Mark Frauenfelder:
From the Make blog. It looks kind of phony. Why does the guy need to be up so high? Link
from Boing Boing
Cory Doctorow: Here’s a gallery of photos of screaming, terrified children having their pictures taken with Santa Claus. Link (via Neatorama)
Here’s a sampling of some subject lines in my spam box today… good for a chuckle as always:
- The As Hole
- RE: you naval
- on minimal
- Re: her lightning
- re: his lawn
- at your own reader
- needs
Could be the track listing for the new Bob Pollard album, me thinks… BTW, has anyone else taken notice that the human song machine has been churning like mad this year? 3 albums already?! Dig it!
Mark Frauenfelder: 
In the 1960s two underemployed young men named Mal Sharpe and Jim Coyle from the San Francisco Bay Area decided to have some fun by walking the streets with a tape recorder hidden in a briefcase to conduct surreal prank interviews with people.On a recent episode of the terrific podcast, The Sound of Young America, Mal Sharpe was invited as a guest to talk about the movie Borat. The podcast’s host, Jesse Thorn, said Coyle and Sharpe were spiritual grandfathers to Sasha Baron Cohen. Thorn also played a segment of an early Coyle and Sharpe bit, called the human sugar bowl, in which the pranksters entered a San Francisco restaurant and asked the owner if he would “be opposed to the idea of using an area of your head, which is currently not used for such purposes, to use this as a storage place for sugar?” I loved the fact that the restaurant owner actually had a conversation with the two pranksters, telling them they were crazy for thinking the idea would be a viable business, and explaining to them why he thought it was a bad business idea. Today, most restaurant owners who were approached by a pair of deadly earnest men spouting such insanity would reach for a gun, a can of pepper spray, or a phone to call the cops.
Here’s a sample of the bit. You can buy a four-disc set of Coyle and Sharpe’s work at Amazon.com.
Cory Doctorow: 
Canadian illustrator Rob Sacchetto has opened a business selling zombified portraits of his customers. Email him a picture of yourself and he’ll mail you back a hand-drawn cartoon of you as a horrible zombie. He got the idea after doing a couple friends’ zombie portraits for Hallowe’en — now he’s charging US$85, including shipping. Link (via Neatorama)
Kynoid refers to any being whose body structure resembles that of a dog especially in the context of science fiction and fantasy fiction. It usually refers to sentient beings, while the rest is described with “canidae“. The term (originally, in Russian) was coined by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in their 1979 sci-fi novel Beetle in the Anthill (translated into English in 1980) to describe the extraterrestrial sentient species nicknamed “Headies“.
Usually, a fictional kynoid species has four legs (all of them primarily used for walking, although other purposes, like fighting, are not excluded) or two legs and two paws (used for wielding instruments and weapons), a tail and a canine head. Very often kynoids possess also the ability to speak and communicate – even if only in their own language. Other details, like size, weight, fur color (if any), even the shape of the head, may differ from species to species.
In sci-fi universes, kynoids are generally shown as specimen of entire alien races, while in fantasy worlds they tend to appear as single supporting characters. Because dogs are assumed the human’s best friend in the animal kingdom, many books and movies feature a kynoid as a partner and a friend-in-need of a human character, although wolves are often presented as adversaries. The common image of a werewolf can also be classified as kynoid (in the animal form).
List of fictional kynoid characters:
Frank the Pug, a typical example of a kynoid from Men in Black II; Angua (a werewolf, Discworld); Drimarondo (a talking dog, Labyrinths of Eho by Max Frei); Ein (a sentient dog, Cowboy Bebop); Fenrisulfr (a giant wolf, Edda); Frank (an alien in a dog suit, Men in Black and its sequels); Gaspode (a talking dog, Discworld); Gmork (a sentient wolf, The Neverending Story); Huan (the Hound of Valinor, Middle-earth); Maugrim (a talking wolf, The Chronicles of Narnia); Schyokn-Itrch (a Headie, Noon Universe); Sirius Black (transfigures into a black dog) and Remus Lupin (a werewolf, Harry Potter book series); Toto (a talking dog, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz); Wildmutt (a Vulpimancer, Ben 10).
List of fictional kynoid races:
Doog (Star Control); Headies (Noon Universe); Moon Dogs (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons); Shistavanen (Star Wars); Vulpimancers (Ben 10); Werewolves (Middle-earth).
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Kynoid”. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.
From Gizmodo:
It’s Wii-Day+8 and gamers around the country are simultaneously discovering one thing: they’re wildly out of shape. Yup, it seems that many gamers have gotten a bit more than they bargained for regarding how vigorous playing the Nintendo Wii is. One girl described it as “harder than playing basketball” while another complained of sore muscles. You know how Nintendo responded to these complaints?
Essentially, “work out more, fatsos.” A Nintendo PR rep said, “If people are finding themselves sore, they may need to exercise more.” Wow, how’s that for motivation. You know you’re out of shape when a Nintendo PR rep tells you to hit the gym. The rep also said that the Wii is not Jenny Craig and should not be viewed as such. Ouch.
So what do the Gizmodo faithful have to say about this? Assuming you’ve even gotten your hands on a Wii (gold star for you!), is all that flailing a bit much? I doubt Nintendo expected its core audience to be made up of a bunch of Mr. Universes.
A Wii Workout: When Videogames Hurt [The Wall Street Journal via News.blog]
