Link roundup

1. The River is terrible. Far from being scary or stylish, it's like watching an episode of Gilligan's Island.

2. An architect was charged with involuntary manslaughter in Los Angeles after a firefighter died fighting a fire in a home the architect built.

3. RL Stine posted a pretty great short horror story at Twitter.

4. Recruiting scandal in the world of college chess. The coach's program is called the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (Spice).

The dirty, lucrative business of the sperm whale excretion known as ambergris

Businessweek:

Ambergris, a waxy excretion formed in the intestines of sperm whales (thanks to their inability to digest squid beaks), is one of the most sought-after substances in the world. Ambergris sells for roughly $20 a gram, gold for $30.

...

Like truffle sourcing, the ambergris trade is shrouded in secrecy. Chris Kemp, a neuroscientist from Grand Rapids, Mich., spent years investigating the ambergris business, which he documents in his book, Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris, to be published by the University of Chicago Press this May. “If you believe what you read in the media,” he says, “you’d think ambergris is something that people just find by accident.” The truth, he claims, is far more clandestine. “There’s a whole underground network of full-time collectors and dealers trying to make their fortune in ambergris. They know the beaches and the precise weather conditions necessary for ambergris to wash up on the shore.” And when whale-poop gold is on the line, he says, “it can get violent.”

Read on.

Mexican pointy cowboy boots

Vice:

In this episode of Behind the Seams we head to the dusty city of Matehuala, Mexico in search of the pointiest long-toed cowboy boots ever made. Over the past year, the botas vaqueras exóticas phenomenon has overrun the rodeo dance floors and clubs of this area and even spreading North into Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and any place where big groups of immigrant Mexicans have taken root. We made our way to Desierto Light, one of the clubs in this area where party promoters host dance-offs to music known as Tribal Guarachero. For the finals competition, the 17-year-old prodigy DJ Erick Rincón of the 3ballMTY crew performed for a crowd of adoring pointy-boot wearing raver cowboys.

Just a guy thing, apparently. Via these sites.

Link roundup

1. The Maldives might be lost on account of rising sea level. So why not buy land in Australia and just move the whole country. Via.

2. Some funny stories about Gawker's new editor.

3. "10 Nagging Questions Left Open By Disney Movies", including Was that prince employing the dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as forced labor or what?.

4. Some good comic book trivia this week, including "DC nearly did an adaptation of Hamlet…starring Batman!" and "Rorschach’s speech patterns were based on Herbie, the Fat Fury."

*Buy Watchmen posters at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Penny Arcade's business manager participated in an interview at Reddit.

2. Deadspin's picks for the top 10 sports articles of the year.

3. Teddy Roosevelt once gave possibly the best start to a speech ever:

Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.

He wasn't joking.

4. The Smithsonian's top 10 science blog posts.

The time Robin Tunney was turned into Angela Bassett for a sex scene

From io9's roundup of science fiction movies where a director was fired before the movie was finished, here's part of the description of Supernova:

Then after Hill finished shooting, he and the studio both agreed that reshoots were needed — but they couldn't agree what needed to be reshot. So Hill was replaced with a new director, Jack Sholder, who did some reshoots. And then Sholder was out, and Francis Ford Coppola came in and recut the movie. It was Coppola, reportedly, who chose to insert some zero-G sex between James Spader and Angela Bassett — which he accomplished by taking unused nude footage of Peter Facinelli and Robin Tunney and digitally darkening Tunney's skin so she could look like Bassett.

Link roundup

1. New holiday-themed Sword and Sworcery desktop wallpaper. (I don't think I ever reviewed this game. I love the art and music, but the gameplay gets very tedious after the first delightful 30 minutes or so).

2. Can you guess why death rates rise in good economic times?

3. A look at how an acrylic storefront sign is made. Via.

4. Penelope Trunk's advice on achieving New Year's resolutions.

5. Nightmare fuel - - the wolf spider and its babies.

6. Madeline Flores remembers cassette tapes.

7. Koren Shadmi on the prices freelance illustrators should expect for their work.

Link roundup

1. "The 30 most important cats of 2011."

2. "A masterly crafted catalog of the 100 most unusual happenings from the year 2011" part 2.

