Inflated by Macy's employees for their Thanksgiving Day Parade.

A propos tu l´as toujours mon nounours rue Sésame?

Starke community is staff housing for Florida's state run prison facilities. 134 homes, 87 mobile homes and 52 apartments ensure that key employees are around during their off hours in case of emergency.

Just outside of the wires is a community within a community. It looks like your normal neighbourhood, but you won't find the place on any map. The county property appraiser doesn't even have a record of it. In this secret community, some streets have names, others do not.

The rent starts at $50 a month. The lawns are personally cut by the prisoners.

There is no sign saying keep out. But you're not allowed to take pictures, or ask too many questions. There's no way to know exactly who lives in each house or how long they have lived there. There is no paper trail either because these homes don't exist in public records.

Video.

Via archinect < First Coast News.

Every year since 1986, near Millsboro (Delaware), the Punkin Chunkin has been held. This month, 100 teams vied to see whose supergun could toss an 8-10lb (3.6-4.6kg) pumpkin farthest. There are several categories (air cannons, trebuchets, pedal-powered doohickeys) and no explosives are allowed. The biggest air cannons, with barrels up to 150 feet (46 metres) long, can shoot their fruit projectiles most of a mile.

After each pumpkin lands, eager men on quad bikes zoom around looking for the crater and then measure the distance.

All in all, Punkin Chunkin is a symbol of what makes America great. Only in the richest country on earth could regular guys spend tens of thousands of dollars building a pumpkin gun. Only in a nation with such a fine tradition of inventiveness, not to mention martial prowess, would so many choose to. And only in a land of wide open spaces would they be able to practise their chunkin without killing their neighbours.

Via Digitaler Lumpensammler < The Economist and the sect of rama.

A list of every monster, mutant, villain, and toady ever seen on Power Rangers.

Via Crazy Japan!
Related: blog of Japanese monsters, aka best blog in the universe.

Mozart, Brahms and Bach have been enlisted to discourage youths from hanging around shops at seaside towns in the UK.

Classical music has been piped into Co-op stores for over a week, and already youngsters who used to congregate near the doors have gone elsewhere.

The supermarket plans to experiment with different types of classical music to see if particular styles are more effective. A Co-op spokeswoman said: "Classical music makes our shops less cool as places for youngsters to hang around. It is early days, but it does appear to be successful."

Via The Guardian.

A guided tour by the National Geographic.

Sandhogs guide a 16-ton front-end loader into the same tunnel where a miner was killed in September 1996 when he fell off a boring machine. Photograph by Bob Sacha.

Via aeiou.