Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird, and Bugs Bunny popsicle (Mark)

Best-ever case-study on free book downloads' impact on sales (Cory)

Amazing mystery of the new AACS key leak, and New AACS key leaks onto 'net (Cory)

How to snoop online (Mark)

Is this Nessie on video?, and Paula Zahn Now: Loren Coleman and Joe Nickell discuss Nessie video (Pesco)

The Great Google Street View Freakout of 2007: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. (Xeni)

The Great LiveJournal Strikethrough of 2007: 1, 2, 3 (Xeni)

Venezuela: Chavez vs. the media vs. Chavez. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. (Xeni)

Damien Hirst's Diamond Skull (Pesco)

Morphing history of female portraiture (Pesco)

New iTunes steals your ability to turn Apple music into iPod-friendly MP3s and EFF finds HUGE block of hidden info in new iTunes tracks (Cory)

Roswell plans UFO theme park (Pesco)

Xeni's snaps from Guatemala

Matthew sez, "UCLA has put a weird, pointlessly restrictive warning into the desktop background of all computers in the residence halls."

This is some warning. So much for "education" -- why bother teaching UCLA students about copyright when you can just scare. Prison sentences, no less!

How about including information on understanding fair use, with particular reference to the special freedoms copyright law affords to scholars?

Or UCLA could explain how "copyrighted material" includes things like class lectures, which, one assumes, students can download without being sent to the big house.

Surely that would be more productive than this inane, shrill "warning." Link (Thanks, Matthew!)

See also: USC's bizarre, non-legal copyright policy

Check out this lovely design for a business card that sprouts a miniature garden when you dip it in water:

The result was a business card that worked like a miniature house-plant, growing alfalfa or cress when dipped in water - a business card for 'another bloomin' designer'.

The logo was also cut into a 'seed stencil' that allowed the logo to be grown on either earth or lawn; on uncut grass, the message would remain hidden until the area was mown.

Link (via Geisha Asobi)

Update: Stella sez, "Here is another creative business card that sprouts a landscape. The card is for a landscape architecture firm. On the card is a printed plan of a landscape design of a miniature garden. Seeds are embedded within the card so in just a couple of days the seeds will sprout through the holes of the print.

Weird Converter lets you establish the equivalence between numerous random objects, for example: How many whale testicles equal the weight of one mid-sized car? (Answer: 3.2449998471)

Weights: Pound, Kilogram, Male Polar Bear, One Million $1 Bills, Blue Whale, Average Bowel Movement, Spider Monkey, American Female, Human Eyeball, Newborn Baby, African Elephant, Each Testicle of a Right Whale, One Gallon of Water, U.S. Quarter, Midsized Car, Can of Soda, NASCAR Winston Cup Tire, Cubic Inch of Air (sea level), Keg of Beer, Tom Cruise, Hockey Puck, Airbus A380, Baby Grand Piano, Sheet of Paper, 600cc Breast Implant, Jennifer Aniston, Placenta, Chicken

Lengths: Inch, Yard, Centimeter, Meter, Great Wall of China, American Cockroach, Flaccid Penis, Mile, Shaquille O'Neal (height), Empire State Building (height), Small Intestine, Giraffe's Neck, T-Rex, Marathon, Gas Tanker Semi Truck, Golden Gate Bridge, Weinermobile, World's Longest Snake, Panama Canal, Human Tounge, Oregon Trail, Football Field

Link (via Neatorama)

Would we feel differently about street-level image mapping if it were done by a government agency? The FBI? CIA? NSA? DHS? Not implying that it should be, and this isn't "backlash." Just asking aloud.

John Battelle points this out in a recent post, and asks "how long 'til this stuff is live video?"

Many asked the same questions a few months back when Microsoft unveiled Virtual Earth Live.

Cameras aren't new, maps aren't new, the internet isn't new, nor is Google or Microsoft. So why does this feel so freshly creepy to so many?

You're welcome to share replies here if you like. Try testing out Google's new facial recognition search feature while you're at it.

Meanwhile, screw all that, here's more easter eggs.

Patrick W says,

Thong action! Link!

