I really like this sushi etiquette graphic Swissmiss posted, especially in combination with reader Emily’s comments:

Y’know how you can stretch Silly Putty slowly, but if you yank it apart quickly it snaps like it’s brittle? d3o labs has taken that to the extreme. They have a gel that is looks and acts like a gooey Silly Putty, but that hardens instantaneously on impact. Discover says the military is taking a look to see whether it can be made to stop bullets. This stuff really needs some HD, high-speed video online, but until then, thankfully, we have Japanese talk shows.

John McPhee’s article on on fact checkers is fascinating. For one thing, I had no idea Japan launched paper incendiary balloons that were carried all the way to the US on the jet stream:

The Japanese called the balloons fusen bakudan. Thirty-three feet in diameter, they were made of paper and were equipped with incendiary devices or high explosives. In less than a year, nine thousand were launched from a beach on Honshu. They killed six people in Oregon, five of them children, and they started forest fires, and they landed from Alaska to Mexico and as far east as fifteen miles from the center of Detroit. Completing the original manuscrip of “The Curve of Binding Energy,” which was otherwise not about Hanford, I wrote half a dozen sentences on the balloon that shut down the reactor, and I turned the piece in. If Wheeler’s story was true, it would make it into print. If unverifiable, it would be deleted. I hoped it was true. The rest was up to Sara.

Check out the amazing performance this guy turns in on what has to be a ridiculously challenging obstacle course. It looks like the video is spliced to get under the YouTube 10 minute limit, so I don't know what his total elapsed time was, but damn, the challenges keep getting harder. The video's nine minutes long, but it's worth sticking it out to the end. What a display of pulling strength and endurance.

Does it get any better than Japanese game shows? « via RT forums »

UPDATE: Wikipedia says the guy is Makoto Nagano and the show is "Ninja Warrior", and that only he and another guy (Kazuhiko Akiyama) have ever successfully completed all four stages.