Today we have almost two weeks' worth of links from others! Many thanks to everyone.

From Bunny: Mustache TV, a game where you stick a fake mustache on your TV and then score points when it appears on objects or people. This sounds exactly like something we would have done in high school.

Cassandra and I have an ongoing project where we document examples of animals rebelling against human oppression. I sent her this story about monkeys in India, and she responded with this video of wild pigs. The revolution, it is coming!

Also from Cassandra: the Natural Bridge in Virginia is for sale (really, they've got a bridge to sell you!); children continue to be terrified of Santa, resulting in hilarious photos; the female rebels of Colombia are choosing different paths; and robot love is just around the corner.

From Holly: do your initials shape your destiny? (I hope not!) Also, Morrissey is threatening to sue NME for misrepresenting his comments on immigrants; Leonardo da Vinci may have used mirrors to create hidden images in his works; the joys and sorrows of living with roommates; a Threadless t-shirt which finally gets the whole "polar bears live in the north, penguins live in the south" thing right; and finally, be on the lookout for some very happy people with a whole lot of Guinness.

From Satori: The always-amazing Sparks have lost their minds, but in a brilliant way. From their website: “How do we best unveil our new album, Sparks as yet untitled 21st? How about playing in concert every single song off of every album that preceded it, all 20 albums on 20 consecutive nights, culminating in the premiere of our latest? That's approximately 250 songs, or for you musicians, 4 million, 825 thousand, 273 notes. Come celebrate each and every one of those notes with us!”

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

Short soundbites today. Sentence fragments! Yes!

Want some depressing statistics? Check out the current cost of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you're looking instead for cheerful holiday gift ideas, the Library Avengers store has some new offerings.

Along the same lines, here are some great sign ideas for a library. I like the children/homeless one myself. It could make a great fundraiser!

The ABA has published a list of the top 100 legal weblogs (aka "blawgs," which I think is horrid).

Israel is planning a national library, to be located in Jersusalem. (I'm sort of surprised there wasn't one already.)

I am a little late to the podcasting craze, but even museums are into it these days! There's a wide array of listening options for those so inclined.

I saw Mary Ellen Bates at Internet Librarian last month, and she had some great tips (as always) on how to make searching easier. Her tip for this month is taken from the talk she gave, and shows how you can use all sorts of shortcuts on Google.

Tomorrow will feature links from others, and there will be a bunch of them!

Today we begin our virtual trip around the world in Chicago, where the Festival of Maps is taking place through January. It looks awesome.

Heading east, we find the Pirates in Paradise celebration going on this weekend in Key West. Arrrr! Then actoss the pond, cute orphaned baby bats are being saved. You may not think bats are cute, but have a look and try to deny it. In Switzerland, the sixth annual Santa Claus World Championship is taking place, while Italians are all agog at the newly publicized temples a man has constructed beneath his house.

The Ogoh Ogoh monsters of Bali make for an amazing parade each year; meanwhile, one of the mascots for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is a sasquatch. He's a friendly sasquatch, though, and seems unlikely to kidnap any of the athletes.

Back from Chicago! Posts and photos will be up shortly - possibly before tomorrow, but definitely by tomorrow.

Hello! It's World Hello Day. Say hello for peace! (Er? Thanks to Cassandra for the link. Hi, Cassandra!)

It's also a national travel day, and I am no exception - I'll be heading off soon for the holiday. We'll be back to posting either Monday or Tuesday, depending on how the weekend goes! For now, here's a smorgasboard of links, both from and for others.

From Bunny: a robotic cockroach is not only accepted into the organic cockroach community, but the regular roaches start following the robot around. This can not end well.

From Dawnowar: RIP, Mr. Whipple.

For Cassandra: Draw circles with your mouse to find out your future in the virtual crystal ball! Flash isn't working on my computer at the moment, so I don't know how accurate it is.

