Thursday links

[yendi]

1. Bill Nye the Science Guy on why baseball bats break.

2. Network Solutions has backed down from its ridiculous front-running scam.

3. The Boston Chocolate Tour! Although, in all honestly, the Langham's chocolate bar alone is pretty much enough to satisfy me.

4. For those wondering about the potential for a return of Blood Ties, Watch with Kristin has an update.

5. Patton Oswalt finally tries the KFC Famous Bowl.

6. Darth Vader and Yoda as bonus characters in the next iteration of Soul Calibre! Yeah, I'll be caving and getting one of the non-Wii systems sometime this year.

7. If you were impressed by 3D Catan, but don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on it, you can make your own (or make a 3D version of any game).

8. Monster Hoodies!

9. Justice League by Gaslight! Best figure mods I've seen in a while.

10. Finally, the Mets are supposedly able to nab Santana, as long as they throw Fernando Martinez into an already-loaded package. This is starting to look scarily like the last time the Mets traded for a Cy Young winner from the Twins. We'll get three years mired in second place or third place with a damned fine ace, and the Twins can nab a world championship. If F-Mart is a substitute for Gomez instead of an addition, I'll be less harsh about the trade.

Comments

[kungfoogirl.livejournal.com]

Those Steampunk versions of the super heros are amazing. I totally want Steampunk!Hawkgirl.

Very cool.

[rowancat.livejournal.com]

Bats, are probably like swords that way. Given the same high quality well tempered steel, a straight edged sword blade has a much smaller area of percussion than a curved or leaf shaped one and will to tend break if you try to chop, say, a really hard tough tree branch with it.

The longer the blade (like a spatha of the same design) the more vulnerable.

A later straight sided/edged gladius (made that way for reasons of economy
from Flavian times, about 70 CE, the Pompeii pattern) is not as effective as
the earlier wasp waisted leaf bladed Mainz style 100 BCE to 70 CE adopted from Iberian designs by Marius) where the blade looks like a very slimmed down version of the Celtic Hallstat design)

The Celt-Iberian Falcata, a shorter version of the Persian/Macedonian Kopis, where the blade curves up and forword like the later Nepalese
Kukri knife, can deliver a really powerful blow, going right through a helmet easily but that's an extreme example. (the sword as an axe, sorta)

Bats, i don't know much about unless they are the furry winged types.

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

That last one made me wonder for a second why the Mets wanted Carlos Santana. Other than because he's a living guitar legend...

[fmi-agent.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I read the Star Tribune article and was a little depressed; the columnist was making it sound like all of the Mets prospects either had weaknesses or were under 20 years old (and therefore, I presume, unpredictable). What do they say about them in the Metsverse?

[yendi]

Martinez is one of the best prospects in baseball, and most folks pretty much project him as a "sky's the limit" player. I'm not sold on Pelfrey, but Humber's got a lot of potential, and Gomez has become one of my favorite prospects -- he's fast, aggressive, and plays mean defense.

Tapani and Aguilera weren't supposed to have that much of an upside when they went to the Twins nearly twenty years ago, either.

[yendi]

He also gets put into games as a late-inning defensive replacement.

[yendi]

I suspect that they're saving that combo for yet another Star Wars-based game.