Link roundup

1. The River is terrible. Far from being scary or stylish, it's like watching an episode of Gilligan's Island.

2. An architect was charged with involuntary manslaughter in Los Angeles after a firefighter died fighting a fire in a home the architect built.

3. RL Stine posted a pretty great short horror story at Twitter.

4. Recruiting scandal in the world of college chess. The coach's program is called the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (Spice).

The dirty, lucrative business of the sperm whale excretion known as ambergris

Businessweek:

Ambergris, a waxy excretion formed in the intestines of sperm whales (thanks to their inability to digest squid beaks), is one of the most sought-after substances in the world. Ambergris sells for roughly $20 a gram, gold for $30.

...

Like truffle sourcing, the ambergris trade is shrouded in secrecy. Chris Kemp, a neuroscientist from Grand Rapids, Mich., spent years investigating the ambergris business, which he documents in his book, Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris, to be published by the University of Chicago Press this May. “If you believe what you read in the media,” he says, “you’d think ambergris is something that people just find by accident.” The truth, he claims, is far more clandestine. “There’s a whole underground network of full-time collectors and dealers trying to make their fortune in ambergris. They know the beaches and the precise weather conditions necessary for ambergris to wash up on the shore.” And when whale-poop gold is on the line, he says, “it can get violent.”

Read on.

The dirty, lucrative business of the sperm whale excretion known as ambergris

Businessweek:

Ambergris, a waxy excretion formed in the intestines of sperm whales (thanks to their inability to digest squid beaks), is one of the most sought-after substances in the world. Ambergris sells for roughly $20 a gram, gold for $30.

...

Like truffle sourcing, the ambergris trade is shrouded in secrecy. Chris Kemp, a neuroscientist from Grand Rapids, Mich., spent years investigating the ambergris business, which he documents in his book, Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris, to be published by the University of Chicago Press this May. “If you believe what you read in the media,” he says, “you’d think ambergris is something that people just find by accident.” The truth, he claims, is far more clandestine. “There’s a whole underground network of full-time collectors and dealers trying to make their fortune in ambergris. They know the beaches and the precise weather conditions necessary for ambergris to wash up on the shore.” And when whale-poop gold is on the line, he says, “it can get violent.”

Read on.

Mexican pointy cowboy boots

Vice:

In this episode of Behind the Seams we head to the dusty city of Matehuala, Mexico in search of the pointiest long-toed cowboy boots ever made. Over the past year, the botas vaqueras exóticas phenomenon has overrun the rodeo dance floors and clubs of this area and even spreading North into Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and any place where big groups of immigrant Mexicans have taken root. We made our way to Desierto Light, one of the clubs in this area where party promoters host dance-offs to music known as Tribal Guarachero. For the finals competition, the 17-year-old prodigy DJ Erick Rincón of the 3ballMTY crew performed for a crowd of adoring pointy-boot wearing raver cowboys.

Just a guy thing, apparently. Via these sites.

Link roundup

1. The Maldives might be lost on account of rising sea level. So why not buy land in Australia and just move the whole country. Via.

2. Some funny stories about Gawker's new editor.

3. "10 Nagging Questions Left Open By Disney Movies", including Was that prince employing the dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as forced labor or what?.

4. Some good comic book trivia this week, including "DC nearly did an adaptation of Hamlet…starring Batman!" and "Rorschach’s speech patterns were based on Herbie, the Fat Fury."

*Buy Watchmen posters at eBay.

Link roundup

1. Penny Arcade's business manager participated in an interview at Reddit.

2. Deadspin's picks for the top 10 sports articles of the year.

3. Teddy Roosevelt once gave possibly the best start to a speech ever:

Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.

He wasn't joking.

4. The Smithsonian's top 10 science blog posts.

The time Robin Tunney was turned into Angela Bassett for a sex scene

From io9's roundup of science fiction movies where a director was fired before the movie was finished, here's part of the description of Supernova:

Then after Hill finished shooting, he and the studio both agreed that reshoots were needed — but they couldn't agree what needed to be reshot. So Hill was replaced with a new director, Jack Sholder, who did some reshoots. And then Sholder was out, and Francis Ford Coppola came in and recut the movie. It was Coppola, reportedly, who chose to insert some zero-G sex between James Spader and Angela Bassett — which he accomplished by taking unused nude footage of Peter Facinelli and Robin Tunney and digitally darkening Tunney's skin so she could look like Bassett.