Here's What's Awesome: The Sociology of Metal, The Science of Baseball

This year, get Mom something she can really use: a set of awesome links. Here's What's Awesome: bringing families closer together since... well, now.

Meedly-meedly-meedly-meedly-meedly-meedly-mee!
If you thought heavy metal was about rockin' after midnight or not taking it anymore, you probably haven't been to Norway, home to the darkest of dark metal cultures. Photographer Peter Beste's new book, True Norwegian Black Metal, goes deep into the scene - though you quickly realize it's much more than a music scene to the folks involved. [TrendHunter]

And now there's a beach ball on the field...
Metal is definitely one of those scenes that people either get or don't get - and while I'm clearly an apostate for saying this in Red Sox Nation, baseball falls into that category as well. The parts of baseball fans love - the duel between pitcher and batter, the anticipation of what may come next, the huge array of statistics for every situation or scenario - non-fans just shake their heads and wonder how anyone could watch anything so boring. Sportswriter Joe Posnanski did some stat analysis and found the most boring part of the national pastime: ball two. Every pitch leads to something, or changes the dynamic of the pitcher-batter matchup, except ball two. So for your non-baseball-loving friends, Tivo a game and skip all the ball twos, and see if they don't fall in love all over again. (Or just show them Ellsbury stealing home a couple hundred times.) [Boston Globe]

Send us the code so we can embed this freakout!
There are so many user-created remix tools for YouTube that they're on the verge of getting their own ZIP code and member of Congress, but some of them are still cool. I'm particularly enjoying one called YooouuuTuuube, which is a bit like a virtual mirror ball for online video. You input a link to a YouTube video and it generates a grid based on that video - you sort of watch 832 small versions of the same video, each a little ahead or behind its neighbors. (I take no responsibility for any side effects of using YooouuuTuuube, such as "seeing the music" or shouting "I am the lizard king" for no reason.) [via Mashable]

Now it's your turn: share an awesome link in the comments. We'd particularly like recommendations for which YouTube video would cause the biggest freakout if played on YooouuuTuuube.

(Photo courtesy Korso87 via Flickr/Creative Commons)