Welcome to the Wednesday Walk Around the Web, where we weave & wind through weblinks weekly. Hopefully you will find the links on offer amusing, interesting, or, occasionally, profound. Do you have a link you want to see featured in next week’s Wednesday Walk? Email Glenn!
- Steve Wille, that titanic figure in our lives, might have the answer to our depressive woes, and it’s laughing gas. Let’s test by releasing some massive stockpiles of it onto the streets of Gotham.
- Steve also has an apt description for the state of ourselves and our world. Of course it’s German.
- Menorah design has come a long way, and you can get a lot of preeeeeetty ones. The best, obviously, is MENORAHSAURUS.
- Happy Hanukkah, folks! Let this be a brief reminder that Bibi Netanyahu is still a boob.
- If you, like me, are so anxiety-prone that you feel vicarious anxiety for people in YouTube videos, this video of a person agonizingly executing a 97-point turn to get out of a parking space might have you squirming in your seat.
- Jason Krowe wants you to enhance your vocabulary the traditional way. I sense something of a theme in the words selected. And since when is “claptrap” not in common use?
- Reconstructed ancient Babylonian music is fascinating to listen to. Stay tuned for our 640-song Reconstructed Ancient Babylonian Music Tournament!
- Jason Greenhouse sends another feature for Buzzfeed Week on the Walk, where you can see one of those sprawling seas of Simpsons characters set in ink on a man’s back.
- Playboy, of all places, features a ranking of every Star Trek TV episode. Obviously nobody’s going to agree; personally I’d have Enterprise and Voyager bunched together on the tail end of the list, along with a few truly execrable selections from the shows I like. Counting two-parters together, but only the ones with a single title, is an odd rule that only serves to split up Deep Space Nine two-parters (and Enterprise three-parters). The best part of the article is the description of “The Chase” as Chariots of the Gods? meets It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. But “Pale Moonlight” at #54? C’mon man.
- For the Everything is Terrible file: Jessica Luther’s article about rape by college athletes and the victim-blaming sessions that pass for disciplinary hearings is harrowing and important. over a hundred students are dead in Pakistan. A Pennsylvania man murdered his ex-wife and five members of her family, and is now also dead. 8chan, a wretched hive of scum and villainy if ever there was one, is also a hub for child porn (note: homophobic slurs appear). Protests continue in the face of police overreach and murder; if you feel like pooh-poohing the protests, listen to Eric Garner’s widow and consider closing your face for a while.
- One more terrible entry: in a publicity move trying to promote renewable energy (good!), Greenpeace activists broke into a restricted area at the Nazca lines in Peru to lay down some big letters (*deep-throated howling*). The Nazca lines are thousands of years old, and the reason they’re still there is that there’s very little wind disrupting the soil. Researchers and other authorized personnel observe the site from above or wear special shoes so as not to disturb the soil. What did these Greenpeace people wear while trampling around? From the picture, it sure looks like plain ol’ sneakers.
- This week in 2014 Best-Of Lists: sports games.
- In our age of cat gifs and cat videos and Caturday, Cat Fancy has struggled to keep up with the times.
- Behold the logos of the NFL, with the addition of dicks. (Let’s go with a NSFW warning on that one.)
- The judicious application of copper in hospital furniture could help curtail infections.
- A zigzag engraving on a shell found on Java is thought to be the oldest abstract mark/work of art we’ve found.
And now, another look at the best of the Wednesday Walk in 2014:
- Social scolds are always hammering on about the same things, in any time period. Case in point: booty calls in 1910.
- After 500 years, Spain is inviting Jews back.
- Hey, remember the cannibal rat ghost ship? Good times.
- Victoria Will used 1860s’era photography to capture the stars of the Sundance red carpet. I still say Elijah Wood looks like a long-lost Lincoln son there.
- FROZEN BLOCKS OF BLOOD. BLOOD ICE. ICE THAT IS BLOOD. IT BLEEDS AS IT MELTS.
- Also in phrases that make me swoon: 600-year-old butt song from hell.
