I have meetings today, followed by training on how to make pages like this and this, followed by drinks on the boss' tab, so pardon today's hodge podge of links as I compete with my own schedule.

Welcome to Seagate's "D.A.V.E.": wireless portable storage - It sounds like a 10 - 20 gig portable wireless/Blue Tooth/USB hard drive with its own power source.

The Kevin Federline Nationwide commercials are drawing mostly derisive attention, but I think the deprecation is somewhat endearing.  I certainly prefer that he sell out (?) to an insurance company than spend a month getting out of limos with no underwear.

So What Happened in Najaf? This Iraqi blogger compares accounts of that huge battle in Iraq the other day.

Speaking of Iraq, Shia and Sunni, A Ludicrously Short Primer - "...Many felt that Mohammad had clearly indicated Ali as his successor, and after Abu Bakr took power, these people had no choice but to say that while he may have become the temporal leader of the young Islamic state, they did not recognize him as their divinely guided religious leader."

Though there's some debate about the actual pay-off, it appears that Ask a Ninja is the new best paid online video show.

HP Scanjet music - If you ever sang Billy Squire's "The Stroke" to the sound of the Xerox machine's carriage return, this will be an amazing step forward.

That Long Island girl fight video - I finally found the video of those girls who were arrested for ganging up on another girl.  I debated linking to it because I really find these fight videos disturbing, but I'm trying to maintain a record of linking to the things we see in the news, and for that matter the TV folks have been showing the video with bleeps, so I feel justified in linking.  My NOTE: is that while this is SFW in the traditional sex/nudity sense, I feel more self conscious watching violence like this than I do watching bootleg blurry Paris Hilton flashing videos.  Also, there's cursing so engage the headphones.

Speaking of fighting videos, as funny as the Bas Rutten videos are, there's an important lesson that the best reason to avoid a fight with someone who clearly wants one is that they're probably just itching to exercise skills like this.

Become an M&M.

"If the head drops below a certain level, a little motor kicks-off to vibrate the earpiece and no doubt scare the crap out of whoever is wearing them."  They're glasses that supposedly keep you awake.

Hot Web Meme of the day: Pilotless Drone - The San Francisco Chronicle published a voicemail from an irate reader.  They're starting a new series of these called "Correct me if I'm wrong..."  As much as I love this audio, I'm not sure I agree with making it a series.  We get gobs of mail from crazy people (I mean real crazy, not just angry about grammar) here at MSNBC.com and I've often thought we could put together a "crazy mail" column of some kind that would be fun to share.  But then, is it really such a good idea to mock one's readers?

Commuter Click:  I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI

Lightmare LED Watch - Whatever "Lightmare" means, I'm always impressed with time pieces that show the time in novel ways.

Vision Board II - Keyboard With Big Keys - On its surface it seems like a good idea.  I'd certainly prefer big keys to the maddeningly tiny ones that are on everything these days.

Simpsons Doughnut Maker - Very good, but can you plug it into the cigarette lighter jack in your car?

The most commonly heard utterance in the cube farm yesterday was, "Harry Potter naked?!?"  This, as links spread to promotional photos for a performance of Equus starring Daniel Radcliffe.  The most complete collection of the photos is here.  They're not exactly NSFW BUT, he's 17, he's naked from at least the waist up in some of them and from the waist up and the hip bone sideways in a couple of them.  Plus, there are also a few featuring a woman in her underwear.  They're more artful than pornographic, but there's the strong possibility that looking at them will make you feel creepy.  Here's the story.  Apparently he is fully naked in the play, and that girl is his girlfriend.

This truly is the biggest bridal freak-out ever.  Over a million and a half people have cringed through this in just two weeks.  Someone needs to book her to get the full after-story please (assuming it's not some kind of hoax, but it looks pretty authentic).  The bride enters at 1:41 so you can start there.  NOTE:  There are a few curses, but most significant is the occasional freak-out scream.  You'll want headphones or understanding co-workers.

Thanks to Scott for the tip in the comments of the previous post.

UPDATE:  Looks like there's already a solicitation from Good Morning America in the commetns of the video.  Even if this turns out to be a fake, enough people want to see the wedding video and the aftermath that they could probably get a pretty successful little video series going.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hoax!

Young student's documentary leaving audiences stunned - No joke, it's pretty stunning.  Fifty years ago a study found that black children preferred white dolls to black dolls.  The study was conducted again, less formally by a girl making a film for her high school class.  Here it is.

Speaking of distorted self image, extreme photo retouching

This commercial for "Synth Coke" is only 37 seconds long but you're going to watch it at least twice and then sit there for a minute or two thinking of how many layers of "wrong" it has.  Presumably it's more fulfilling than other cocaine alternatives.

What we don't know - 42* of the biggest questions in science.  (*** Wiki warning on this one.)

