Top 4 lists I clicked lately
Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007 4:54 PM by Will Femia
50 Great Widgets For Your Blog - Wow, these would take forever to randomly learn about through the course of surfing. Very handy list for dressing your blog.
Speaking of lists of links, 40 Unusual Websites you should Bookmark. Some you've probably already heard of but again, a list like this is easier than waiting to come upon them by chance and recommendation.
17 best time machines
The 10 Best Foods You Aren't Eating - and recommendations for preparing them.
Speaking of food ideas, have you ever heard of gelatin filtration? It reminds me of the movie Harold and Maude and the smelling machine. The basic idea is that a food's flavor is captured in a clear liquid. The article also refers to the Ideas in Food blog.
Speaking of cooking, if you're the kind of person who can't even make toast, a transparent toaster might be a suitable tool for you (when it becomes reality).
The idea that America's climate of pedophile/predator hysteria has created a situation in which men are afraid to go anywhere near children is something I see raised online from time to time, which explains the resonance of this article. Lately my son has been in the habit of calling out loud, "Mama! Mama!" When he does it in public and she's not around I admit part of me worries people will think I'm kidnapping him. Thankfully, at least he looks like me.
Wow, Madeleine L’Engle died. Hey, we haven't had a contest in a while. I'll find a bit of MSNBC.com swag for the first person who can tell me the name of the thing Charles Wallace was trying to construct in A Wrinkle in Time. No cheating! You have to actually remember all the way back to the 70s. And if I'm asking the question not quite accurately it's because I'm also trying to remember back to the 70s so really this is a contest to guess the question I'm trying to ask and give the answer. First correct answer wins.
Given my vacation WiFi mooching experience this cartoon gave me a laugh.
Judging by what I've heard from colleagues here at MSNBC.com, Ron Paul has some active and passionate supporters online. Fox News has by now learned this lesson in the wake of their hosting of a debate between Republican candidates. Complaints that Paul was treated unfairly have permeated the Web, exemplified in this Open letter to Fox News.
Weirdest spam I've ever received: "Take the hassle out of entering a bonspiel." I wouldn't have guessed there was much hassle involved in the sport of curling, but I guess it makes sense that practitioners of the sport have a low hassle tolerance.
Last week there was a lot of noise about Microsoft's Flash competitor Silverlight. The story feels a little beyond the scope of Clicked, but it's worth recognizing the name and even playing one of the videos to get the download out of the way or at least recognize it when it comes up some day. One that came recommended to me is the Halo 3 trailer.
One way to get corporate influence out of politics, take away "corporate personhood."
Sea Organ: Holes in a shelf built over the water are actually pipes that play a note as waves displace the air in the hole. I really like this idea, though I suspect I wouldn't want it under my hotel window. The point is to make music, but I wonder if there'd be a way to build one to convey information like the tide level and direction or water conditions.
You've probably seen Darren Brown on SciFi channel. I'd seen clips of his British show on YouTube before it came to the States. One thing I'd never seen explained well before is how card counting is done. I'd heard about it (Warrick knows how to do it on CSI) but the explanation at 8:55 in this hour and a half long special was news to me.
"The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic." See also the recent revelation that Comcast will shut you down if they decide you're downloading too much - though they won't say how much is too much. When I think about all the forecasting about watching TV online and downloading movies (legally) online and other high bandwidth activities we can expect to become commonplace in our lives, it seems pretty clear that we consumers will ultimately end up presented with different packages of service the way we are with cable TV. Basic Web or some kind of premium subscription? If you want the Web version of HBO, you'll probably end up paying for the Web version of premium cable.
And also: Is Comcast's BitTorrent filtering violating the law? (This might seem a little complicated but stick with it, the actual legal argument is pretty interesting and not that difficult to understand.)
Reading the sheer bewilderment of football player Matt Hasslebeck I almost feel bad for him - particularly in that he seems to think that President Bush's divisiveness is indicative of politics as a whole.
"There are compelling religious/cultural reasons to oppose gay marriage and compelling libertarian reasons to oppose non-discrimination laws, reasons not based on animus against gays." The assumption behind the hypocrisy accusations against closeted gay lawmakers who vote against gay issues/interests is that they're driven by some kind of denial or self loathing. Other perspectives do exist.
Remember all the hype about the disappearing bees? Nature reports on a new theory that the culprit is a virus.
Dear colleagues at NBC Entertainment, if a freak lawyer who represents alternative people isn't the premise for a hit TV show I don't know what is. Put it on USA or SciFi, I watch those channels more than NBC anyway.
"Here we show that the moray eel (Muraena retifera) overcomes reduced suction capacity by launching raptorial pharyngeal jaws out of its throat and into its oral cavity, where the jaws grasp the struggling prey animal and transport it back to the throat and into the oesophagus." It also drools acid.
Google Book Search now lets you link directly to passages found in search results.
I didn't quite understand what this feature did so I gave it a try:
Hmm... not sure that worked. I think my selection area was too small.
I only barely passed the Film Critic quiz, but if you're good at movies you should do better.
Since reading this article about YouTube sensation Marie Digby having the secret help of a record label to bring about that sensation I've also read that she is the sole driving force behind her YouTube campaign (an impatient response to lack of record label promotion). Regardless, it's a good lesson in remembering one's skepticism on matters of the Internet.
(If you can't access the article, you can at least see her videos here.)
With that in mind it's hard to not be skeptical about this little item - especially given the recent question of whether a new Jurassic Park movie involving weapons attached to dinosaurs would be cool or ridiculous. Hmmm... where did this image come from? NOTE: VERY prominent four-letter word in the middle of the screen.
I saw this link in the context of marveling over the size of the screen but what I saw was the future of advertising. Surely it's just a matter of time before someone figures out that there's a whole new ad sales frontier in the "immediate overhead" market. And then I saw deeper into that future in this look at the past.
