Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• Conspiracy buffs may be interested in the contention that Hilary Clinton is a closet Republican. Horrors! Hey, are we that short of conspiracies, guys?
• People have been sending me links to bobblehead pages. Evidently, bobblers are very big in American culture. Here's the best collection I've seen. Want John Gotti or Jesus nodding on your desk? You got 'em. Sigmund Freud? No problemo. Edgar Allen Poe? Condi Rice? They're all here.
• Actually, I can't quite decide which I want for Christmas: The Condi Rice bobblehead or the Pope Innocent III action figure.
• I learned the other day that big band leader Fred Waring (of Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians) popularized the blender appliance that later bore his name. The actual blender concept was invented in 1922 by a guy named Stephen Poplawski, but he didn't have a band.
• Bigelow Aerospace has finally launched its one-third scale model of an inflatable space station on a converted Russian ICBM. Inflatables are an obvious way to create habitable space in space, and it's always puzzled me a little why NASA hasn't pursued it. (And don't say that that's because "it's a good idea" even if it's true.)
• Steampunkers may enjoy Crabfu's Steamworks, a collection of some pretty clever steam-driven models, including a model of a steam-driven rowboat-driven by oars. (Thanks to George Ott for the pointer.)
• Useless knowledge: Betty Boop was originally created as a floppy-eared anthropomorphic French poodle by the Fleischer animation gang, back in the early 1930s when nearly all cartoon characters were funny animals. She appeared in several cartoons as the girlfriend of Fleischer's popular Bimbo character, who was also an anthropomorphic dog. Betty grew so popular after a few cartoons that Fleischer redesigned her as fully human, then was forced to drop Bimbo because a dog with a human girlfriend suggested bestiality. By the way, you can legally download perhaps the weirdest and most totally surreal cartoon ever made in b/w. This Snow White has nothing in common with Disney!