by Mark RoseEndangered Animals — Videos, Stills and Sounds. http://www.arkive.org is attempting to assemble a multi-media archive of video footage, still photos and sounds of the 11,000 animal species on the World Conservation Union’s Red List of Threatened Species. Go to the site, click on “ARKive species“, then click on one of the chapters (Globally Endangered or British) and make sure to click on the text itself (the imagemap click doesn’t work). Lots of very cool imagery. Also, click on “ARKive news” and “Most wanted” to find a list of the species for which the project most desperately wants video footage and still photos. I swear they’re getting some of these species names out of a Dungeons and Dragons game, like the “No-eyed big-eyed wolf spider“ and the “Pygmy hog sucking louse.” Wait, I have one of those last animals for my boss! Ba-da-boom.
Hey, what’s with the stupid Matrix crack in the title of this email, but nothing even remotely Matrix-related? Well, how about this very cool ping pong video:
http://www.ntv.co.jp/channel/asx/hkzkt10.asx
Pirates Batsman Whacks Sausage Racer — Huh? Yeah, that isn’t just a bunch of nouns thrown together. At Milwaukee’s Miller Park, during the 7th inning stretch, 4 people run around the bases dressed in gigantic sausage costumes. Fans are encouraged to pick a winner and it’s all in good fun. Until Pirates first baseman Randall Simon, also in good fun, decided to whack one with a bat. It was a joke but he was ticketed for disorderly conduct (a +$400 fine and they were thinking about charging him with assault, but smarter people prevailed. One of the smart people was in the sausage costume who said he was just playing around and it was stupid people who were taking it so seriously.) This is the best video I’ve been able to find of the incident. It’s indescribable; it has three different angles, way too serious newscasters, and sausages helping each other in a time of crisis. You simply need to see it.
http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/popup.asp?id=2714
If you can’t get enough of sausage racing, you can do it online. Klement’s is the company that sponsors the sausage races at Miller Park. Go to this site, pick a sausage, and good luck!
http://www.klements.com/Games/
If you’re really bored, you could join the British Sausage Appreciation Society (BSAS): http://www.meatmatters.com/sausages2002/. They’re very excited because British Sausage Appreciation Week will be held this year from October 27 to November 2, 2003. It’s on my calendar. If you join, you get their free newsletter The Missing Link (or if you’re a Junior member, you get Sizzlin’. No sadly, I’m not making this up). At the same place, you can find the absolutely mathematically perfect way to make pork crackling. You want a crackling index of 100. http://www.meatmatters.com/downloads/pdf/formula.pdf
OK, back to fun stuff! Amorphoscapes! Stanza creates net-specific multimedia art to explore the audio-visual relationships between art and science (blah blah blah). There’s some fun stuff in here but it takes a while to dink around and get to it. Interesting artwork on the Web.
http://www.amorphoscapes.com/
Too esoteric for you? How about The Lego Treasure Hunt? This is a wonderful game featuring a small Lego character that you control and move about in oddly manipulated photo environments. Collect coins, buy maps, solve puzzles and find the Lego treasure. Very strange. http://www.newgrounds.com/ You’ll have to search for it but there’s lots of other odd things on this site worth searching around for as well.
More My Speed. Apparently, for 20 pounds a year, you can sponsor a local drinker in Gloucestershire. “In return, you get a certificate, a signed photo of your adoptee, a beer mat and a newsletter giving updates on how your drinker is faring.” If done right, this would be completely classic. Go to this site and click on the “Adopt A Local” ad to the right: http://www.pubs2000.com [Well, of course, this has now closed down. But the link still works for a directory of pubs in Gloucestershire with the amiable tagline “Where do you want to drink today”?]