• First reaction: cancer prevention and awareness is all fine and well, but can a OB-GYN exam version of the Inflatable! Super! Colon! be far behind? Second reaction: Elvis? Are you in there? [Link possibly NSFW] [Image courtesy Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation, via NeatoRama]
• I'm a big crime thriller buff, and David Fincher's latest, Zodiac [Metacritic; read the Village Voice review], does not disappoint. By all means catch it if you enjoy meaty, dense, lengthy films with a wealth of detail, but skip it or wait for the DVD if you: a) expect frequent gore or chase sequences, b) enjoy zoning out during movies, or c) have a small bladder. 3 word review: subtle but gripping. Also recommended, a film I'm ashamed to say I haven't seen yet - Fritz Lang's M.
• Inventions known and yet-unknown: the Innovation Timeline predicts by 2050 we'll have "mindwipes," "quiet paint," "sleep surrogates" (mentioned twice; must be an important future invention), "offshore prisons," (note: Britain tried those back in the 17th Century; not a success) and humorously, "Roujin-Z 0001" [via Kottke]
• Buzz has it Korean cuisine is (literally) the hot new taste on the street (as was Vietnamese recently, and Thai before that, and so on...). My Korean Kitchen is a good starting point for recipes and terminology; I'm afraid the new Super H-Mart in Niles, IL soon will become even more insanely crowded than it already is. NOTE: Google Language Tools' Korean-to-English Beta translation engine appears to need a bit of work; the translation of H-Mart Korean-language page is one of the funniest things I've read in weeks. The word "wasabi" is autotranslated as "Gas rain (!)" and the Japanese brand "Ajinomoto" comes out as "Oh [ci] old mother toe."
• Treasure hunters, listen up! The U.S. Mint apparently released 50,000 of the new George Washington dollar coins without the unique edge engraving that reads "E PLURIBUS UNUM - IN GOD WE TRUST." That means there are plenty of "God-less" dollars on the street - currently they are fetching $200 and up each on eBay.

Labels: links du jour