Creative photos by Chema Madoz

Speaking of scrolling through interesting images, "Each image portrays a specific quantity of something."  I like the soda cans and the shipping containers.  The point is apparently to send an environment message about consumption.

A quick word about Googlebombs - You may know that when a lot of people link to the same thing with the same words, search engines associate those words with what they're linking to.  Sometimes a campaign is organized to deliberately associate a word or phrase with a result.  The most famous is probably that a search for "miserable failure" returns the biography of George W. Bush.  Not anymore.

New ROI of blogging report from Forrester - Is blogging worth it for businesses?  Though it doesn't give a definitive answer, it outlines some ways to assess the value of a blog to a business.

Speaking of the value of blogging, ascertaining that value is not a debate for the meek.

Amapedia is a new site from Amazon.com.  It's a product wiki, which means the public can write and edit entries about Amazon.com products.  It's still brand new, so not very meaty, but I still have to wonder why this is better than the product reviews as comments on Amazon itself.

At Least 25 Million Americans Pirate Movies - That is WAY higher than I ever would have guessed.

Remember that item about the president of India posting a question on Yahoo Answers?  Well now Hilary Clinton posted a question to Yahoo Answers.  Of course, Hilary is working that "let's have a conversation" angle in her campaign, so this fits right in.  I don't know why, but I was completely ready to believe that the president of India had posted his question but I can't bring myself to believe that Hilary actually submitted her question.

It takes 35 seconds to get to the point, and you probably won't need to watch it for much longer past that.  But in the category of trendspotting I think it's worth noting the number of people who know the entire Thriller dance and perform it as a line dance.  In the last Halloween parade here in the City there were groups of people dressed as Zombies who would suddenly break into the Thriller dance.  I can definitely see this integrated into the traditional American wedding dance set along with the Chicken Dance and the Electric Slide.

Books mapped - I can't imagine how long this will take them, but they've found a way to find the locations of settings in books and plot them on a map.  Actually, the whole thing could be handled with a lot of automation since they are already taking in the text of the work.  Scan the text for place names and automatically plot them.  Someone's still going to have to go in and double check for things like Manhattan, Kansas.

"Search for music by singing or humming part of a song. All you need is a microphone."  OK, not exactly.  The way it works is that people record themselves singing songs and the site searches against that database when it does a voice search.  After singing just about every song I know into the thing I managed to get three or four to guess my song correctly.  Though I don't doubt that the many failures were due to my lousy singing, I also have to wonder if party of the problem was that I wasn't singing as badly as the people who have filled the database.  Another problem may be that no one had recorded the song into the system yet.  In an effort to test the "hum it if you don't know the words, I made myself hoarse on The Outfield's "Your Love" before I figured out that it just wasn't in the system to find (and surely not that my falsetto is at all flawed).

Speaking of free ways to record music, this gal used YouTube and her online star is rising.

Wicked cool 3D spinning Flash map of the world by economic activity.

Stop the Iran war before it starts - I was wondering when we'd hear from Scott Ritter.  I remember him well before the war insisting in the face of tremendous criticism that Iraq had no WMD.  Since so many people bashed and smeared him I would have thought he'd do an I-told-you-so by now.

Reverse product placement sounds at first like a new advertising idea: take a fictional product made popular by a fictional show, movie, video, etc and make it real.  But isn't that basically the same as merchandising?

Where are they now? Interview with "Switcher Girl" Ellen Feiss - I could never really get into the whole cult of Ellen so I was surprised to find myself reading so much of the interview.  I think what's refreshing about it is that she's not really famous (remember, no one on the Web is famous) so it's an interview about what minor celebrity is like.

This electric car answers a question I've often wondered.  It's generally acknowledged that electric vehicles are dangerously quiet.  They have a way of sneaking up on pedestrians.  So if a vehicle didn't make a sound, what sound would be artificially added?  If you've been to an airport you know we can rule out a high pitched beep by virtue of sheer annoyance.  What about an electric motorcycle?  Maybe just put a baseball card in the spokes?

Reggie Watts: Out of control - Fun with a microphone and a loop machine.

A car seat with a 5 point racing harness welded to a robotic arm.

Advertising = graffiti - From the folks at the Graffiti Research Lab - I was concerned that this was a little too NYC-specific, but it has some philosophy behind it that everyone can consider.  As the video makes clear, one of the chief points of the street art movement is that the aesthetic of our surroundings shouldn't be the sole domain of the people with enough money to own it.  Street artists resent that the appearance of their surroundings is the sole domain of advertisers.

That said, not everyone is so pleased with the idea of self-appointed artists decorating public space either.  Recently New York City has been in the midst of a struggle between street artists and at least one person who has been defacing others' works.  The vandals' vandal, sometimes referred to as "the splasher" for reasons that are obvious if you click through to the pictures, is apparently a Dadaist activist who, if I understand the manifesto correctly, resents the way art creates a context of audience and performer, "agents and a mass."  Since pretty much everything in our society creates that context it's not clear why street art is the target but there does seem to be contempt for it as a "bourgeois fad."

