The L.A. Times has an interesting article on Walt Disney, 40 years after his death on December 15, 1966.

Ask just about anyone how he or she feels about Disney and you are likely to get either a beaming, misty-eyed tribute from those who recall him fondly and enjoy his animations and theme parks, or a scowling, brow-furrowed denunciation from those who see him as the great Satan of modern mass culture.

After 40 years, Walt Disney is not either/or — the best or the worst. He is both the best and the worst — not the polarizing center of cultural warfare but a portent of the truce between high and low.

(via Cartoon Brew)

Follow Santa around the world with Google Earth on Christmas Eve. There’s also a toy tracker game: Santa’s elves have hidden gifts around the world. Follow the clues to find the next one. A new gift is added each day. (via Lifehacker)

“This shirt owes me $249, for breaking my glasses!” The shirt in question was created using a photograph of stencil art without the original artist, ghostpatrol’s, permission. No laughing matter, of course, but the comments in this thread are absolutely hilarious. (via You thought we wouldn’t notice)

10 Most Bizarre People on Earth (via Kottke)

World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade intro cinematic: The sheeping mage and murlocs are a nice touch.

Comedy genius Adam Buxton, of Adam and Joe fame, offers up this fantastic spoof of Richard and Judy’s “You Say, We Pay” quiz-segment.

“I finally downloaded Second Life the other day. Oh dear.” Greg Howson at The Guardian seems to have had the same reaction to Second Life as me. I just don’t get it. I’ve played World of Warcraft, and at least that seems to have a purpose… even if it is just effectively collecting harder and harder to obtain artifacts. Can someone enlighten me as to why this thing is so popular?

Il Etait une Fois Walt Disney: I meant to write about this earlier, but I got so excited that I’d actually be seeing it next month that I almost completely forgot! Le Grand Palais in Paris is running an fantastic exhibition of classic Disney artwork alongside the works that inspired them. It runs until January 15th 2007, so there’s still time to catch it before the exhibition moves to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from March 8 to June 24th 2007.

There’s a superb slideshow of artwork at l’Express and Cartoon Brew (where I originally found out about the exhibition) has a few more details as well.

Update: I’ve been! Read my report here.

Stuff from the Park have posted scans from a booklet called “The Maintenance of Magic in the Magic Kingdom“, a guidebook for Disneyland maintenance, published back in 1969. It contains some great photographs and gives a really good insight as to how things used to work behind the scenes.

I love the idea of a bunch of guys fixing stuff, or knocking together a dinosaur, backstage.

Have you been wanting to race against (and generally gloat about how much fitter you are than) your friends, but don’t have a pair of those expensive Nike running shoes with the hole in the bottom? Fear not, SwitchEasy have introduced the RunAway AnyShoe Adaptor for just 6 quid. You’ll still need to bring your own iPod Nano and Nike+ kit though.