Boston.com has an amazing gallery of photos from 2008. This one was the most surprising to me, mainly because what looks like people playing a game on a beautiful hillside is actually a deadly war where the soldiers still use bows and arrows. Here’s what their caption read:

Maasai warriors cover a battle field as they clash with bows and arrows with members of the Kalenjin tribe in the Kapune hill overlooking the Olmelil valley located in the Transmara District in Western Kenya on March 01, 2008. The Massai, the Kalenjin and the Kisii tribes have recently clashed over ongoing land disputes that erupted after botched local elections during the general elections held in Kenya in December of 2007. Over twenty warriors from the tribes have been killed in bow and arrow battles near the borders of these tribes in the last couple of months.

For more stunning photos and stories, be sure to click here.

I’ve been begging for a table tennis table. My fiancee’s been telling me we need a door to our bedroom. Looks like this could be the perfect compromise. Link via the always exciting WebUrbanist.

I know I said last Friday’s Happy Hour was the last of 2008. But this morning my wife is stuck working, the baby is napping, the dog still exhausted. So before I turn my attention to gift-box removal, here are a few questions for discussion.

1. A family friend was recently in Egypt. While gazing at the pyramids, something else astonishing wandered into view—someone with whom he attended high school. They hadn’t seen each other in over twenty years. I’m always fascinated by these kinds of stories, probably because my own pale in comparison. I once ran into a (New Jersey) high school friend at a McDonald’s in North Myrtle Beach. Good times. What’s the strangest place you’ve unexpectedly run into an old friend?

2. Have you ever done anything truly memorable on New Year’s Eve?

3. Early in my freshman year of college, I started getting strange phone calls very late at night. “Do you know what your phone number is?” the presumably drunken caller would ask. I did. 613-3425. What of it?

The calls continued every few days, like an annoying teaser campaign for a movie I’d never consider watching. But at 3am one morning came the grand reveal: “Your number is 613-DICK!”

The phone numbers in these dorms don’t change, so the caller knew what room was associated with this riotous number. One night I heard someone writing on my whiteboard, so my roommate and I opened the door. The pip-squeakiest guy I’d ever seen had written “Your Number Is,” but our mere presence startled him. (Our mere presence should not have intimidated anybody.) Rather than finish his message, the prankster returned the Dry Erase marker to its snug little holder and took off running. The calls stopped.

Did you ever have a phone number that spelled something? (Or did you ever harass someone who did?)

4. What’s your favorite episode of your favorite TV show?

[See previous 'Friday Happy Hour' transcripts.]

College football’s bowl season is here, and with it comes the annual cavalcade of baffling sponsorship deals. For much of college bowls’ century-plus history, the postseason games carried humble monikers. The Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Salad Bowl, and Refrigerator Bowl all accentuated just how much time bowl organizers spent in their kitchens frantically looking for something quotidian whose name they could slap on their bowl (“Have we named a game after the blender yet? Does anyone else think ‘Spatula Bowl’ has a nice ring to it?”) However, selling naming rights has become a hot business since the 1980s, and now most bowls’ names are more market-driven than indicative of local color.

In honor of the corporate magic that now permeates almost every bowl, here are a few of our favorite bizarre corporate sponsorship and naming deals:

1. San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl

If you’re like me, you were probably sitting around last Tuesday night mulling the logistics of a hypothetical move to San Diego. If I took a county job, where would I do my banking? I couldn’t have been alone in this conundrum. The entire nation was wondering, and if they’d been watching the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, they would have known. Does a local credit union really need the national exposure of sponsoring a bowl game? If you’ve got a more efficient idea for letting people in Vermont know about the 4.00% APY they could be earning with an average daily balance over $100,000 in the credit union’s Money Market Max account, I’d like to hear it.

2. Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl

(more…)

By Steven Otfinoski

As far as Christmas carols go, you’ve got three basic archetypes: songs about Jesus, songs about baby Jesus and songs about snowy weather. Then, tossed in with a lovable snowman, is poor King Wenceslas. Because he’s jumbled into this mix, some might walk away thinking the good king existed only in song; but they’d be wrong. Very wrong. With a nation of Czechs still looking to him as their patron saint, it seems that Wenceslas more than made his mark. So, just how “good” was he? And why do we sing about him at Christmas time? Don’t worry, it’s all covered below.

Behind the Music

(more…)

British playwright and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter passed away last night at the age of 78 after struggling with cancer. Pinter was as famous for his sharp, absurdist plays as his political stances (he made waves in his Nobel acceptance speech for his blistering criticism of American political policies). Apparently, America wasn’t the only thing that irked Pinter. If the anecdotes below (plucked  from one of my favorite sites, anecdotage.com) are to be believed, Pinter also hated explaining his work, and explaining his work to actors!

On his work

Harold Pinter, whose difficult nature was reflected in his writing, was once asked what his plays were about. “They’re about,” he replied, “the weasel under the cocktail cabinet.”

On getting the best from his actors

Alan Ayckbourn once appeared in a play directed by Harold Pinter. While preparing for his role, Ayckbourn asked his fellow playwright where his character had gone to school. Pinter’s reply? “Mind you own business.”*

[*This is apparently an edited version of Pinter's actual reply, which has been deemed "unrepeatable."]
Read more on Pinter’s life at CNN. And be sure to check out Anecdotage for other great stories.

The WebEcoist has a gorgeous round-up of beautiful environmental photography. While there are a lot of stunning photos on there, I found these pics from storm-chaser Eric Nguyen incredible. You really get a sense of both the raw, swirling power of the storm, but also how sweeping and beautiful they can be. Of course, what isn’t coming through is how inconvenient they often are. (more…)

Neatorama found this great story in the Wuhan Evening Post of a Chinese man who’d been struggling to train his white Pomeranian puppy for months. The pup was essentially a nightmare of a pet: it refused to listen, smelled awful, stunk worse when shampooed, and instead of barking made odd cooing sounds. Stranger still, unlike standard purebreds, this Pom’s tail kept growing. Oh, and it also bit the owner a lot. Fed up with the situation, the man finally took his pet to a zoo for answers where he found out that his dog wasn’t trainable for a reason: the doggy in the window he’d spent £60 on was actually an Arctic fox. Ridiculous! In any case, I’m hoping that the scars on his face in the picture have nothing to do with trying to get his fox to heel. Link via the always fascinating Neatorama. 

We apologize for doing this on Christmas morning, but it’s time someone spilled the dirt on the Three Kings, and just how wise they really were. While the story of the cheersome threesome is oft-repeated through manger scenes and Christmas carols, only one of the four Gospels (Matthew) makes mention of visitors from the East. And while scripture does list the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Matthew doesn’t specify how many people brought them. In fact, based on the writings of early Christian leaders, the wise men weren’t even kings, but rather Persian astrologers. However, we totally understand if no one wants to sing “We Indeterminate Number of Zoroastrian Astrologer Priests of Modern-Day Iran Are.”

Image via the highly recommended Brick Testament.

An article from a 1990 issue of Spy magazine that examines the physics of Santa’s toy delivery journey has been floating around the Internet for as long as I can remember. It’s ubiquity at a certain time of year sort of makes it the web version of the “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and, Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. (more…)