Speaking of the spirit of rebellion, Smells Like Teen Spirit backward - Since the advent of CDs we don't really hear songs played backward anymore, but someone found a way to do it with this song and found -almost- a second song.  Some parts sound pretty close to real words but others are a stretch even with help from the subtitles.

"Ask Me, Don't Tell Me is a 1961 educational film about gangs in San Francisco."

Speaking of San Francisco, Slate's review of the new Sony Bravia commercial has put their old bouncing balls video back in viral circulation.  I clicked the YouTube version but the better quality sound and video is on the Sony site.

The Real Hustle - Proposition Bet - The bottom line is that if someone wants to make a bet that they can do something, chances are good they actually can.  In fact, I don't even think this is a hustle.  It's more like, "How much will you pay me to show you this cool trick?"

Say no to dirt - The self-cleaning rehab toilet.

That Dick Cheney/Wolf Blitzer video - I was trying to write an item comparing this with the time the president asked Jim Webb about his son and was told essentially, "None of your business" but after thinking about it, other than the fact that both incidents involve politicians talking about their kids, they're really apples and oranges.

I'm blogging - In case it wasn't already clear, the backlash is here.

Co dokaze zena... (What a woman can do...) - Unless you understand whatever language the song is being sung in (Czech?) then you really only need to see the first 23 seconds of this one.  I ignored thy misogyny and instead focused on the bizarre physics of it.

I meant to include this bit of mail in today's entry:

Hey Will,
Isn't this kind of stuff that makes the net great... A magazine makes a list of the best guitar solos, and a blogger makes it even better by digging up a youTube clip to go with the top 20! Even if you don't post it I really hope you check it out.

The clips are amazing finds. I spent my whole weekend on YouTube and Yahoo vids sorting out the best live versions, just amazing historic (and now archived!) stuff.

If you're not a mainstream guy, at least peep... Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King & Albert Collins "Texas Flood" 1988, so great...

They're all pretty much incredible. I wasn't much of a Skynyrd fan and the Freebird - Collins/Rossington clip is one of my faves.

Hope you're well and very best regards,
-CityRag

Will replies:  Outstanding effort!  Really well done.  My challenge to readers is before you click the video, see if you can sing the solo from memory.  Even if you don't agree with the songs, most of the people I thought of are represented on the big list.  There's no Willie Nelson though.  Y'know what I always thought was a catchy solo?  The one in "What I am" by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians with the heavy wah pedal.  I haven't heard that song in at least ten years and I can still sing the whole guitar solo.  I don't think I saw any Boston on the list.  Their songs are so guitar heavy they'd have to be close to top 100 for something -like maybe the More Than A Feeling solo.  Who else?  It feels like there's a category of pop metal hair bands that's being left out.  Dokken, Poison, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Cinderella, White Tiger Lion, Whitesnake... all those kinds of bands had proud guitar soloists, but nothing from their catalogs is coming to mind so I can't really argue that any of them should be on the "great" list. 

Photo: Smoke3 by Swiss Bones / Jonny Watt **

I found out why I've been seeing smoke photo instructions lately.  According to this post it's been gaining interest around the Web following this inspiring set by Graham Jeffery.

**The Creative Commons license on this photo forbids commercial use of the photo.  Do you think I violate that by virtue of being on a commercial site or do you reckon I'm cool so long as I don't try to sell the photo?

UPDATE:  I asked the photographer how he interpreted "non-commercial" and whether it was OK if I used his photo anyway:

:: Re: non-commercial use

I'm not sure about whether it falls within the CC license but i'm more than happy for you to use the shot.  I guess the term Non-commercial can be seen different ways.  I always felt that as long as someone's not trying to directly sell my shots as their own then any other use is fine.

Thanks for the link and if you want to paste this reply on your blog you're welcome.
Cheers,
Jonny

25 Web celebs? - Has there ever been a true Web celebrity?  Someone who everyone knows, and they're in magazines like a real red carpet celebrity, but they got their start on the Internet?  Jessica Lee Rose (lonelygirl) is probably the closest there is.  Actually, does anyone remember Cindy Margolis as the most downloaded woman in the world?  She ended up with a show and a career.  She's the best example I can cite of a Web celeb.  (Which means, in case I didn't actually get around to saying it, I don't think any of the people in the slide show are celebrities even though I link to or read most of them regularly.)  Am I overlooking anyone?  Viral video stars don't count unless you know their name.

A 13 minute Battlestar Galactica gag reel.  Contains curses.  Also contains a good amount of the Shannon Moon Hoon version of 3 Is A Magic Number, which rocks.

The Wii laptop - Next Tuesday they'll show how it was made.  I was just asking my IT guy the other day why we see PC build instructions but never laptop builds, so this will be interesting.

Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year - Apparently different colors require different energy.  He figured how many people hit Google and for how long and did the math on how much energy it takes to light that many screens.  His result is a broad assessment of the cost to display the page with a cheaper color.

The funniest thing about these viral Saturday Night Live clips that get passed around every week is the expressions of amazement that Saturday Night Live is funny again.

Folks are worked up about a single frame McDonald's ad in an Iron Chef clip.  It's hard to imagine what it could be other than a subliminal marketing attempt.  Even so, I don't feel especially outraged.

Kitchen beat box - Thankfully no real food involved.

The New York Times makes a fun tool to play with that utilizes the full text of past State of the Union addresses.  Unlike other word clouds that choose keywords for you, this lets you search anything.  "But" has an interesting result.  I saw one blogger recommend "diplomacy."  Clicked flashback:

U.S. presidential speeches tag cloud - The page is a weird layout because the top is all graphic and navigation.  What you want is the middle of the page.  The timeline dragger is above the word cloud on the right.  It reminds me of the State of the Union word count interactive timeline. -requires Java but worth it.  (And the State of the Union parser.)  The really early speeches are the most interesting I think.

Among the abundant coverage of last night's speech I saw sizeable discussion of whether Webb upstaged the President.  I didn't think so when I watched it, but I clicked Jonathan Alter's piece anyway.

CIA recruiting through Facebook

Nike's environmentally friendly sneakers

The insanely great songs Apple won't let you hear.  If you're at all familiar with real-world, tangible music media then you've heard of the Japanese import.  It only stands to reason that with the Web bridging all barriers, every song, no matter where it was released would have global availability.  I wouldn't even have thought there was an issue there.  Turns out I'd be wrong.

I keep reading about pillow fighting as the new erotic performance (compared to mud wrestling and foxy boxing, though it seems closer to roller derby to me for some reason in the way it's connected to that new burlesque-chic style).

"A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 2,000 feet or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week."  The video is included on the article.  Is there anything cooler than a prehistoric deep sea species that looks like alien death?

Globorati is a brand new global travel blog.

Social Media – Under the Microscope - What happens when you're linked by a site like Digg?

A parkour pair - If you head to their site, advertised in the video, they've got a section with tips, though let me be clear, "don't try this at home."  I'm not clear what they train for to prepare for this.  It looks more like martial arts than gymnastics, but not combative; more like a floor exercise.  UPDATE: OK, hold your mail, I actually bothered to look up wushu.

Ecstasy, the new prescription drug?

Duct tape use number 323: parenting aid.

REVERSE GRAFFITI: Clean Green Street Art - It's a fancier version of when people write "wash me" in the dirt on the back of a truck.  There are probably a lot of opportunities for it in New York City.  UPDATE:  OK, so this is probably more literally a fancy version of writing "wash me" on a truck.

Scientists Optimistic on "Bionic" Eyes - So far it's just being done on cats, but it's a cool article.  Sounds like we'll have Terminator eyes before we have Geordi La Forge eyes.

Following a glowing review from TechCrunch folks online are buzzing about TellMe.  With TellMe installed on your phone, all you have to do is speak the name of the person or place whose number you need and it automatically accesses the directory assistance database and gives you the info you need.  Now all you need to do is install it on a watch and run it through your black Trans Am.

Keep an eye out for solicitations for participants in a new reality show featuring virgins questing for carnal accomplishment.  I guess it's better than eating bugs.

Pirating the 2007 Oscars - Waxy looks for how many Oscar nominated films are available in pirated versions online and with what level of quality.

As the president describes for us the state of our union, I'd like to highlight the latest in what is shaping up to be the Internet's most important democratic function.  More than giving everyone a voice and more than providing an essentially free platform for leaders to communicate with followers, the Web has proven to be an effective tool for the enforcement of accountability.

The early demonstrations of this ability were focused primarily on the media, making a mockery of its principle of objectivity and out-fact checking fact checkers in sufficient quantities to turn the world of journalism upside down.

We've also seen the Internet press accountability on consumer issues.  Just today I clicked (yet another) Best Buy nightmare warrantee story.  And this is the second "dirty store" series I've seen lately.

Within the realm of politics there has been a heavy focus on the fundraising possibilities of the Internet, but sites like TPM Muckraker and Porkbusters have taken up the task of exposing corruption and waste in government.  And the most significant aspect of the new "netroots" movement has been to channel that fundraising to support underdog local candidates.  The Internet is offering an answer to the unspoken question, "What are you going to do about it?"  And now a new group aims to use the Web (among other tools) to hold Democratic politicians accountable.  "It's like the Super Friends of progressive politics."  Daily Kos will be working with They Work For Us which seeks to hold Democratic members of Congress accountable to their constituents.  Legislators who run afoul of the group will face well supported challengers when they come up for re-election.

For all the political coverage out there, when was the last time you heard someone ask whether a politician was doing a good and accurate job representing his or her constituency?  (The description of the group, particularly how tied it is to ideology, is a little different in this post from Steve Rosenthal, though I don't imagine it's enough to disrupt the unity of the coalition).

