Actually, it didn’t so much surface as it was rescued, years after its final descent, from the bottom of the seafloor off the coast of Liverpool. Currently residing on land near a museum in the UK, its rusting hull sits exposed and rusting for the world to see. Pic via our friends at The Cellar, via a Russian photo blog (which identified the wreck only as “German sub.”)

For those of you in the Southern California region, we heartily recommend a tour of the Scorpion, a Russian sub-turned-tourist-trap currently docked in the water just off Long Beach. It’s as close as most of us will come to embarking on a dank, cramped submarine mission of our own. The best part, though, is the photo of the Scorpion’s original crew: most of the men are blessedly diminutive, except for the sub’s commander, who stands at least 6’5 – and has some of the most alarming permanently-hunched shoulders we’ve ever seen. Tall guys – this blogger included – don’t belong on submarines!

More photos after the jump …
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Folks, we’ve finished the fine-tuning on a new warp-speed Web site, and will be catching up on this morning’s posts over the next few hours. Thanks for your patience!

I’ve always secretly wanted to drive truck for a brief stint–or hey, maybe cabs. Reading all that Daniel Handler (while listening to Prince’s “Lady Cab Driver”) has romanticized the notion of the female cabbie for me. But I might want to keep those inclinations stateside, or at least just out of China. According to a recent “self-improvement list” issued by the Beijing Transportation Management Bureau in preparation for the ‘08 Olympic Games, cabbies must now adhere to stricter personal appearance sanctions…Including, if you’re a female, no more “red hair” or “big earrings.”

For urban spelunkers and infiltrators, California is a recreational heaven. For people just minding their own business — and building new homes on once-remote inland foothills — it can be a holey Hell. Literally: after more than 100 years of heavy-mining operations, from the ‘49ers onward, California’s easily-accessed gold and silver have been replaced by at least 40,000 abandoned mines, and many more ancillary mine structures like tunnels and shafts.

While these can be fascinating places — I admit that I have a tough time staying out of dark holes in the sides of hills when I come across them; the idea of finding some 100-year-old miner’s sardine can, still moldering where he left it, is just too cool — they’re also dangerous. In the last few years, homes have collapsed into crumbling mine shafts, swallowed trees and claimed several lives annually. In fact, there are so many mines that California can’t even count them: “We’ve estimated that it would take 26 years for us to complete an inventory of all abandoned mines in the state,” says the mining office’s assistant director, Doug Craig.

More photos:
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To determine the 57 Varieties of Heinz, I opened my fridge.

1. Ketchup.
2. Dill Pickles.

I could not find a third. Not a great start.

But this is a question, I learned, that many others have asked before me. There are (about) 181,000 Google results for a “what are the 57 varieties of heinz” search.

Here’s what the Heinz.com FAQs used to say, according to Yahoo! Answers:

Our corporate history tells us that in 1896, Henry John Heinz noticed an advertisement for “21 styles of shoes.” He decided that his own products were not styles, but varieties. Although there were many more than 57 foods in production at the time, because the numbers “5″ and “7″ held a special significance for him and his wife, he adopted the slogan “57 Varieties.”

So in contrast to the learnings from my focus group of one refrigerator, there are far more than 57 varieties. Thousands, perhaps. I’m not sure whether or not this includes green ketchup, which has been discontinued.

Throughout the week, I’ve looked at Image Macros: Intro to LOL Cats, “Invisible” LOL Cats, “I Can Has Cheezburger?” LOL Cats, and I’m in Your X, Y’ing Your Z. Today the series wraps up with some unusual Image Macros that have caught my eye.

“Bucket” Image Macros are based on this deeply evocative two-panel image:

It loses a bit when scaled down like this — check out a larger image at ihasabucket.com. (You know you’ve got a successful Image Macro when your entire site is just the image.) Also note that “Bucket” Image Macros are sometimes called “LOLrus” after the walrus (sea lion?) in this image.

More unusual (and awesome) Image Macros after the jump.

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I’ll admit it: for a period during my late 20s, I used to use the word like as filler - pretty much the way teenagers were at the time, and still do. It wasn’t conscious, and I certainly didn’t use it in every sentence, nor did I emphasize it in a Valley-girl kinda way (e.g. “And he was, like, no way!”) But it served the purpose of filling in sentence gaps much the same way the French will throw in an ehhh or a maybe, when they’re thinking about the next word they want to use. (e.g. “Ehhh, maybe, ehh, ihhh, you want we go to dinner, now, ehh, maybe, ehh…”)

A colleague of mine came into my office the other day complaining that someone accused her of inserting “y’know” in every other sentence. (e.g. “So, the best way to, y’know, slice a bagel, is to, of course, use a knife.”)

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Well, in a manner of speaking. The idea is this: streetlights and traffic signals take lots of electricity to function — electricity which could be generated by a special low-impact ramp, built into the road, which would harvest power from the inertia of the cars moving over it. (Sounds a bit like the tube station that powers itself, which we blogged about awhile back). Check out this video from Hughes Research and see if what you think. Would this work on American roads, or would it be annoying? (Apologies in advance for the cheesy rock soundtrack.)

I was recently listening to an interview with writer and historian Jennifer Price, and I was interested to hear her say that the current ratio in the U.S. for lawn ornament flamingos to real ones is 700 to 1. Even so, the word is out that the lawn counterpart of our pink friend is now extinct…At least in its original glory: the Union Products Leominster, MA factory (they made urns & bird baths, too) manufacturing them shut down in November of last year. Ms. Price has penned a poignant eulogy here. Their coy (yet still screaming) likenesses dominated lawns in the latter half of the 20th century. They debuted in 1957, the magnum opus of a young designer named Don Featherstone, who lovingly lined up 500 members of his empire for a 40th anniversary celebration here.

Thousands of you took our first TV theme song quiz last week and we’ve heard only good things about it. So guess what? You’ve gone and inspired a second quiz featuring 15 more shows!

So go get to it, and let us know how you made out.