Separate And Equal

Physically separated bike lanes are very cool and successful...



(via GGW)

The World Of Acoustic Hip Hop Covers

I fell down a very deep rabbit hole this morning after Ezra Klein posted this video of a rather rotund heavily bearded and very Caucasian dude (Mat Wettle of Obadiah Parker) playing an acoustic cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya":



(A different video with better audio of the same exists, but is not embedable)

That led to this M.I.A cover...



Which subsequently led me to Marie Digby elegantly covering Rhianna's "Umbrella"...



A little bit of searching on You Tube turned up a couple of more nuggets. The Scared Dinosaurs doing Soulja Boy's "Crank That" (this one might be my favorite):



And One Republic sponsoring a You Tube acoustic cover contest for their song "Apolgize":



At this point I knew it was time to desperately extricate myself before I disappeared completely into the You Tubes. But not before looking for one of the earliest hip hop acoustic covers to go big time, Dynamite Hack taking on "Boys in the Hood". Surprisingly the only thing interesting I could find was a video made out of scenes from one of the more recent Grand Theft Auto games which appears to contain the track...



It's also worth noting that this is a popular genre, at least online, and that several of these videos have well over 1 million views (one of them has been watched more than 12.5 million times)

Yet Another Reason To Love Vermont

You can get REAL syrup on your pancakes at IHOP...

So when the land of piping-hot pancakes and fresh maple syrup became the 50th state to welcome an IHOP last month, the franchise owners sought permission to depart from the chain’s standard fare. The IHOP here is the only one of about 1,400 in the United States, Canada and Mexico to serve real maple syrup.

“You can’t open up a Vermont pancake shop without Vermont maple syrup,” said Sam Handy Jr., who is the restaurant’s general manager and whose family owns the franchise.

(via Kottke)

Badass Biking

No two ways about it that's what we have here in a crazy video just released by UK based Inspired Bicycles featuring rider Danny MacAskill in Edinburgh.



I've seen a couple of demos at bike expos before but nothing quite like this. There's probably plenty of other folks out there riding like this and plety of videos if you go looking though.

Interesting aside, the video is available in HQ on YouTube and not available in HD on Vimeo. A bit odd since this seems to be right up Vimeo's alley. It seems (this may be way too much extrapolation however) that YouTube's move to offer higher quality (and HD) uploading is paying off.

(via GL)

Who Doesn't Love Jenga?

And who hasn't spent hours shooting rubber bands at things? Ok, maybe not recently but at some earlier point in your life you did. Now imagine combing these two excellent pursuits and then taking them to 11...



via (GL)

Not Your Average Celebrity

Then again, I suppose that being a celebrity negates being average on principle. Either way it appears to be young female celebrity day here and we'll follow up the satire from the previous post with an instruction to go read Scarlett Johansson's piece at HuffPo on diet and exercise and how it worries / scares / frustrates her that the tabloid media continues to push the physical image of celebrities upon us and often urges crash dieting.

It's a thoughtful, righteously indignant screed and you should check it out...

Since dedicating myself to getting into "superhero shape," several articles regarding my weight have been brought to my attention. Claims have been made that I've been on a strict workout routine regulated by co-stars, whipped into shape by trainers I've never met, eating sprouted grains I can't pronounce and ultimately losing 14 pounds off my 5'3" frame. Losing 14 pounds out of necessity in order to live a healthier life is a huge victory. I'm a petite person to begin with, so the idea of my losing this amount of weight is utter lunacy. If I were to lose 14 pounds, I'd have to part with both arms. And a foot. I'm frustrated with the irresponsibility of tabloid media who sell the public ideas about what we should look like and how we should get there.

(via EK)

Lindsay Lohan Is Alone

At least according to the tabloid rumors and her new eHarmony ad...

Lindsay Lohan's eHarmony Profile from Lindsay Lohan

(via bloggasm)

Holy Royal Rumble

The Catholics and Presbyterians are at each others' (metaphorical) throats in the Denver ex-urbs.

The back and forth on the church message boards across the street from each other is ridiculously awesome, and it mostly concerns whether dogs can go to heaven...

(via BD)

It's Music...

I think. At the very least it's very creative. Kutiman, nee Ophir Kutiel, a twenty-something Israeli semi-musician has a web album of sorts out known as the Thru-You project. Basically he's mixed together lots of YouTube samples to create actual songs or tracks, depending on how you want to calssify them. It's a good listen and interesting viewing as well.

Thru-You project page.

Kutiman interview with Sasha Frere-Jones.

(via SFJ)

Presenting The BAAAA-Studs

You've probably seen at least a bit of a working dog competition somewhere on tv (between Nat. Geo., Animal Planet, Discovery etc how could you not have) but none of those dogs or handlers have anything on these guys.

This has to be about the most awesome thing I've ever seen, seriously.



(via kottke)

Don't Waste Water

Seriously don't do it, those people are cheering the dude who stops the running toilet not the toilet. Plus the sound from a running toilet will drive you nuts (and or make you have to pee)...



(via facebook)

I Think SkyNet Is Here...

Either that or we're a step closer to the Matrix.

Google's at it again this year and once again it's a doozy. They've released the first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity in to the wild as it were.

About, Homepage, Tech Specs

"All your personal world wide Website belong to CADIE" Yes, yes they probably do.

Enjoy, although I'm still waiting to hear about when I get to go to Mars.

Update:

I just noticed that CADIE will also respond to all of your emails for you if you turn on gmail autopilot today, very nice.