Harroworld

This impressive impressionist cake is featured on the flickr photostream of a California pastry chef who calls herself megpi.

As you say to yourself, “Wow, megpi must have LOTS of free time,” keep in mind that she has also uploaded 6,748 other photos to her portfolio.

We’re just saying.

Bob Dylan has just gifted us with a Christmas album. So how does it feeeeeeel?

The answer, my friend: it’s blowin’.

You might think a gravel-throated grinch like Dylan would be perfect for songs like “Little Drummer Boy” — just as, say, William Shatner totally nailed his rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

But the proof is in the figgy pudding, so hark to this sampling of three Dylanized carols we cobbled together:

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Yikes. Do you hear what I hear?

Link: amazon.com

Newspaper sales have declined so badly,  The Onion points out, that 93 percent of all newspapers are now bought by kidnappers who need to prove what day it is when taking their ransom-demand photos.

According to a source who wished to remain anonymous, there is an ineffable quality to the printed page that kidnappers cannot get from its digital counterpart. Though there are other methods for proving the date of grainy, home-made videos, the source said that newspapers add a certain gravitas to abductions that news websites do not.

“Holding a laptop next to a kid’s head while blood is streaming from his nose just isn’t the same,” said the source, adding that printed materials remove any uncertainty about dates being altered with Photoshop or other digital manipulation software. “There’s just something about the feel of newsprint and the smell of ink coupled with the mildew odor of a windowless basement that can’t be replaced. Ultimately, I think newspapers make the whole thing more tangible and concrete for everyone involved.”

“They’re also great for wrapping up a severed ear and mailing it to the family when they don’t come through with the cash fast enough,” the source continued. “And I always enjoy reading For Better Or For Worse.”

Link: The Onion

Less taste! More filling!

Say heigh-ho to “Ho White,” a raspberry ale launched by an Australian brewer this week.

The label shows the naked fairy-tale princess in bed with seven dwarves (renamed Randy, Filthy, Ugly, Freaky, Dodgy, Dirty and Smarmy).

The beer’s slogan is “Anything but sweet” – which, coincidentally, also describes Disney’s lawyers in cases like this.

Link: Adelaide Now

You know how, in “The Terminator,” Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a cyborg from the future, and whenever he looks around, his eyeballs combine a camera-lens view of the world AND a computer display of graphics and statistics?

Well, now YOUR eyeballs can do the same thing with an iPhone.

It’s called “augmented reality.” It’s been used for years by the military, in museum exhibits — even football telecasts use it to superimpose that yellow first-down line on football fields.

And starting today, it’s a free app for iPhones called Layar.

Fast Company explains it this way:

Imagine your Web browser was a window onto the real world. Instead of seeing Web pages inside that browser window, you see the environment around you — except with an added layer of data on top of it. Layar’s AR (augmented reality) is a bit like that.

It works through your smartphone camera, where its on-screen viewfinder displays the camera view enhanced with extra information connected with exactly what you’re looking at, or the direction you’re looking in.

Layar’s trick is that all this augmented data is stacked up in layers, meaning you can choose different layers of information to view. Point your phone’s camera at a building, for example, and one layer will be about the architectural history, click to a different layer and you can access the menu for the restaurant inside the building.

In other words, you just stand somewhere, point your iPhone camera — and it’ll show you the nearest hospital. Or where to get pizza. Or the movie times for that theater over there.

Some are already calling it the iPhone’s killer app — a game-changer so huge it redefines the hardware.

Link: Layar

Link: imgur.com

OOF! Winston Justice tackles a big green ball.

The sports guys at guyism.com offer this helpful advice for “future mothers of NFL players of the future”:

Give your kid a cool name. In the future.

To show you what they mean, they’ve
compiled the 25 Coolest Names in the NFL. Their list includes:

• Atari Bigby (Packers)
• Rock Cartwright (Redskins)
• Winston Justice (Eagles)
• Drew Brees (Saints)
• Dantrelle Savage (Chiefs)
• Tully Banta Cain (Patriots)
• Macho Harris (Eagles)
• Takeo Spikes (49ers)
• Madison Hedgecock (Giants)
• Xavier Omon (Bills)
• Captain Munnerlyn (Panthers)

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Yeah, but our favorite sports name of all time still belongs to NASCAR’s Dick Trickle.

Link: guyism.com

I am morphologically disturbed.

If you enjoy seeing how bugs mutate after radiation exposure — and hey, who doesn’t? — check out the beautiful insect images of Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, a scientific illustrator from Switzerland.

She roots around nuclear reactors (including the fallout areas of Chernobyl) to study the “morphologically disturbed” insects and paint their portraits — like this one, at right, with the hinky wing, missing antenna, and the ability to see right through your undergarments with its glow-in-the-dark X-ray feelers.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Link: butdoesitfloat.com