3. How to print and bind your own book.

Link roundup

1. From Fast Company's article on Bioware:

The man in charge of creative development for The Old Republic, James Ohlen, had little experience in video games when the founders hired him away from a job at a comic-book store 16 years ago. "We heard he was an amazing dungeon master from a local D&D [Dungeons & Dragons] campaign," says Muzyka. "We had this weird idea: That means he can tell stories! And it was true."

(Don't forget to enter the contest to win a copy of The Old Republic's companion art book.)

2. "A masterly crafted catalog of the 100 most unusual happenings from the year 2011."

3. "The bodies of most of the models H&M features on its website are computer-generated and 'completely virtual,' the company has admitted."

4. Last Exit to Nowhere is giving away a book featuring John Landis's monsters.

5. Plush Jake from Adventure Time by Miguel Ruiz and Veronica Villalobos.

Guard falcons in Santa Monica

Gulls became such a nuisance at the Water Garden office park in Santa Monica, that falcons were brought in to scare them away. Via.

Link roundup

1. The fake Jack & Jill Twitter account was almost certainly funnier than the film.

2. Rats enjoy being tickled and laugh.

3. Seems a little too cinematic to be a faithful report - - but this article about a death on Disney cruise ship is certainly interesting. And don't miss this article about what life is like for Disney cruise ship workers. Via.

4. The college football all-name team, including Yourhighness Morgan and Mister Cobble.

5. My 4 and 6 year-olds love Scribblenauts. Do you recommend any other educational iOS apps? (Math, science, reading, history, whatever).

Link roundup

1. Watch a player on the Buffalo Bills score a touchdown in Dallas, and then give the ball to his girlfriend, a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.

2. And more on football and "romance" - - Bart Scott of the Jets:

Do you sense a rivalry between the Jets and Giants?

"Not at all. Like I said when I was in Baltimore I could remember with the Redskins you had guys fighting over strippers and all kind of stuff. I don't sense that here. I think it is a mutual respect. I think the town is big enough for both of us. I think we were just trying to make a statement that hey we wanted a little bit bigger piece of the spotlight because when I got here my sense was pretty much all Giants type of town. We played in Giants Stadium. We just want to get our piece of the pie. We respect them, but we would definitely love – we look forward to that game. I believe it is the 24th of December for bragging rights and hoping that's the game that could help us win this division."

Bart you gotta help me out. You guys fought for strippers? What does that mean?

"When you are in a small place like Baltimore and the temperature is relatively cold – hey you compete over the same chicks. That's a football players favorite spot. Especially young football players. It was always a rivalry. Guys fight about hey that is my girlfriend and that's my girlfriend, but here? Five million people, maybe more. There is plenty for everybody."

3. Prison in Acapulco:

Authorities say a surprise search at an Acapulco prison has netted two peacocks, 100 fighting cocks, 19 prostitutes and two sacks filled with marijuana.

4. Finally, taking a break from the sex and sports talk - - Joe Ledbetter's excellent Zodiac toys are finally in stock at Tenacious Toys. These are about twice the size of typical blind box toys, and slightly poseable (heads and/or limbs that turn). Probably my favorite designer toy set of the year (I'll be giving out some as gifts over the holidays). They're not blind box, so you can pick the one(s) you want.

Link roundup

1. Gallery 1988 needs votes on which Scott C. illustrations it should sell as prints.

2. BldgBlog:

Nettle's newest album, El Resplandor: The Shining in Dubai, released last month by Sub Rosa, comes with an awesome premise: it is a speculative soundtrack for an unmade remake of Stanley Kubrick's film, The Shining, set in a mothballed luxury hotel in Dubai.

3. The animator who made the Tintin video that went viral last week was invited to the Tintin premier and offered a job by Steven Spielberg.

4. Couple married for 72 years died one hour apart:

"It was really strange, they were holding hands, and dad stopped breathing but I couldn't figure out what was going on because the heart monitor was still going," said Dennis Yeager. "But we were like, he isn't breathing. How does he still have a heart beat? The nurse checked and said that's because they were holding hands and it's going through them. Her heart was beating through him and picking it up."

"They were still getting her heartbeat through him," said Donna Sheets.

Via.

5. Secret Cinema tickets going on sale tomorrow.

6. Tenacious Toys has those Gary Baseman vinyl figures I mentioned the other day.

Link roundup

1. William Gibson made the main character in Pattern Recognition afraid of Bibendum because his own daughter was terrified of him.