For the Club Creatures: Mormons Exposed may sound R-rated, but it's a calendar for a nice wholesome missionary cause. Er. Well, anyway...

Have a spiffy holiday and/or weekend, everyone! See you next week.

I had today's entry set to go when Bunny emailed me the news that our friend and fellow horror host Hayden, aka I, Zombi, died last night. We'll miss you, Hayden. Godspeed.

* * *

• Another amazing modified PC is making the rounds. This one is made from wood and is incredibly detailed.
• Andy Paiko makes stunning works of art from glass which should appeal to steampunky types - check out the Absinthe Fountain!
• I had not heard of this mechanical theatre in Hellbrunn, Austria before, but I'd love to get a chance to see it (and the water-driven automata, too).
• From Cassandra: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, better known as the Doomsday Vault, has begun the "deep freeze" process meant to protect seeds from the world's crops.

And now, for something completely unrelated: a geography quiz that's truly challenging. I've gotten to level 6 (of12) so far; I need to work on my South American cities, I think.

Someone asked me this morning if I was ready for the holidays. Ha. If you're as unprepared as I am, this tutorial on how to make gift boxes out of cereal boxes looks awfully good.

The "XYZ of the Year" lists are starting to come out as well. Did you know that Oxford's word of the year is locavore? The list of nominees is interesting. I think I like bacn the best.

The art competition known as Last Man Standing is about to get underway. (Women can enter too - one won last year!)

The Onion's AV Club lists 20 good books that turned into so-so movies. If you haven't checked out the AV Club, please do - it's relatively serious, compared to its parent news site!

Bunny discovered Folk Streams, which lets you watch documentaries online for free. This is an excellent time waster, but you can always say it's educational!

I just saw this photo from my Flickr contacts photostream. Our local news team is, as always, on bleeding edge of journalism. (Image courtesy of JesusHShatner, who actually lives nowhere near here but found it somewhere.)

Links from others! Thanks, everyone.

From Bunny: how to make a towel elephant. We're thinking of trying this for a Meet Cleaver Theatre episode. I'll let you know how it turns out.

From Cassandra: Do hyperactive kids really need to be medicated?

From Holly: squirrels that swim (and hitch rides on ships), cats that wander (and hitch rides home) and a bizarre story involving a man and a bike (and anything I say about hitching would probably sound vulgar).

Swiped from Scalzi's site: a contest involving the Creation Museum, LOLcat captions, and autographed scifi goodness! Even if you don't want to take part in the contest, the Flickr set of John's visit to the Creation Museum is worth a look. I think it would be too dangerous a place for the Spooky Librarians to visit; my eyes would roll out of my head, Bunny would get beaten to a pulp by some militant Christians for making too many snarky remarks, and both our heads would explode from trying to figure out how the dinosaurs could have coexisted with the Egyptians and why it's Adam's fault that roses have thorns. (Yes. REALLY.)

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

The winners of the PimpMyBookcart contest have been announced! You can see the rest of the entries, too.

Case law is coming to the masses, slowly but surely. Hooray!

A group of former Wikipedia editors have created Veropedia, which insists on verified, "stable" information that is not open to random editing. This is an interesting idea; I wonder if academicians will take Veropedia more seriously than Wikipedia.

And now, for some lists, because I am a list geek:

• The 2007 World Press Freedom Index is out. Iceland is the best place for the press (which now includes bloggers); Eritrea is the worst. The U.S. is frighteningly low on the list.
• The most popular baby names for New York City have been published! It gets interesting when you scroll down and they break it out by ethnicity. Who knew Vincent was a popular Asian-American name?
• The L.A. Times has a grid showing which shows have been affected by the writers' strike, and what will most likely happen in the near future. Battlestar Galactica only has 10 of 22 episodes. Noooo!

Tomorrow: links from others!

Happy Geography Awareness Week!

