Via Maggies Farm:

The LA Times has a fun slideshow of dogs having fun in Huntington Beach,California at the 2012 Surf City Surf Dog contest.

…a full sized go-kart made from Legos. Given the cost of Legos, it’s probably cheap to just buy one, though.

Details here.

See the other nine here.

And a whopper it was. Meanwhile, a photo from the Sunday eclipse, the crescent shapes you see are from the eclipse close to its fullness in SoCal.

Tony Perry in the LA Times

…The 1924 Pulitzer Prize for reporting went to Magner White, a reporter for the San Diego Sun, for his account of a noontime solar eclipse that occurred Sept. 10, 1923.

White’s account, in the lean, vivid prose of the day, had weird gusts of wind hitting the city, circus animals pacing and roaring, prostitutes falling to their knees and vowing to change their wicked ways, and San Diego residents exchanging “ghastly smiles, pale lilies they are.”

The Sun’s story was on the stands within minutes of the eclipse becoming total. A rival paper’s story published the next day didn’t have nearly the same kind of detail and emotion. According to its story, the zoo animals were quiet.

For his story, the 29-year-old preacher’s son from McKinney, Texas, who loved three-piece suits and prize fights, won the biggest prize in journalism, a rare honor in those days for a newspaper from the West Coast.

Just how White scooped his rivals and found such colorful details is a matter of conjecture. Most of his contemporaries are gone now but in 1989, on the 66th anniversary of the eclipse, they talked to the Los Angeles Times about White.

And finally a third Sun alum: ”Magner used to joke about never having to leave the office to win a Pulitzer.”

“Magner White was a very polite con man and a great reporter,” said one.

“Magner White was a damn fine newspaperman,” said the editor who had assigned the eclipse story to White. ”He got cocky after winning the Pulitzer though.”

This is a complete lift from American Digest.

Click more to find out.

(more…)

Via Drudge.

Story here

In three days, $100,000 was raised for Caine’s scholarship fund.

…unless you make bar bets.

The earth’s surface is smoother than a billiard ball.

That means a billiard ball has mountains higher than Mount Everest and valleys deeper than Death Valley.

…I can barely stick the landing on my couch.

More video here.

Watch it full screen.

Looks like an evil grin to me.

via Reddit

A sweet look at the current high school generation.

Teresa Watanabe in the LA Times.

For weeks, South Pasadena High School senior Alex Hom knew he wanted to ask freshman Brooke Drury to winter formal. But it wouldn’t do to just pop the question — too boring — or, even worse, to text it.

So he rounded up more than 20 friends, supplied them with red roses, choreographed a dance routine and wrote out his plea on signs. Then he had a friend bring Brooke, blindfolded, to a spot on campus for the big production.

“I thought, this is my senior year and I gotta go out with a bang,” Alex said.

He’s not the only student elevating the art of the school dance invitation.

Students are folding the question into homemade fortune cookies, tucking it into pinatas, knitting it into scarves, spelling it out with pepperoni on pizza and orange chicken on fried rice.

There are animal-themed invitations, using live puppies and turtles as messengers. There are glow-in-the-dark schemes. One student at Lincoln High School spelled it out in candles: “HC” (homecoming), “yes” and “no.” The date blew out her answer (yes).

Then there are those who choose to go the performance art route.

Camille Santos, Van Nuys High’s student body vice president, recalled one student who dressed up as a knight and got a friend to dress up as a dragon to “attack” his prospective date. Then he rode onto the scene on the back of another friend dressed as a steed, “slayed” the dragon and popped the question.

I liked this one especially.

Allie Hodgen, a freshman at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, went online to look for ideas before her Girls Service League dance last fall.

She liked one suggestion about using a T-shirt but took it a step further: She wrote the names of several girls on the shirt with washable markers, added her name in permanent ink, and told her prospective date to wash the shirt to find out who was asking him.

Street Dance in Paris brought to you by Funny Tube

People travel the earth via Google Earth, finding interesting places and things.

These fun videos were made by using the record function of Google Earth Pro.

See them here.

Bulldogs and surfboards are a match made in heaven.

HT: Susan Gertson

Tittle, lunule, gynecomastia — just three words you must add to your vocabulary.

Read it here.