Interactive Global Storm Tracker
Rich sent me this great interactive global storm tracker
Rich sent me this great interactive global storm tracker
Seven reasons the 21st century is making you miserable — this is a fascinating look at how isolated we've become.
The world clock [via Rich]
Scott Adams: My compliments to you
Map of Antarctica — without the ice
Coping with death on the web [via Dave]
Amazing story: If a great musician plays great music from great composers on a great violin, but no one cares, was he really any good? [via Paul J.]
Via Paul J.: Collect-me-nots: "The owner of Napoleon’s penis died last Thursday in Englewood, N.J." [NYT registration required]
I love this: Brad's A Childhood Saved, records of a natural and personal history.
My six-week journey to the land of the thin — extreme dieting
Multi-tasking makes you less productive. This is something I'm just beginning to learn. (See my recent epiphany about getting more work done when I don't have a wireless internet connection.)
This too shall pass: The key to staying calm during an argument
How marbles are made — stick around for the lovely hand-crafted marble. It's fascinating.
Demolished buildings of Portland, a map by tinzero
The Astoria Notes — a series of missives from a downstairs neighbor
For Kris: The Slav Epic, the magnum opus of Alphonse Mucha
Ooh. Way cool: The Dinosaur Factory [view first | view second] via mefi
DrawerGeeks! Not what you think it is.
AskMe: Does having children make people less happy? Studies show that kids decrease happiness levels in parents slightly. Here are some anecdotal responses.
Life 2.0: The Little Book of Flow — an encapsulation of the idea of "flow" in a longish blog entry
Walk on the water: a pool filled with a non-Newtonian fluid
What if all humans vanished? [via Dave]
Old Portland, a Flickr photoset [via frykitty]
Are you a CraigsList fiend? Try ListPic, which gives the site a new front-end. Not necessarily better, but different, and fun.
A review ripping Burning Man: "Burning Man is not run for hippies and not run by hippies. It is run by thugs and bullies for the benefit of thugs and bullies. It is a festival for the Freudian Id."
Waxy has the amazing tale of a sex-baiting prank on craigslist in which a couple hundred responders have been "outed". This is disturbing on many, many levels.
Everyday (a work in progress) — guy photographs himself every day for 6-1/2 years, makes a video, sets it to music. The effect is mesmerizing.
For Pam and Sabino and Marcela: research into language acquisition in children, particularly in bilingual children. Fascinating science!
This is awesome. Hating America isn't really about hating America, but about the cultural adaptations one makes after spending a long time in a third-world country and then returning to the U.S. Why is it that everyone who comes back finds the U.S. more foreign than the country they're returning from? Excellent reading.
The 1% Rule — in online communities, 1% of users create content, 10% interact with it, and 89% simply watch. But everyone benefits from the content. Very interesting.
The secret to wisdom is strong opinions weakly held [via kottke]
Mt. Everest panorama — it's kind of awesome to see this, including the Hilary Step. So many people have died in this one spot. And it's the location of so much personal achievement. [via rich]
How meditation works — I've been thinking I should practice a little meditation in order to calm the million thoughts constantly buzzing in my head...
Awesome hurricane animation demonstrating the effects of storms ranging from category one to category five. Excellent. Thanks again, Rich!
The end of network neutrality? Susan forwarded this article to me. It's an interesting disucssion on the future of the internet, a future being decided by Congress right now.
Awesome article on train surfing in South Africa
Amazing! Sir David Attenborough, naturalist and pioneer of the nature documentary, turned 80 last month. To mark the occasion, Britons were asked to choose their favorite Attenborough moment and of all the memorable scenes, his recording of the lyrebird came out on top. In this clip the bird mimics neighboring birds, several cameras, car alarms, and perhaps most impressively, loggers with chainsaws. (wmv, qt) [via mefi by way of frykitty]
Getting Real: an interview with Jason Fried — I find this guy's story inspirational. It's similar to what I plan to do with some of my stuff.
Video: amazing R/C airplane demo
My feelings about market economies are all kerfuffled. The Great Money Trick does nothing to help. Am I a capitalist or am I socialist? Maybe I'm both. And neither.
Is this a repeat? I love stories of feral children. They're wild! [via Dave]
A future with no bananas? "Go bananas while you still can. The world's most popular fruit and the fourth most important food crop of any sort is in deep trouble. Its genetic base, the wild bananas and traditional varieties cultivated in India, has collapsed."