Speaking of keeping people honest, CNN Debunks False Obama 'Madrassa' Smear - My first thought was that Obama has had his first introduction to Swift Boating, but I wonder if there's an element of the media learning its lesson as well and actually running down stories like this.  For that matter, there's probably something to be said for the way the Internet can spread a story in defiance of mainstream media gatekeeping to put mainstream media in a position of having to cover the story after all.

I finally figured out that the reason I keep seeing pro-choice blog entries is that we're in the midst of the Blogging for Choice campaign.  Like its pro-life counterpart, the March for Life, it marks the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

I saw the first episode of Dirt and thought it had promise, but frankly I was a little embarrassed by the cheap sex pandering (please make them stop saying "strap on").  I have the second episode in my DVR, unwatched, but it looks like cheap sex pandering is not going away.  (Grey's Anatomy is guilty of the same thing.)

The good news is that the Philippines and Nigeria seem to really like the U.S.  The bad news is that most everyone else is not such a fan.  The result showing how Americans feel about the U.S. handling of North Korea's nuclear program is interesting.  I wouldn't have expected many people to know what the U.S. government's handling of that issue is.  The comment thread on the story is a bit of a train wreck and makes this headline a little more obvious.

22-Year-Old Killed Amid Internet Lies - The role of the Internet in this one is weird.  If only the murderer had known how undesirable (?!) his online lover was he wouldn't have slipped into that homicidal jealous rage.

This guy nearly kills himself on a rocket scooter so you don't have to.  Start this one at 2:40.  The question is whether it would have done something cooler if he'd put his weight farther forward.

Get all the tech news you need (in 20 minutes a day) - It's basically a list of all the top tech sites.  Plug their RSS feeds into a reader and you'd have a pretty complete snapshot of that news category.  The lie in this and in the follow up note about using sites like PopURL is that it's a miracle if you can get away from them in only 20 minutes.  The reality is that you know you're going to click stuff and before you know it an hour is gone.

Speaking of losing more time than you'd planned, this game lets you move through levels quickly enough, and those levels are sufficiently different that you keep telling yourself, "Oh, just one more level."  Until your sandwich is stale and your coffee is cold.  P.S. I played it with no sound because it loads with a heavy metal soundtrack that's a bit too much for my workplace.

Speaking of free games, 101 free games.  Obviously I haven't downloaded all of these, so you're on your own here.

Tastespotting is a foodie group blog on which people post photos of food linked to recipes and articles about food.

Speaking of cooking, make your own magnetic spice rack.  (Might be safer on the fridge, but still a cool idea.)

By the way, I saw a version of the magnetic spice rack on Curbly, a community for home do-it-yourselfers.

Andy Griffith vs. Patriot Act

All McGyver Ever Needs…

Top 10 Magic Trick Tutorial Videos - I feel smugger already.

Hezbollah Riots in Lebanon (Continuously Updated) - Riotblogging from Michael Totten.  (Funny that he seems to feel self conscious about merely rounding up links and not being in the middle of it reporting first hand.)

I followed this link to see the original non-silhouette version of iPod ads, but ended up clicking through most of the gallery.  It's another nice collection of how advertising images are altered.  Most of the final photos are pretty surreal, so it's not a shocking expose like some of the transhumanism models we've seen, but still interesting.

Jared's best Subway ad yet.  I wonder if the couple will get a celebrity mash-up name.

The Beinart International Surreal Art Collective including Toddlerpedes from Jon Beinart.

Today's token StarWarsery:  The destruction of the Death Star done with hands and the new Honda X-Wing.

Service asks you to give up your SS and credit card numbers ... for safety's sake?  What's funny is that I saw the subject of this article before I saw the article itself and right away sent it to Bob to see if he thought it was a good idea for people to go typing their Social Security number into a random Web page.  In short, he said no.

Shoe Rolodex maintains law and order

The latest in the Second Life ping-pong assessment: Fortune's David Kirkpatrick reports on why IBM's Sam Palmisano and other tech leaders think Second Life could be a gold mine.

... and back again:  Virtual world's supposed economy is 'a pyramid scheme'

Speaking of virtual worlds, BBC plans online children's world - "Those building CBBC World said the emphasis would be on safety and responsibility, with no chatrooms or facilities for building new parts of the virtual world."  Hmmm... maybe it'll teach kids that computer worlds are boring.

The complete guide to PDFs in iTunes - I thought this was going to be about eBooks, but it's really about how-to instructions and sewing patterns and stuff like that (though it does look ahead to eBook possibilities).

A quick trip to the mailbag:

Dear Will,

Since first discovering your link, I have been an avid fan.

And, as an active supporter of the Carolina Trekkers in their endeavor to raise awareness for stroke research while discovering more of America, I hope you will take the time to CLICK on their site.

