A lovely antidote to Monday morning stress! The only part about this that's a bummer? These wonderful, wild critters are stuck in a zoo.

Video link: Humboldt Penguins chasing a butterfly at the Philadelphia Zoo
[Submitterated by voightkamff, video by Marty McGuire] — Read the rest

An Iowa restaurant was fined $335 after the head chef was caught "kissing and licking live toads" in the kitchen.

Christopher Turla, who goes by the name TaiMaiShu at the popular Japanese restaurant, is seen on the tape inside the restaurant during business hours with two small toads on the prep table where vegetables are cut.

On June 5, 1925, Sir John Bland-Sutton delivered a fascinating lecture titled "The Psychology of Animals Swallowed Alive" to the Royal College of Surgeons, of which he was president. Over at our Submitterator, Dani points us to a transcript of the presentation that ran in the British Medical Journal. — Read the rest

Photo: Shannon Cottrell/LA Weekly, Durarara!! cosplayers from Anime Expo 2010

In our time covering conventions and other fandom events for LA Weekly, cosplayers have both directly and indirectly influenced the work that photographer Shannon Cottrell and I produce.

Neither one of us has ever cosplayed, but we appreciate it as an art form. — Read the rest

I've read about people who have performed appendectomies on themselves. Now it makes sense.

This is how much it will cost us to have a ruptured appendix removed (Via Cynical-C)

My book Made By Hand is finally available in Kindle and iBook formats. If you've been waiting to buy an electronic copy, here you go.

Learn more about my book here.

A few recent reviews:

• Less a how-to book and more a rumination on the value of screwing up as a path to mastery, Made by Hand is impossible to set down once you start reading it.

The first volume of William H Patterson's enormous Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century is out. It's the first authorized biography of the sf writer who popularized at least three important motifs of the 20th century (polyamory, private space travel and libertarianism) and redefined the field of science fiction with a series of novels, stories and essays that are usually brilliant but sometimes self-indulgent, sometimes offensive in their treatment of race and gender, and always provocative and generally sneaky. — Read the rest

I've covered Canadian psychology hijinks before, and how a handful of them are leading the push to expand which sexual interests are mental illnesses.

Now comes another scandal that's like something out of Clockwork Orange.

Late last month, Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services in Burnaby, British Columbia was forced to shut down a decades-old program where troubled youths had a device placed on their penises while they were subjected to media depicting stuff like rape and child pornography. — Read the rest

EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!

This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies- if converted into heat- could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second!

In the West, India is masked in the dull gauze of invention. It is that "spiritual" place; the land of Gandhi, where movies are made about lovers who never kiss. India is also the country that has killed 50 or more Kashmiris in the past sixty days. — Read the rest

This Japanese guy visiting Istanbul, Turkey just wanted an ice cream cone. You'd think that would be a simple request. Poor guy. [Video Link] — Read the rest

Our Dean Putney caught this shot of Julian Casablancas of the Strokes performing at the Outside Lands festival this weekend. Go check Dean's Flickr set, which also includes on-stage snaps of Grateful Dead godfathers Phil Lesh and Bob Weir (now Furthur), and Tokyo Police Club.

CNN reports that Tila Tequila, star of MySpace and reality television, suffered facial cuts after being pelted with rocks and liquor bottles during her performance at "Gathering of the Juggalos" in rural Illinois. A witness said the crowd of about 2,000 was hostile toward Tequila. — Read the rest

Photo: Shannon Cottrell/LA Weekly from the release party for Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour in Los Angeles

There's a recent interview with Bryan Lee O'Malley over at About.com: Manga where the Scott Pilgrim creator talks about the influence of shonen (boy's) manga on his comic series. — Read the rest

Revenge of the sound professional! This video is packed with all the clichés currently spewed by clueless producers, which sound even more ridiculous through a character-to-voice translator.

For more tips on how not to be clueless about audio, there's also this classic sound tutorial from acceptable.tv — Read the rest

Some who were the subject of a recent Slate piece titled "How Black People Use Twitter" were annoyed at being referred to as a monolithic, homogeneous group.

From this, #browntwitterbird sprang forth.

Innyvinny.com's original post, and search the hashtag—sorry! the blacktag here. — Read the rest

Hollywood is split on the FCC's new proposals for regulating the internet, possibly doing away with net neutrality.

Lucy Cooke has just premiered an episode of the aptly named The Cute Show on a Costa Rican sloth sanctuary.

The Cute Show: Sloths! [ VBS.tv]

The maker's motivations: It's cool, and it'll keep kids off drugs. I'm not sure about the mechanism on that last part, but whatever. Jet-powered school bus! (Via Tyghe Trimble)

Sharks are not the big, dumb, bullies of the sea that you might suspect. Over the last 20 years, research into shark behavior has gotten more sophisticated and it's turned up some surprising findings about what's going on in the brains of these "mindless death fish from hell". — Read the rest