BB reader scott lamorte sez,

Here's a google street-level view of a man unloading the Good Vibrations van, which is parked behind a "road work ahead" sign. what kind of tools does he stash in that van, anyway? Link.

BB reader Matt Hamrick got caught by Google sneaking into work late.

All this talk about privacy concerns with respect to Google Street View seemed pretty academic until I noticed that the back of our Prius was captured as I was turning into the parking lot at work. From the angle the shadow casts, you can tell that I was probably sneaking into work at around 11AM. If you pan right a little bit, you can see mi amigo Aaron (the guy with the beard in the white shirt) delivering a latte to a patron at Dana Street Coffee Roasting.

I was using a less frequently used and less visible entrance to the parking lot on a day that I got into work late. I was surprised to find documentary evidence on the web that I wasn't in my cube at 9AM.

Nick West says,

I was cruising Google Maps' new Street View in San Francisco...and saw this billboard for competitor Microsoft's Virtual Earth. There's also a "black hole" in the same shape as the billboard right next to it -- it even obscures an edge. Maybe Google intended to delete the entire billboard for "privacy", but missed by a few feet? Link.

Fairy Use (not to be confused with A Fair(y) Use Tale) is a video made by Ithaca College students in which cunningly edited Disney cartoon characters recite the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. Sweet! Link (Thanks, Rick!)

I just read Cathy Malkasian's "Percy Gloom" (scored from the new release table at LA's Secret Headquarters), a charming, sweet, weird little hardcover graphic novel from Fantagraphics.

Percy Gloom lives with his mother, an inventor. His father, a Gloom, killed himself with the Gloom death-slap shortly before he was born. All his life, Percy Gloom has dreamt of writing cautionary advisories on products -- WARNING, DO NOT STICK HAIRBRUSH IN EAR -- and when the story opens, he's finally gotten a chance to interview for a position doing just that.

Lazy-eyed, balding, jug-eared Percy sets off in his fedora and pedal car to interview for the job, but he's sidetracked by his hunger, which can only be satisfied by muffins and lemon juice. In town, he meets a whole cast of characters, some nice and some terrible, and ends up with an infected foot jammed in his mouth.

Percy's troubles have just started, and as the story unfolds, we get more of his backstory -- very unhappy indeed -- and life inside the cautionary writing company, and a city in the grips of a death-eating immortality cult.

This all has the charm of something like Howl's Moving Castle or Yellow Submarine, and Percy and his friends are drawn in a lovely, old-timey way that made me smile on every page. This is a big, solid, handsome hardcover that sells for $13 on Amazon, a stellar deal. Link

The Malaysian government has just approved a magic boner pill derived from walnuts. It takes an hour to work, and gives you wood for four hours.

Prof Kim said the active ingredient was arginine, an amino acid that is absorbed into the body and converted into nitric oxide.

“This enlarges blood vessels and enhances blood flow to the penis,” he said, adding that the walnuts were sourced from China because they were cheaper there.

As to how he ventured into exploring walnuts to treat erectile dysfunction, he said it all began with something he read.

“I read articles about Romans and French having eaten walnuts for this purpose. I thought if it had been documented that long ago, then there surely has to be something there,” he said.

Link (Thanks, Qc!)

Danny sez, "This is a seventies-era softporn film remixed and redubbed to become a SFW video about the Vietnam war, created by a student for an American history class. It's hilarious!" Link (Thanks, Danny!)

Stephen sez, "As seen in the 1986 movie 'Aliens', the M41-A Pulse Rifle became an instant classic. With its fully functional hero models that fired 45 cal. blanks, and 12 guage shot gun rounds, to the ultra-slick O.D. green shrouds, this prop is the rare weapon that could actually do what it appeared to do in the movie! Shoot!" Link (Thanks, Stephen!)

Silksounds sells MP3 audiobooks of trained actors reading classic works of literature from the public domain. They're reasonably priced and they sound great. Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Update: Michael sez, "The Naxos site is a lot bigger - many more titles - and they quietly went DRM free a couple of months back. Price range is wider - but they do offer things like unabridged War and Peace! And the performances are all by top drawer actors. Some great free sample titles too."