This week around the globe: the Doo Dah Parade takes place in Pasadena. (True story: we found a tape of a previous Doo Dah parade in an abandoned house a few years ago. I'd never heard of it till then, but it's fabulous.) Meanwhile, an ocean away, South Africa's cherry festival will be taking place.

Closer to Spooky Librarian HQ, a weird blue light appeared at a Parma gas station about a week ago. Some people think it was an angel. I think it might have been a person, but can't explain it. See the video and make your own guesses...

The Disclosure Project has been in the news lately with all the talk of UFOs among political candidates. I haven't seen a UFO yet and I'm beginning to feel left out.

This just in from Bunny: evidently a lot of people want their ashes scattered at Disney theme parks, especially in the Haunted Mansion. I love the Haunted Mansion and all, but this had not occurred to me.

Today it's all about the Victorians. Well, except for this steampunk Dalek, courtesy of Danny (thanks, Danny!). Hee.

H.P. Lovecraft might not be Victorian, strictly speaking, but he certainly wanted to be. As part of their exhibit on all things Lovecraftian, a collection of computer games based on Lovecraft's works have been gathered together. Some are easier to install and/or understand than others (I know one game is French-only), but they're all beautifully spooky and worth a look.

Absinthe is worming its way back into mainstream culture. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Many thanks to Cassandra for the story; for additional information on the green fairy, the wonderful Curious Expeditions site explains the history and the current state of the drink. Look out for absinth, it's not the same as absinthe.

Madame Talbot's website is so full of wondrous things to look at and click on that it'll take me hours to see everything, but a quick once-over was more than enough for me to recommend it!

RIP, Norman Mailer.

You can now improve your vocabulary and fight world hunger simultaneously, thanks to Free Rice. Spread the word!

Attention, artists: Gawker is looking for more work to feature on its pages. Weirdness is encouraged, I think.

Fun with paper: you can make moneygami, or build your very own Chicago!

Fun with fabric: you can make your own celebrity knitted icon (and then venerate and/or torture it however you see fit), or you can purchase a cute little rotting zombie puppet to keep you company.

You can then take your small companion, be it made of paper, fabric, or something else entirely, and go on vacation with it, photograph it, and become part of the Traveling Toys Flickr pool! (Well, you COULD. I'm just saying it's possible.)

Hi! We've got all sorts of stuff today for the Friday Links from Others post.

First off, though, I've got a question. The Internet Librarian conference talked about Facebook constantly. Is Facebook where it's at these days? Should I set up a profile? Is it worth it?

On to the links. Thanks, everyone!

From Bunny: there were zombies in ancient Egypt, oh yes there were, and we should all start preparing now for future attacks. (Bunny is well ahead of the curve on this one, as anyone who knows him can tell you.)

From both Bunny and Cassandra: the bizarre story about the toys laced with GHB. Oops.

From Cassandra: a story about the astronomers searching for new planets, a look into why the Onion is possibly the most successful newspaper out there at the moment, and news about a remarkable genetic test that can help predict the cause of your eventual death. I totally want to take this test, by the way.

From Holly: the GigaBall, almost as cool as zorbing - and more affordable!

From Brendan: the future of reading, with a sidebar containing tons of cool links.

From Tim: a map of UFO hotspots around the country. Arguments about the map's validity can be found in the comments. Also swiped from Tim's weblog: a readability test for websites. Like Tim, my site is readable at a junior high level. Woohoo!

From a mailing list: James Blunt rewrites his "Beautiful" song to sing about triangles on Sesame Street. He gets major points for this in my book.