2. How to turn a dollar store skeleton mask into a Death Eater mask.

3. Suspected Russian spy trying to avoid getting deported from England:

Elements of the case . . . included her interest in Nato and a string of affairs with older men in positions of authority.

Via.

4. Book giveaway.

5. At Toycutter: Sucker Punch mecha Munny.

Link roundup

1. Vexin Classics: classic books like Huck Finn and Frankenstein, but with naked women on their covers? Via.

2. A look at The Pie Hole, a new restaurant in downtown LA.

3. A new law in Louisiana makes buying used goods with cash (at certain locations) illegal.

4. Brothers.

Link roundup

1. Nintendo better get it in gear, GTA III and Superman for iOS both sound great.

2. Famous movie producer/spy.

3. Maybe there will be a cure for peanut allergies.

4. Gawker tries to explain Herman Cain's surge:

There's a specter of Tea Party, anti-establishment, and now, more specifically, panicky anti-Romney feeling out there that's migrated from Trump to Bachmann to Perry and now to Cain. It is an energy that takes over these bodies, one after the other, kind of like Voldemort's soul or one of the X-Men or whichever character it is from the pictures, we forget.

5. Tron-inspired wallpaper. Via.

*Buy Tron posters at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Roosters are kept caged next to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles as an early warning device for West Nile Virus.

2. Chrome Remote Desktop sounds useful.

3. "Quarterly Co. is a subscription service that enables people to receive physical items in the mail from influential contributors of their choice."

4. Olly Moss's glow in the dark and dayglo vampire t-shirt has been reprinted at Threadless. (He's also going to be selling some posters tomorrow, but good luck.)

5. My thanks to sponsor the Imperial Trouble Podcast, a weekly uproarious and informative look at pop culture. Placing an advertisement is easy, very cheap, and available by the day.

Link roundup

1. Futuristic mouthguards:

The football team at Stanford University has gotten a high-tech upgrade to its uniform.

This season, players have begun wearing mouthpieces lined with sensors that measure the force and angle of collisions, to help researchers understand what kinds of hits and body positions are associated with concussions.

2. CBLDF fundraiser includes lunches with Neil Gaiman, Frank Quitely, and more.

3. China:

For example, when Shang-Jin Wei, an economist at Columbia University, and Xiaobo Zhang of the International Food Policy Research Institute examined the size distribution of Chinese homes, they found that families with sons built houses that were significantly larger than those built by families with daughters, even after controlling for family income and other factors. They also generally found that the higher a city’s male-to-female ratio, the bigger the average house size of families that have sons.

Mr. Wei reports that many families with sons have begun to add a phantom third story to their homes, one that looks normal from the outside but whose interior space remains completely unfinished.

“Marriage brokers are familiar with the tactic,” he reports, “yet many refuse to schedule meetings with a family’s son unless the family house has three stories.”

Via these sites.

4. The Portal-themed iPad decals I posted a few days ago are now on sale.

Link roundup

1. Best adventure gear of 2011.

2. Jess Nevins offers several suggestions for Asian steampunk novels. For example:

One of the archetypal steampunk figures is Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo. While there was no real-life analogue for Nemo, one fictional figure who was similarly archetypal in Japanese popular literature during the early 1900s was Oshikawa Shunro’s Captain Sakuragi, who appeared in six novels from 1900 to 1907. Sakuragi is a Japanese naval officer who grows disgusted with the Japanese government’s inability to do anything to resist the imperialism of Western governments in Asia and Japan. Sakuragi quits the Navy and on an isolated island somewhere in the Indian Ocean builds the Denkotei, an “undersea battleship” armed with futuristic weapons, including torpedoes and high explosive shells. In the novels the Denk0tei demolishes white pirates, the Russian, British, and French fleets, and Sakuragi and his crew go ashore to help Filipino “freedom fighters” against the imperialistic American occupiers.

3. "Men and sometimes women from a group of families disavowed by mainstream Amish have terrorized a half-dozen or more fellow Amish." Via.

Link roundup

1. Kim Jon-Il's exiled grandson is named Han Sol.

2. Hand signals used by restaurant staff. Via.

3. Mysterious Russian radio tower. Via.

4. The Daily seems to be doing terribly, but it does feature a lot of great articles, such as this one about Zach Baron's misadventures in Las Vegas.