The Great Hamster of Alsace.

What a great name. Anyway, I’m checked out, and it’s Friday afternoon, so here’s a story about wild hamster preservation:

France was punished on Thursday for not taking proper care of its hamsters.

The Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Union’s highest court, ruled Thursday that France had failed to protect the Great Hamster of Alsace, sometimes known as the European hamster, the last wild hamster species in Western Europe. If France does not adjust its agricultural and urbanization policies sufficiently to protect it, the court said, the government will be subject to fines of as much as $24.6 million.

Via the Hairpin.

Back to the future.

Navigation links at the bottom of blogs drive me crazy. It seems to me that the natural layout would be “< Older” and “Newer >,” since that’s how English reads. However, that seems to be the minority opinion, based on the templates I was flipping through (indexes on the one I ultimately decided on are backwards, though the links are swapped again on individual posts). Anyone have any insight? It makes no sense to me.

WWWurlitzer.

Via Ezra Klein, the Library of Congress’s historical audio recordings. Could use a more attractive design, especially for a self-described  “jukebox.”

Techno-utopian aside: it’s pretty awesome that we can see and hear museum exhibits on any device with an Internet connection.

A weak response.

But it’s all I’ve got.

Yu Arafuka.

I forgot to post this from a few days back, but it’s NOTY time! Bracket’s here. Go nuts.

Kind of a weak year for the 1-seeds, in my opinion. Personal sleeper picks: 8-seed Widgett Washington, 13-seed Col. Many-Bears Grinder, 15-seed Yolanda Supersad, 11-seed Monsterville Horton IV, and 11-seed Deflector Durley Jr.