: "There’s a jungle inside Vietnam’s mammoth cavern. A skyscraper could fit too. And the end is out of sight."

*Buy Mass Effect toys at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. Photo gallery of the "Door to Hell" in Turkmenistan, Darvaza:

The Derweze area is rich in natural gas. While drilling in 1971 geologists accidentally found an underground cavern filled with natural gas. The ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a large hole with a diameter of about 50-100 meters. To avoid poisonous gas discharge, it was decided to burn the gas. Geologists had hoped the fire would go out in a few days but it has been burning ever since. Locals have named the cavern The Door to Hell.

2. Tron-ify a Marvel character art contest. Via.

3. FYI, Carl's Jr's new hand-battered chicken strips, the ones they're advertising nonstop in LA, are disgusting. (Not sure how it's possible in 2010 for a fast food restaurant to ruin chicken tenders.)

*Buy Tron toys at eBay.

Link roundup

1. "The tunnel people of Las Vegas: How 1,000 live in flooded labyrinth under Sin City's shimmering strip." Via.

2. "Remember when Democratic congressman Bob Etheridge went berserk on two kids who were harassing him on the streets of Washington, D.C.? And everyone was wondering who those kids were? And the GOP denied it? Guess what? It was the GOP."

3. The LA Times says Meg Whitman spent $11.7 million on campaign consultants to Brown's $167,000, and spent 5.9 million on campaign worker salaries to Brown's $157,000.

*Buy Meg Whitman collectibles at eBay.

Submerged town on Google Maps

"Villa Epecuen in Argentina was traditionally a town famed for its saltwater lake, with many tourists flocking to the village to test out its healing properties. However in 1985 it was completely flooded when the lake overflowed and covered half the town. The aftermath reveals the powerful and devastating effect water can have." You can see lots of photos here, and here's the town on Google Maps. Via.

*Buy 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea posters at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. The South Edgemere Wasteland: an abandoned part of New York, claimed by packs of wild dogs. Via.

2. Download an mp3 to participate in tonight's Improv Everywhere event in New York.

3. A fungus wiped out half of the 2010 poppy crop in Afghanistan. Via.

You are nowhere

No Name rest area. Wikipedia says:

No Name is an unincorporated community in Colorado. It is located east of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, off exit 119 of Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon. It is named for No Name Creek and No Name Canyon. The No Name Tunnel of I-70 is nearby.

Via these sites.

*Buy Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. Aquarium in Japan featuring fish frozen in blocks of ice.

2. Fearsome Korean armored police vehicle. Via.

3. Looks like all of Spirited Away can be watched on Youtube.

*Previously: Spirited Away in Lego.

*Buy Spirited Away toys at eBay.

Submarines rotting on a beach in Scotland

Aberlady submarines:

The submarines are XT-Craft, training versions of the X-Craft that attacked the Tirpitz in 1942. In 1946 two of these vessels were towed to Aberlady Bay and moored to a large concrete block, then used as target practice and gun tests by RAF aircraft. Afterwards their badly damaged remains were simply left to rot.

Via.

Link roundup

1. Warren Ellis looks at magic cannibalism (hint, you almost certainly know someone who practices it).

2. TARDIS paper toy.

3. The Story of Paris’s Most Secret Underground Society. Via.

Link roundup

1. Read about the time Kyra Sedgwick accidentally pressed the panic button in Tom Cruise's home.

2. A trial judge called an NFL player a coward for his role in his friend's murder.

3. There are two ATMs in Antarctica. Here's how they're operated. Via.

*Buy NFL bobbleheads at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Robin Hanson:

I’ve been sick, so watched tv more than usual. Watching Journey to the Center of the Earth, I noticed yet again how folks seem to like adventure stories and games to come with guides. People prefer main characters to follow a trail of clues via a map or book written by someone who has passed before, or at least to follow the advice of a wise old person.

2. London tube station located in the third story of an office building. Via these sites.

3. Bacon and Tomato Guacamole recipe.

*Buy The Rough Guide to Ultimate Adventures at Amazon.

Link roundup

1. Exploring the ruins of Japan’s illegal to visit Battleship Island.

2. Vampire idol/poison bearer by Steamcrow.

3. Meet the man who is dedicated to spreading free WiFi across Estonia. (Cory Doctorow wrote a great book about a character with a similar motivation.)

*Buy Japanese Design (MoMA Design Series) at Amazon.

Independent Order of Odd Fellows (link roundup)

Independent Order of Odd Fellows ribbon. There's more Oddfellows merchandise available at eBay.

And a few more links:

1. Cool crop circle graphics.

2. Good Samaritan has stenciled directional compasses outside of subway station entrances. Via.

3. A Nestle supermarket barge is going to travel the Amazon, selling goods to people without access to stores.

*Previously: Crop circle looks like a giant jellyfish.

*Buy hoax collections at Amazon.

The Simpsons drawn as humans (link roundup)

The Simpsons drawn as humans by Lesley Vamos. Via.

And a few more links:

1. Ryan Cody is currently accepting sketch card commissions. Since he doesn't include many in the post, here's some recent illustrations he's posted.

2. The Underground Light Mine of Batavia.

3. Big demon.

*Previously: The world's deepest pub was in an abandoned gold mine.

*Buy Simpsons toys at eBay.

Lucy Van Pelt illustration (link roundup)

John Martz turned the Koyama Press mascot into Lucy Van Pelt as a commission.

And a few more links:

1. Review of several new books about Christianity is full of interesting details:

The odd absences in Mark are matched by the unreal presences in the other Gospels. The beautiful Nativity story in Luke, for instance, in which a Roman census forces the Holy Family to go back to its ancestral city of Bethlehem, is an obvious invention, since there was no Empire-wide census at that moment, and no sane Roman bureaucrat would have dreamed of ordering people back to be counted in cities that their families had left hundreds of years before. The author of Luke, whoever he might have been, invented Bethlehem in order to put Jesus in David’s city.

Via.

2. There's an island near Australia called Magnetic Island.

3. You can watch a full playthrough of Alan Wake.

*Previously: Watch Bright Falls, the Alan Wake prequel.

*Buy Peanuts toys at eBay.

The Duplicative Forest (link roundup)

The Duplicative Forest - - you can read about it here and here. But wouldn't you rather just know that it's a real place in Oregon and let your imagination do the rest?

And a few more links:

1. A suggestion that Turkey provoked the fight with Israel as an excuse to accelerate their goal of obtaining nuclear weapons.

2. Apparently the Attorney Generals of 48 states, including California, have argued in the US Supreme Court that non-media speakers (whatever that means) get less first amendment protection.

3. Ghostbusters proton pack backpack.

4. The feds have asked James Cameron for his suggestions on solving the oil spill.

*Previously: Forest Head.

*Buy Ghostbusters toys at eBay.