Little Red Riding Hood: The Infographic remix. (Via Daring Fireball.)

Pretty clever marketing campaign: Defriend 10 people on Facebook, and get a coupon for a free Whopper.

Improv Everywhere ratchets up the excitement at a little league baseball game with bleachers full of screaming fans, NBC Sports on the jumbotron, and the Goodyear Blimp. (Via AgBlog.)

Well, well, well… it looks like we have another airline adopting movie plot security tactics. From JetBlue’s page on service animals (emphasis added):

Certain unusual emotional support animals (i.e. snakes, other reptiles, ferrets, rodents and spiders) pose unavoidable safety and/or public health concerns and will not be allowed to jet with us. The release of such an animal in the aircraft could result in a direct threat to the health or safety of customers and crewmembers.

No word on whether they’ve hired Mr. Jackson as a consultant.

Wolfire Blog has a neat analysis of the design of World of Goo (which, if you haven’t played it, is a rather fun game.)

Today’s Times has a great article about rice cookers.

1. I want to try toasted rice ice cream.
2. I think that this should be our national loaf.
3. I want to stick a spoiler on my Sanyo, turning it into a rice rice cooker.

Here’s a lede I never thought I’d see:

A spokesman for the pirates … said that so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood. —Somali Pirates Tell All: They’re in It for the Money, New York Times, 2008-09-30

The New York Times reviews a trendy fashion boutique in delightfully snarky fashion. The place truly does sound bizarre; the sales clerk at the store was disappointed that they’d sold out of the dress that came with an instruction manual.

Google Maps has walking directions now.

A federal agent strolls into a small Missouri town and helps clean up their meth problem, spearheading a string of arrests. The only problem is that he wasn’t really a federal agent, or any kind of law enforcement officer at all. Monica Davey for the New York Times writes:

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood, from television mainly, to be the law. They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government. Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, …