• Video of many car crashes on icy Portland road (Welcome to a world without friction.)

• Having low expectations makes you happier (Danes don't expect good things to happen to them, and when something good does happen, they're thrilled.)

• Canadian spy coins a "mistake" (Defense Security Service unable to substantiate the claim that coins had eavesdropping bugs in them.)

• Man tasered for wearing baseball cap at city council meeting (“It means more than just a hat,” he said. “It’s like my crown. It’s like asking a king to remove his crown.”)

• Every issue of MAD on one DVD-ROM (That's over 600 issues -- 17,500 pages)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• John Hodgman's Mole Men / Cavalcade of Hobos
• Mole Men imagined by Ape Lad

Matt West of CNN's "Pop Digital" produced a piece about Boing Boing tv, and here it is: Video Link.

Oobject has a fascinating collection of radioactive products, most of which are no longer for sale.

(Given a choice between Gladstone’s Report Wizard for Microsoft Access or radioactive condom for Christmas, which one would you take?) Link

Can't see the video? Click here

Andrew says: "It seems a team of clockmakers broke into the Pantheon in Paris in September 2005 and spent a year fixing the historic and neglected clock, which had been abandoned by the authorities. They were prosecuted for breaking in, but have just been cleared of the charges in court. The group, "Untergunther" have a catalogue of subterranean lo-jinks to their name."

Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.

But the UX, the name of Untergunther's parent organisation, is a finely tuned organisation. It has around 150 members and is divided into separate groups, which specialise in different activities ranging from getting into buildings after dark to setting up cultural events. Untergunther is the restoration cell of the network.

Can't see the video? Click here

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Todd Lappin visits The Black Hole of Los Alamos
• Net-Funded A-Bomb Article Offers High-Yield ROI

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* Import data from Access into Excel easily and quickly

* Gladstone’s Report Wizard for Microsoft Access, $42.50

Passing By presents two films that piece together brief segments from many different journeys into ever growing sequences of sights-seen-along-the-way, while looking out of the window of a car, a train, a plane or even just pushing a shopping trolley around the local super market.

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Screensaver displays security cam images

Amy Stewart says: "A scientist at the University of Illinois received a cup of compost from a friend; he put it under the microscope and created a very cool composite image of all the creatures living in that one cup of decay." Link

He believes tularemia is to blame for a deadly epidemic dubbed the "Hittite plague" which raged through the Middle East in the 14th century BC. Around 1335 BC, letters to the Egyptian king Akhenaten reported a pestilence in Simyra, a Phoenician city near what is now the border between Lebanon and Syria.

The (letters from 1335 BCE to the Egyptian king Akhenaten) describe a terrible illness causing disabilities and death. Most tellingly, they mention that, because of the plague, donkeys were banned from being used in caravans.

According to Trevisanato, this indicates that the people living in the city were hit by tularemia. The disease can infect donkeys and the insects that they carry, so preventing the use of donkeys for transport may have been an attempt to quell its spread.

Can't see the video? Click here

I asked (His Holiness Abuna Paulos, patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) if the ark in Ethiopia resembles the one described in the Bible: almost four feet long, just over two feet high and wide, surmounted by two winged cherubs facing each other across its heavy lid, forming the "mercy seat," or footstool for the throne of God. Paulos shrugged. "Can you believe that even though I'm head of the Ethiopian church, I'm still forbidden from seeing it?" he said. "The guardian of the ark is the only person on earth who has that peerless honor..."

(We) made our way toward the office of the Neburq-ed, Aksum's high priest, who works out of a tin shed at a seminary close by the ark chapel. As the church administrator in Aksum, he would be able to tell us more about the guardian of the ark.

"We've had the guardian tradition from the beginning," the high priest told us. "He prays constantly by the ark, day and night, burning incense before it and paying tribute to God. Only he can see it; all others are forbidden to lay eyes on it or even go close to it." Over the centuries, a few Western travelers have claimed to have seen it; their descriptions are of tablets like those described in the Book of Exodus. But the Ethiopians say that is inconceivable-—the visitors must have been shown fakes.

Can't see the video? Click here

A study at the University of Central Lancashire found that over-emphasising prominent features on people's faces made them twice as easy to identify than before.

The researchers used computer software to alter the faces of 18 celebrities which had been created using three standard photofit techniques. The faces were then turned into caricatures by exaggerating certain features, such as the size of a person's ears, forehead or nose, by as much as 50%.

(Image credit: Dad, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed picture from PhylB's Flickr photostream)

Super Rubes is a weekly one-hour show that follows a band of talented creators as they design, build, and set off a massive Chain Reaction Machine in front of a cheering crowd. The point of a Chain Reaction Machine is to do something very simple, like turn on a light bulb, using as many steps as possible. This is an opportunity for engineers to let their creative hair down and have some fun building a giant Chain Reaction Machine. Our team will take on impossible challenges (i.e. "Can you crack an egg with a human hair?") in a race against the clock.