From Time:“The biggest juggernaut in children’s-television history sprang forth from mundane origins. At a Manhattan dinner party in 1966, a Carnegie Foundation executive named Lloyd Morrissett mentioned that his young daughter was so enthralled by television that she would park herself in front of the family’s set to gaze at early-morning test patterns. That story prompted a public-television producer named Joan Cooney to investigate how television could be used to package education as entertainment: “What if it went down more like ice cream than spinach?” The ensuing creation ?

After five months and 2,500 miles of walking, James Strickland reached the top of Clemons Hill in Central Park with his cross upon his back ?

 
Thanks Iila Alii!

 
Alexander McQueen’s Astounding 12 inch heels baffle Lady GaGa

 
I’m not so sure I would have clipped my cable line if American TV carried the German television show, Wetten, Dass..? (Wanna Bet..?), a show that attracts up to 50% (!) of Europe’s German-speaking viewers whenever it airs.  I mean, could you see these amazing dinosaur puppets (an animatronic extravaganza spun off from from the BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs) popping up on Jay Leno?  The below clip features a dinosaur trio stomping their way into the studio, shocking and delighting the Wetten, Dass..? audience.  Is some of it due to the blue jeans on that ‘raptor?  I think so!

 
Bonus video: T-Rex Fight!

(via Coilhouse)

Scene the First: Some time around the early days of the universe, neutron stars collide. Superdense stars with the mass of our sun but contained in a diameter of only about a dozen miles. So dense that even a handful would be billions of tons. Unable to resist each other’s gravitational pull, these stars careen into each other, spiraling inward, colliding and producing explosions from which, among many other elements, gold is formed. It is these cosmic sex acts that are the origin of the gold that exists in our universe.

Scene the Second: In the latter days of our universe, our Earth forms, and there’s gold in them thar hills.

The animal kingdom loves shiny objects?

 
Dangerous Minds pal Michael Simmons writes: “This is one of the rarest records in the world, though with the advent of the internet, rare ain’t what it used to be.  For Maureen Starkey’s 22nd birthday, someone at Apple arranged to have Frank Sinatra record a private version of “The Lady Is A Tramp” for Mrs. Ringo Starr with new lyrics by Sammy Cahn called “Maureen Is A Champ.”  Allegedly only one copy existed—the one Ringo gave to Maureen.”

Download the MP3 here

 
There you go again, Hitler!  Always gotta be one-upping Ahmadinejad!  First ancestry, now teeth—this race to see who’s so much more totally Jewish has got to stop!

Adolf Hitler had dental fillings made from gold torn from the mouths of Jews in concentration camps, a new book on the F?ɬ

This is a great idea. Really shows who the greediest human beings are and where they live don’t it?

Reliable data on economic growth is hard to come by in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries. Yet according to scientists, outer space offers a new perspective for measuring economic growth.

Using satellite images of nighttime lights, J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil from Brown University have created a new framework for estimating a country or region?

 
With Smile more or less put to bed, Brian Wilson can now move on to completing the work of another American master.  As today’s LA Times reports:

Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson has been authorized by the estate of George Gershwin to complete unfinished songs Gershwin left behind when he died in 1937.

He plans to finish and record at least two such pieces on an album of Gershwin music he hopes to release next year.  The Gershwin-Wilson project may strike some as an odd coupling: one New York musician famous for sophisticated 1920s and ‘30s pop songs including ” ‘S Wonderful” and “Someone to Watch Over Me” as well as such expansive, classically minded compositions as “Rhapsody”; the other the driving force behind Southern California beach culture hits such as “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “I Get Around” and “California Girls.”

But their career paths and evolution of their artistry have common threads, noted people involved with the project and some independent scholars, and that gives the proposed collaboration logic.  Todd Gershwin, George’s great-nephew and a trustee of the George Gershwin family trusts, said, “George for his time was a visionary.  He certainly crossed genres and musical lines, tried things that hadn’t been done before and Brian Wilson has done exactly the same thing.”  For his part, Wilson, 67, described himself Tuesday as “thrilled to death.”

To see what Wilson’s up against, the following clip shows Gershwin himself pounding out I Got Rhythm.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds: