• Being ‘it’: these guys have played a game of tag for 23 years now and it’s awesome
• Last Saturday, over 2800 spaceships clashed in a battle costing thousands of dollars
• Self-immolators in Tibet near 100 as pressure grows from China
• Smithsonian on the story behind Banksy
• Amazingly, this Russian family was cut off from civilisation for 40 years
• Strange Geographies: the beautiful and alien Iceland
• On Barnes & Noble and the end of the mega-bookstore
• Computer programming languages aren’t copyrightable, says a High Court judge
• Surgeon Simulator 2013 is the new medical QWOP
• Letter of Note: The Alien father is HR Giger
• A great list of 36 supervillain musical numbers
  (I have a huge hankering to re-watch Gremlins 2 right now)

Also, it’s pretty mean, but this edit of Lance Armstrong’s confession interview with Oprah recut to the lyrics of Radiohead’s Creep is very well done.

• Bryan Stevenson’s crusade with the US justice system and why mass incarceration defines us as a society
• While Europe debates it, decriminalising prostitution has been great for New Zealand
• Craig Thornton and the obsessive world of underground cuisine
• “It’s so pervasive. It’s a virus.” Tom Waits’ 2002 letter on the commercialisation of songs
• The 25-GPU cluster that’ll crack a password in under 6 hours
• A letter to the TEDx community on TEDx and bad science
• Statistician Howard Wainer on the most dangerous equation (pdf)
• Study shows Fox News viewers have a 20 point lower IQ than the national average
• A man wrestled a shark to get back his nephew’s severed arm
• Wickr – now you can send ‘self-destructing’ messages
• A new trailer released for that South Park video game. Still looks good.

Boy watching solar eclipse… taken from 1.5 miles away

• If you “Like” something on Facebook, you just gave it permission to post in your Timeline
• Having Access to the Internet is Good for Your Love Life (But Only if you are Under 30)
• White LEDs Lighting Directly On Paper
• Q: Why Do We Wear Pants? A: Horses
• UK government slammed for ignoring key security issues
• Lucas Foglia: the photographer in search of off-the-grid Americans
• The trouble with wind turbines
• No Matter the Drilling Method, Natural Gas Is a Much-Needed Tool to Battle Global Warming
• Mysterious radiation hit the earth just over 1200 years ago
• What divorced readers did with their wedding rings
• How Neuroscience Is Challenging Our Conception of Justice
• The Ghost in the Machine: Unraveling the Mystery of Consciousness
• Scientists Predict Synthetic Life Within a Year
• Crime Waves Will Follow the Heat Waves of Climate Change
• Letters of Note: A government complaint about a ‘debris’ dam and the landowner’s response on behalf of its builders
• Want: I’ve Never Meta-Pizza I Didn’t Like
• Build a bonkers hi-fi system
• Super-Resolution From a Single Image
• A rare interview: with Christopher Tolkien
• If the Wizard of Oz were set in China, it might look something like this

This site has been one of my favourites lately and a recent post highlighting Gene Wilder’s correspondence before commencing production on Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory is wonderfully insightful.

Prior to accepting the role, Wilder set out one condition to director Mel Stuart:

“When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.”

Asked why, Wilder explained: “Because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.”

It really is a great example of an actor whose thinking process works on multiple levels in creating and developing both a character and performance for an audience.

There’s also a second letter on his thoughts towards the costuming of Willy Wonka that’s equally fascinating, but I don’t want to post verbatim from such a great site, so check it out here.