A great weblog entry that I wish I had written: The Best and the Interesting
AskMe: Have you ever managed to quit using the internet? I've given it up for short periods, and loved it, but am always drawn back. I've talked with others who have had similar experiences. Now, though, I'm entrenched: I'm running three sites and have bought into the lifestyle!
For Kris: Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab 'The Body Farm' Where the Dead Do Tell Tales. That's an awful title, but the book looks intriguing, even to me. (And I'm not even a trained observer!) [via frykitty]
Soviet underground submarine base — I love cool abandoned structures like this [via Dave]
Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation — this is a fascinating story of how the twenty-mile exclusion zone around the failed reactor has become something of a nature preserve
The Incredible Machine — a series of elaborate Rube Goldberg-style machines that do nothing, but are simply amazing to watch [via frykitty]
Adapt to experience: "Nothing is more important than developing the ability to learn and understand new things that enable you to change.
If you can change your future is open. If you are incapable of change your future is closed."
Hack your brain with an iPod: "You can modify the electrical activity in your brain (the stuff that's picked up by EEG readings) by hearing sounds that mimic those waves."
Damn interesting: the swirling vortex of doom. "Lake Peigneur is a shallow, now salt-water, lake near New Iberia, Louisiana that was the location of an unusual man-made catastrophe on 21 November 1980." [via mefi]
Sci-fi now: brain cells fused with computer chip. I still haven't given up my dream of immortality. It seems to me that the form this is most likely to take is something along these lines: a fusing of mind and machine, so that my consciousness lives on in a computer state. [via dave]
US Copyright Office searchable database (primarily for works registered since 1978)
Awesome! A MeFi post on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the concept of flow. I'm already working on a weblog entry about this subject (which was introduced to me by Lisa).
How to spot a baby conservative. This twenty-year study shows that children who were whiny and insecure tend to grow up to be conservatives and "confident, resilient, self-reliant" children tend to grow up to be liberals. [via kottke]
SXSW to MPAA: STFU — the battle over copyrights is in full-swing and there's a huge cognitive disconnect between consumers and the multimedia behemoths that own most of the work
Vegan (the consumer, not the alien life-form): Vee-gun or vay-gun? Veh-jun? Answer: the coiner says vee-gun, as do most vegans. Most non-vegans say vay-gun, like the alien life-form.
A handy chart of when U.S. works pass into the public domain
William S. Burroughs: The Now. An outgrowth of this AskMe discussion of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow (which Lisa introduced to me).
MeFi: Ascaris lumbricoides — According to estimates, about 1.5 billion people — about a quarter of the earth's population — are hosts to the Ascaris lumbricoides parasitic worm.
I am a benevolent experiencer. Fine, fine: I get it already. I am an extrovert. I will quit claiming to be an introvert. Sheesh. (You can take the personal DNA test here.)
The skin you're in — "When Erika Thereian changed her Second Life skin from white to black, other things changed. Friends became distant, men made assumptions about her sexuality that they hadn't previously made, and there were blatant racist attacks." [via sennoma]
Pew Research Center study on happiness. Are you a married rich white religious Republican living in the southern U.S.? You're happiest! (Statistically speaking, that is.) [via bb]
The secret cause of flame wars: people believe their intended tone can be perceived 80% of the time in internet communication, but in reality recipients are only able to perceive the intended tone 50% of the time.
How songs get popular: the science of hit songs. [via /.]
What an amazing story: Stone-age tribe kills fishermen. Apparently, the "lost island of the savages" has been known for decades and is intentionally kept isolated from the modern world. [via bb]
Alone together in World of Warcraft: an interesting analysis of the social dynamics of this supposedly multiplayer game. This article argues that, largely, people choose to be by themselves in this heavily social virtual world. [via waxy]
Manufacturing Reality: The Omarosa Experiment is a fascinating article on reality show contestants [via kottke]
A handy reference for people like me: Memory Master
Dashiell Hammett's parable of the falling beam (from a Sam Spade story) is fascinating [via ml]
The prejudice map makes amusing use of the Google API in ways I don't quite understand. [via waxy]
Oddly obsessive statistical analysis of the rates paid by customers of legal Nevada prostitutes, broken down by sex act, attractiveness, body type and presence or absence of a jacuzzi, among other topics. [via Mefi]
I'm totally removed from the facebok phenomenom, but still found this study of student life on facebook interesting
I Will Teach You To Be Rich is a great personal finance weblog
I find the New York Times column, The Ethicist, very interesting. [link may require login]
Bitter Brew: I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life. [One reason I don't follow through on my dream to open a restaurant.]