And finally, swiped from John Scalzi's site, here's an interactive test that tells you whether or not you tend toward Asperger's Syndrome. My results:

Translation: I am considered neurotypical, if rather introverted and slightly weird. The comments on Scalzi's entry are interesting as well, and worth a look.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

So, I went to Internet Librarian again this year, and it was...well, it was a mixed bag. The good included Monterey, of course, which is always awesome (and they're very friendly to the librarians invading their town), the energy level in the conference that comes from over 1000 wired librarians, the keynotes this year that were particularly good (especially the one from Joe Janes on Reference 2.0, which was fantastic, and now I want to work at the iSchool in Washington), and the tips and tricks I got from various sessions (for instance, I found out from Steven Cohen's RSS presentation that you can use RSS with Justia's docket site, which is just plain awesome. Way back in the days of Library 1.0, Steven told me that Folderol should get on the RSS wagon, and it took me a while but then I saw the light.)

The downsides included me nearing the end of my rope with a conference that has Internet in its very title, but doesn't have decent net access anywhere. The search engine track took place in a room with chairs (i.e. no place to put a laptop, other than balanced in one's lap) and no wifi. I felt like I was in the Monty Python cheese shop skit. (Also, while I am not anti-Library 2.0, I don't really get what the big deal is about it, so I think some of the theme of the whole shindig was lost on me. But that is a different discussion altogether!)

On to links!

A new government site is all about drought. This seems kind of ominous to me.

More political fun: Slate has a constantly-updated map of where the presidential candidates are and what they're saying in the news. It takes a while to load, but it's full of information. (At the moment, I can't even see Iowa, it's so covered in icons.)

LibraryThing has competitors. Some are good and useful, while others are evil. Evil!

If you've seen Flickrvision, which shows you who's uploading photos in real time, you may also like a similar app which shows you Wikipedia edits in nearly-real time around the world. This is also a fun way to find out about Wikipedia entries, too - I had no idea Depeche Mode's 101 film had its own entry until I saw someone updating it this morning.

For history buffs, here's a blog which posts a Soviet poster each day, with commentary. Very cool and informative.

Tomorrow: lots of links from others!

The winter holidays seem to be coming up faster this year, don't they? Diwali begins this weekend, and the Christmas Doll and Toy Festival in London is this Sunday as well. Yikes. (I've already found something I want to give and/or read this holiday season, however - the Onion's world atlas. It looks hilarious.)

If you're not ready for year-end festivities, it's okay - why not participate in the Vertical Marathon in Singapore this weekend?

Halloween may be over, but that's no reason to go all dull and normal. Another local spooky place is offering ghost tours year-round these days - the Waverly Hills sanitorium in Louisville can be investigated now.

Speaking of spooky, I point you to...House of 1000 Muppets. Rob Zombie would have made a great guest on The Muppet Show, I think.

The wave of steampunk popularity continues, which simultaneously delights and frightens me. It's even in Newsweek! There are new online communities springing up, like a buy and sell group and a Flickr pool of steampunk gear.

Voyages Extraordinaires, one of the oldest distinguished statesmen of steampunky goodness, is now in weblog format, hooray! Also, the genius behind the necropathic spectrograph and Lovecraftian antiquities has a weblog as well at Many Dead Things.

Many of us have seen the amazing props and weapons from Weta. Now they have a rival -- check out Kropserkel's fantastical guns! (The whole site is worth some hours of immersion.)

I'm back from the land of sun, sea and earthquakes, and it was fun! More on the conference later this week. For now, here are the Monday links.

Halloween may be over, but there's always a time to wear masks. You can make your own Mexican wrestling mask, or you could wear the faces of various Australian politicians (I include this because one of the choices is Midnight Oil singer-turned-politician Peter Garrett. Beds are burning!).

If you want more fun with paper, here's how to make a paper skull with an articulated jaw. If you like skulls, check out the skull stop signs among this cornucopia of old traffic lights!

Holiday card season is coming. You can enter a competition at Moo for the best cards, or you can buy some when the contest is over Dec. 1st!

The Poetry Foundation has started a series of poems in comic format. They've only got two so far, but it looks like it could become an excellent ongoing feature.

Arts and crafts and Star Wars. It's a match made in heaven! If you look through the previous entries, you'll find an amazing life-sized Jabba the Hutt puppet.