Some cause happiness wherever they go...

Eating and Drinking

Let's begin with a good breakfast and by that I mean a look at the 50 best breakfasts of the world. If you throw out the tomatoes and beans, I guess I'm a fan of the English breakfast.  The American breakfast is pancakes and bacon which, while delicious, doesn't come close to bacon and eggs and hash browns (and let's not get started on what good hash browns are about).

For my beer drinking friends: Design a label for your homebrew using Labeley. How many of America's most alcoholic beers have you had? (Precisely 1: Stone's Double Bastard.)

Form and Content

The Eyes Have It. How well do you know your cartoon characters from their eyes alone?  Interactive site and poster.

Painters: Website for the project to create Richard Diebenkorn's catalogue raisonne.  Mark Bradford has had an apparent meteoric rise to fame including his current exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art. The work of Tomory Dodge and John Zurier.

Dev Harlan, Parmenides I, 2011.  Sculpture and video installation.

Part 7 of the series of visualization resources lists essential visualization books which is continued in part 8.

Structure and Behavior

Back in 1883 an astronomer observed what he thought were hundreds of comets. His contemporaries disagreed, calling the observation birds or insects passing in front of the telescope.  Later, the UFO loonies latched onto this. Now we have a more sinister explanation: a billion or so tons of comet fragments passing within 600 to 8,000 kilometers of earth.  Can you say extinction event? 

Scale of Universe is a flash-based, poorly drawn ripoff of the classic film Powers of Ten.

On the role of technology in music Brian Eno wrote "Technology in music is a little bit like numbers in mathematics. You can't really imagine music without technology."

Proof #1124 that innovation was still alive in 2008: a zero-g coffee cup.

Lacking Common Sense

Proof #36D that science remains keenly focused on tackling the grand challenges of our time: why there are bumps on your nipples. (There are bumps on my nipples?)

You would think this would be ripe for jokes but I'm having trouble finding a single one.  Miss France models a bikini made from 300 pieces of chocolate. Your turn.

100. Pound. Scrotum. Why isn't science working on this?

Ooh LaLa indeed. source

Shoemania is an auction of autographed celebrity's shoes.  Who wouldn't want David Hasselhoff's hiking shoes?

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Especially mammals. source

Conflict

If you ever think you're having a bad day or deserve a pat on the back, read the story of Medal of Honor recipient Roy Benavidez.

A soldier is inspired by the movie Predator, created a belt-fed ammo backpack for his machine gun, sends it to the Army lab in Natick, MA, and gets back the Ironman (which I'm certain has some convoluted acronym).

Sure.  Nazi soldiers last week, Hitler this week.  I'm a sucker for those Downfall overdubs where Hitler reacts to current news.  This time he finds out that Gaddafi has been killed.

Challenge Conventional Wisdom

Steve Jobs, "role model": A demanding perfectionist who ran Apple like a dictatorship.  Who cheated his “friend”, Steve Wozniak, out of thousands of dollars early in their friendship.  Who fathered an illegitimate daughter and refused to acknowledge her as his child until years after the fact.  Who typed angry emails to his critics.  Who regularly lost his temper when his employees screwed up so much as one line of code.  Who feels is beyond his own rules.  Who only donated to charity once.

Bill Gates, "aggressive businessman": One of the richest, yet humble, men on the planet who never took for granted what he accomplished.  Who took responsibility when it came to family matters.  Who wrote code for years along with his employees even despite the fact that he was of higher authority than they were.  Who was strict with his employees while still being respectful to them. Who constantly donated to charitable causes during and after his time as chairman at Microsoft.

source 
 
Denouement
 
Finally, it's time for a deep, cleansing breath.  But why breath by yourself when you can breath synchronously with people around the world courtesy of the Universal Breathing Room. In... out... in... out...

...others whenever they go. ~Oscar Wilde