Awesome AskMe: What do I do about my food-addicted boyfriend? This question strikes very close to home. I would call myself food-addicted but trying not be...
diagnose-me.com: The Analyst is a diagnostic tool, now accessible online, that fills the gap between what you need and what busy, human doctors can offer. [via frykitty]
From NPR: The Laws of War ("Treat them with humanity.")
News Flash! That "moderate alcohol consumption is good for you" line you've been using to justify your glass of red wine every evening? It may not have any basis in fact.
Interesting AskMe thread: How far does a parent's responsibility go when they have their kid at someone else's house (who has no kids)? Is it the responsibility of the hosts to kid-proof their house? From the discussion: "I've found it useful to divide my acquaintances with children into two camps: those for whom the word 'no' means 'no', and those for whom it does not." This is a keen insight.
I've come to love New York Times Magazine every Sunday. The articles are fantastic. This week featured The Prodigy Puzzle, about child geniuses. A couple weeks ago there was an article about medical treatment for Amish and Mennonite children. Great stuff.
Handy reference: Flowchart for determining when U.S. copyrights expire. General rules of thumb: 1. Anything published in 1922 or before is in public domain. 2. Nothing else will enter public domain until 2018. 3. There are a very few odd exceptions.
Conspiracy theories: 9/11 Pentagon attack and Hurricane Katrina [via Jeff]
Pandora, created by the Music Genome Project, is a fascinating web-based service that recommends new music based on the songs and artists you tell it you prefer.
The wooden library at Alnarp is a xylothek. Fascinating.
city-data.com: stats about all US cities
Great AskMe discussion: Should I stop being vegetarian?
AskMe: What sort of neat things and convenience features would you design into your dream home? There are some great ideas here.
AskMe: coming to terms with your own mortality. I, too, have experienced many sleepless nights fretting about my eventual death.
Feral Children, isolated, confined, wolf and wild children. This is another subject that fascinates me. To me, it's closely related to animal intelligence.
A fantastic weblog entry on mistakes in stories (esp. film and television) and the suspension of disbelief: The Imaginary Workshop.
Fascinating account of the process behind creating custom-bound comic books. I'd love to have some of my books and comics custom bound, but I don't know where to start. (Also: an interview with the guy who does this.)
Repeat, but worth it: Kevin Kelly's cool tools, a web site devoted to the best of everything
Idea generation methods: the definitive collection
Fantastic idea for better sleep: use two alarm clocks to exploit your natural sleep cycle. Set the first for the time you need to wake up. Set the second for somewhat earlier and put it in soft radio mode.
University lectures available for download: Stanford lectures in iTunes, Princeton's University Channel, the wonderful MIT OpenCourseWare and the U of Wisconsin - Madison.
Good Sleep, Good Learning, Good Life — a fantastic (but long) guide to good sleep, similar to my recent entry: A Brief Guide to Better Sleep.
The usable home: home hacks to make life easier. For example: put items you need to remember in your path. And: leave writing instrumens everywhere.
The Common Census map project creates a map of the United States based on how respondents self-identify with a particular region. Fascinating idea.
Body as Billboard features provocative t-shirts for women with slogans like: "The only Bush I trust is my own"
Amazing video from NASA showing the track of every 2005 tropical storm/hurricane. Well worth the download.
The latest issue of Preservation magazine, the publication of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has a fantastic article on Oregon's land-use planning (specifically Measure 37). If you'd like to borrow my copy, let me know.
The zeppelin library archive. I love zeppelins. There's something nostalgic and fascinating about them.
Going beyond the Staten Island boat graveyard, the same site has a huge collection of "abandoned photography and urban exploration" stuff. (See also.)
I was all excited to show Kris the Microgram Bulletin — the DEA's monthly drug smuggling newsletter, but she's all like, "Yeah, whatever: I print that off for the chem lab every month. Everyone initials that they've read it, then they give it to me, and I file it." She's a trained observer.
