Of which, surprisingly, there are many.

What I can’t figure out, though, is exactly what message it’s trying to convey.

It turns out that there’s a whole series of these, most seemingly conveying that cigarettes can burn other people. (Which, while true, is generally not why people take offense to smoking in the United States.)

And then… Well, just watch. You can hear what sounds like the fire department on the radio in the background. (Actually, it looks like PD was on scene before FD, so they were running into the burning building trying to search for residents.)

This site was linked to from an article on laughter. It’s essentially a Chinese (?) menu that’s been horribly translated. It starts off humorous, gets tiring for a minute, and then rebounds, becoming more hilarious than I could have imagined. Note that it gets mildly profane at the end. If you’re viewing this at work, that may be a bad thing. If you’re viewing it at home, a Chinese food menu inadvertently turning vulgar is about the best possible outcome.

Then there’s this article on Chuck Bonnet Syndrome, a sort of visual hallucination that’s apparently more common than we’d believe. What I find interesting isn’t so much the hallucinations themselves, but the stuff going on behind the scenes. The article implicitly sets up an analogy to the brain as a computer (even measuring the eye’s throughput in megabits per second–I’m really not sure how that figure was derived). It could be said, then, that the problem isn’t with the person becoming insane, but with odd bugs in the firmware of their brain. Perhaps most interesting is that eyes actually have dead spots, which we ordinarily don’t notice due to some excellent interpolation. But they have an example graphic, which lets one “see” (err, not see?) the presence of a dead spot.

And then there’s this interesting tale of an airplane, practically fresh off the lot, that experiences myriad failures. I won’t spoil the “ending” (the cause of the problems), but I’ll say that I found the whole article pretty interesting. Err, damn interesting.

The obvious example, not on that list, is Chernobyl, which can apparently be traveled in parts.

I think Andrew has posted about Gunkanjima before, an abandoned city in Japan.

But what fascinates me is the second one on the list, Varosha, Cyprus. A perfectly-good city, a beachfront paradise, even, was abandoned (well, the residents were forced out, apparently). What’s odd is that, vacant for thirty years, the military aggressively patrols the area, not just with myriad guards outside but, apparently, guards inside in case anyone jumps the fence. Even photographing the city is forbidden. (Which, of course, adds to the intrigue and, subsequently, the desire to photograph!)

How interesting it would be to explore! (When you’re done checking out the Cyprus photos, check out the rest of the site, which is also fascinating!