They have been featured in local newspapers and are destined to be featured again and again along their route.

Edie New and I have been best of friends since 8th grade.  Now in our fifties, life is just beginning in many ways.

Thank you sincerely for your time.

Best Regards,
Peg

Will replies:  I was totally expecting something related to Star Trek, not a bunch of ladies on a cross country horse ride.  But that's not to say I was disappointed.  In fact, I have an American friend living in Mexico who owns a horse there and has been trying to figure out how to get it to the east coast (of the U.S.).  She needs to follow these ladies' path.  (Can it really be this straight a line?)

I don't have a strong lead item today but that's no reason to go home with links on the clipboard while the blog goes stale.

Tech buzz watchword: ultracapacitors or ultracaps - The article doesn't have the typical mainstream dreaminess so let me point out that paragraph for you on page 2: "EEStor claims that, using an automated production line and existing power electronics, it will initially build a 15-kilowatt-hour energy-storage system for a small electric car weighing less than 100 pounds, and with a 200-mile driving range. The vehicle, the company says, will be able to recharge in less than 10 minutes."  I'd like to see one of these in a motorcycle.  My garage already gives me free (with my parking fee) electricity to keep my battery fresh, I could have no fuel costs with a battery powered bike.

Glenn Greenwald listens to Alberto Gonzales Congressional testimony so you don't have to (and makes it kind of entertaining).

Having read the entire Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series I love the "half-animal" woman story.  And now that I've got a baby and have seen how he puts every single thing he touches into his mouth, the idea of a human child surviving in the wild seems a little more plausible.

"Cancer cured" headline of the week:  What if there was a cancer cure that wasn't profitable?

Parody site seeing its link passed around everywhere:  Get a First Life.  "What's this body thing, and what do I do with the dangly bits?"  Boing Boing has links to the source as well as a follow-up that includes the first time I've ever heard of a "Proceed and Permitted" letter (the opposite of a "cease and desist").  The page's creator has quite a bit to say about it actually.

The Invisible Enemy in Iraq - Not what I thought.  It's about bacteria and other problems of disease on the battlefield in Iraq.

Speaking of unseen in Iraq, "Ghost Soldiers" Compromise Operations, Endanger Iraqis and Americans - It's helpful to read a specific description of corruption in Iraq (by a blogger who's actually there) rather than have it be the subject of vague blame.  In this case, reporting extra (ghost) soldier and pocketing the pay provided for them.

The Ergopod lets you work at your computer from any position or posture.  And after all, what's the worst that could happen if you lie under a table with a monitor over your face?

If you're of a certain age, the first thing you thought of when you heard that the Bears were going to the Super Bowl is the rap song they did last time (which should have disqualified them from any further Super Bowl appearances).

I read this piece about Indie music labels getting together to force iTunes and Zune to cut deals with them the way deals were cut with the big labels.  This led me to read the new business model entry.  Both are good food for thought.  After going back and forth in my mind about whether I agree, I can at least say that the new business model described is more true to the nature of music scenes.  (It's the fact that I'm not much of a music scenester that makes me resist agree that it's a good idea.)

TechCruch provides an exciting description of a new photo site called SmugMug.  Until very recently I would have turned my nose up at sites like this (somewhat expensive for a lot of fancy sharing and community tools) but since I started using Flickr I have a completely different outlook.  Flickr users are much more active and engaged and enthusiastic than anything I encountered when I only published a stand alone photoblog.

Have you ever looked at some of those Google Maps sightings and wished you knew when the satellite was going to fly over so you could have something prepared?  These people knew.

Speaking of playing with online maps, Yahoo's TagMaps is getting cooler to play with as more people use it.  Be sure to take your time as you try it because the features take a little while to load.  The loose stacks of photos remind me of that big touch screen we saw the other day.

Speaking of things I had fun playing with.  I think Viddler is so cool I actually signed up for an account (free) to make sure it worked the way I thought it did.  It's a video sharing site, but it lets you add tags and comments to the time bar** under the video so not only can you comment on the video itself but you can add your two cents to the specific part you're speaking to.  (**What the heck is that called?  I'm talking about the little progress line that runs along the bottom of the video window.  Usually there's a little bead that shows where you are in the course of the clip.  You know what I'm talking about.  Does that even have a name? The time stamp bar?  The progress line?  The play strip?)

A new crop of kids: Generation We - If you've got young kids already this probably won't be news to you, but not having grown up with computers I'm really interested to see the role they play in the lives of kids -- particularly since I've been heard to say that the Internet is no place for kids.  This is also the first time I've seen a name given to the new generation (Generation We).

Speaking of kids learning.  How about an alphabet rap?

Stress testing the wing of a Boeing 777 - You can jump ahead to around 2:20 if you just want to see what it looks and sounds like when a wing snaps.

No Pork - Proving that pranking fast food restaurants is a global diversion and funny in any language.

