Apparently, December 8th is the annual cannibal polar bear photo day. I am not suggesting that you click through, because these pictures will make you sad.

"The exhibition makes the case for understanding the fascination with cannibalism as a seismographic reaction to contemporary developments such as medical innovations that confront the boundaries between two bodies — organ transplants, genetic manipulations, and gestational surrogacy. Against this background monstrous sexist, racist and consumerist tendencies emerge." —There is an exhibition on cannibalism in, of all places, Germany. Here's a slideshow! [And, of course, related.]

Today marks the 50th birthday of German gourmet Armin Meiwes. To learn more, read this.

While it was shut down with a Denial of Service attack by the German authorities in late 2002, the website for the Cannibal Café can still be viewed online thanks to the Wayback Machine. Nine years is an eternity when it comes to the Internet and, suspended there in history, the website is a time capsule of early website-design features and flourishes, down to a .gif of dripping blood and the flashing "WARNING" sign. Its forum messages also carry the whiff of a different era; written at a time when people, unaware and unafraid of consequences, were more open with their identities online.

On the Café's forums [...]

"I think it would be mistaken to conclude from these bone finds that this was cannibalism or has some cultural background. In Germany too, corpses are dilettantishly discarded, that doesn't just happened in the Second or Third Worlds." —Adolph Gallwitz, professor of police psychology at the police college in Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany, makes a good point about a pile of human bones found on the South Pacific island of Huku Niva. Local police think the bones may be the remains of a German engineer, Stefan Ramin, who went exploring the island with a local hunter and has been missing since October 9th. Some say that the bones betray [...]