The procrastinator's clock keeps you guessing about what time it really is so you can't lazily give yourself "just a few more minutes."  Because you know your trick of setting your watch a few minutes ahead only makes you procrastinate more as you round up how many minutes ahead your watch probably is.

Hear the iPhone ring tone.

Games I played:

• Cosmic Crush was fun once I figured out how not to lose right away, but then it took too long to play.
• Tower Blaster - It's an 8 level demo, but that's enough to make for a satisfying lunchtime puzzle.

The best thing I clicked all day is this video of a water buffalo being purchased for a Chinese family.  Jason Kottke has links and back story but in short, inspired by a charity that purports to buy these animals for poor people but doesn't actually do so, some people got together to make it really happen.  UPDATE:  Let me just clarify that they do buy animals, just not in the direct way implied by their 'catalog.'  I don't doubt that good work is done by this organization and the money they receive.  The point is that the people in the video wanted to literally purchase a water buffalo and give it to someone.

Speaking of Kottke links, I may not know what a rep is outside of a weightlifting context but I'll be ready when I hear someone say "book" instead of cool.

"Working all but alone from his hardware-strewn office, Jeff Han is about to change the face of computing. Not even the big boys are likely to catch him."  This is about a kid who invented a really cool touch screen interface - video of which we saw a few months ago, so I was going to skip it, but then I saw the new video.  I mean seriously, can you imagine?

'Extraordinary heroism' of helicopter rescue bid - They actually strapped themselves to the outside of a helicopter and flew into an enemy fort to retrieve a fallen comrade's body.

Mickey Kaus returns to that Boxer/Rice confrontation - And this time he's more explicit about its real meaning: "Boxer's illogical detour allowed her to not-so-subtly advertise her motherhood in line with the reigning mommy-rhetoric of the Pelosi Era, in which "the gavel" is in 'the hands of America's children.'"

Katie Couric must have missed all the media coverage when she left the Today show because she seems to be realizing only now that she's the only female news anchor.

37 Fads That Swept The Nation.

"Completed by 1772, 'The Writer' was the most perfect and complex automaton built by Swiss clockmaker Jacquet-Droz."  It's a wind-up doll that dips a pen in ink and writes legibly on paper.

Choose your own adventure for iPod is here.

Iranian Politicians Threaten to Wipe Ahmadinejad From Map - Why wait for us to be at war with them before we start paying attention to their political climate?

I think I like these guys even more than the OK Go treadmill dance.

Lately when I see commercials on TV that use supposed real people with real names I Google them.  Of course nothing comes up.  But it didn't even occur to me to hunt for American Idol contestants.  Luckily, someone else did.  And by the way, since American Idol is on Fox and their parent company also owns MySpace, you'd think they'd have already come up with a round-up like this.  NOTE:  It's kind of cruel, but then American Idol is like a big hazing ritual anyway.

The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trailer

That was Gary Jules again during the emotional scene in Grey's Anatomy tonight.  The track is called "Falling Awake" but I couldn't find any free copies anywhere.  Here's his MySpace page though.

Web Sites Challenge the Textbook Goliaths - This is about Web sites that cut the mark-up, but I thought the new trick was to use the Internet to buy books overseas.

Tricky flicky - I hope this kid is getting paid by the company that makes that cell phone.

This guy has a hard time getting FedEx to ship empty containers.  My first reaction was that this isn't really a "homeland security is ridiculous" story because the employee is clearly just making up his own rules.  But then I have to wonder how often idiocy is employed in the name of security hysteria.

The president of India asks Yahoo Answers how to solve the problem of terrorism.

The top 100 most endangered species

The Jeep Waterfall writes messages and designs with falling water.

Remember when I was talking about how people perceive personalities in the sites they use?  This post matches sites with photos of how they imagine the average user looks.

What's funny to me about Stephen Colbert's explanation of the AT&T/Cingular deal is that I'd mentioned the deal to someone in connection to Cingular and the new iPhone but I didn't get the details right and the other person explained it all to me and said exactly what Colbert says in this video.

"Cancer cured" headline of the week:  Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers

Fact Checking 101 - How Skeptic magazine was Duped by an Environmental Activist Group (The duping was over a story you may have heard of about creationists in the Bush administration pressuring park guides at the Grand Canyon.  Turns out that wasn't very true.)

Parents fight to clear the Internet of photos taken of their daughter after she was killed in a car crash.  The story is a little extreme, but in a nutshell: "Graphic accident-scene photos, including close-up shots of Nikki, who suffered massive head trauma, have been leaked onto the Internet."  For some reason people are actually harassing the family members with the photos.  That part I don't really understand, but there's an interesting lesson in how once something's online, it's not coming off.

Speaking of not getting offline, I've had this one in my notes for a couple of days waiting for a segue like the crash photo story.  "Videos show challenge of info wrangling" is about a paparazzi video that shows a Brazilian model Daniela Cicarelli and her boyfriend engaging in various degrees of PDA on a beach.  At one point they appear to be having sex in the water.  It's not as explicit as, say, the Paris Hilton sex tape, but it's pretty racy nonetheless (consider that a NSFW NOTE if you happen upon a link to the video in the course of clicking through pages related to this story).  The model and her boyfriend were sufficiently mortified at the video's release that they went to some pretty extreme measures to try to keep it from spreading, including getting ISPs to block customer access to YouTube.  Outraged at having their Internet censored just because some girl couldn't keep her bikini bottom on, a boycott of the model (NOTE: this link has a photo of a scantily clad woman pretty close to the top) became part of the campaign to liberate the Web.

Plus, my best New Year's Eve picture from this year:

(This post is actually a test of importing YouTube and images.  In case I don't get the video to work right, you should watch it here, it's very good.)

Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo Cafe are drawing attention to the turnover in offices of US Attorneys around the country.  "Okay, so we already know that the White House has now taken the unprecedented step of firing at least four and likely seven US Attorneys in the middle of their terms of office..."  Also:

• A bit more on the relevant portion of the Patriot Act.
• Video of Senator Feinstein speaking out about the matter and proposing that appointments be made by the district court, not the executive branch.

What 1.2 Trillion can buy - In case the word "squander" wasn't already ringing in your head, the author outlines things the Iraq War cost could have bought.  There's a handy graphic if you don't feel like reading it.

Speaking of criticizing the war, what was the argument made by the anti-war left at the war's outset and has that argument been vindicated by the results we see?  The piece focuses on objections to preemptive/preventive war and decides that the failures in Iraq do not prove that attacking first is a bad idea.  Maybe, but it does prove the difficulty of assessing a threat and the cost of making the wrong assessment, which is ultimately the reason to reject preventive war.  If it was guaranteed to always be correct and always work, there wouldn't be any objection (on those grounds).

Speaking of looking back at the history of the lefty blogosphere, MyDD looks back on a graph of pundit blog linking patterns in the few months before the 2004 election and speculates on what such a graph would look like now for bloggers on the left.  It might get a little more specific than most people care about, but if you're interested in political anthropology (digital political ethnography?) this and the related links make for some essential reading.

Speaking of thought provoking MyDD posts, this one tallying blog and media mentions of potential presidential candidates is fun to digest.  The more free media you get, the less your campaign has to spend to get your name out.

I don't think this LonelyGirl show gets near enough credit as an online serial.  I know video blogs get their fair share of hype, but a long running serialized fictional drama online for free with a huge following is pretty unique.  It's remarkable that no mainstream site has come up with a Web soaps concept.

You've seen this on TV, but kudos to KING TV for offering this with natural sound in full screen with just a little logo in the corner.  No TV anchor talking over it making stupid puns, no loops of just the dramatic parts, no setting it in a TV graphic fake computer browser.  (Oh, it's the video of cars skidding on icy roads.)

Speaking of rubbernecking, The Jawa Report finds yet another Saddam execution video.  This one is after the event, when his body is put into an ambulance and taken away.  No blood or anything, just him in a white sheath, his head exposed.  There's so much amateur video of this you'd think he'd been executed in Times Square.

Geni is a new cool family tree maker.  The idea is really neat.  You start with your name and your e-mail address and add the names and e-mails of the family you know.  When you add their e-mail they're invited to add to the tree.  Hopefully they know some family members you don't, and the tree grows.  From there you can flesh out the profiles to share more information with your family.  There's a note in the "about" demo about the tree being private.  One of the most forehead-slapping personal security tips I ever read pointed out that people who build family trees on public sites are publicizing their mother's maiden name or the mother's maiden name of other family members.  What does the credit card company ask on the phone when they verify your account?  You mother's maiden name.

More on the legacy of Robert Anton Wilson.

Wrong winner chosen twice by same voting machine - Hey, what are they doing reporting on voting machines?  We're not supposed to worry about that until the week before the election when it suddenly becomes clear we have a broken system.  (As for the actual story, it's more reasoning than hard proof and has to do with an unusually large number of people in very specific districts deciding not to vote in the main race of the local election.)

100 impressions in four minutes.  Some are better than others.  Once the vicarious embarrassment wore off the most dazzling thing was the array of characters.

The 250 in this headline refers to the 250 km/h speed at which the car hit the bird, which looks like it may have been a chicken.  NOTE:  Since I've learned that some readers like to pick apart the URLs of some of these links, I'll add that I did so with this one and did end up clicking one thinly covered image of an erect penis.  However, enduring that did bear fruit.  Carved fruit to be exact.  Unless you speak the language, play this click roulette at your own risk.

3D morphable model face animation - I'm not sure what the source of this is, it's basically a software demo.  Amazing stuff.  Plus, we learn that if Tom Hanks lost a lot of weight he'd become Michael Stipe.

Fighting the Front - This is an account of a protest staged in Second Life against a conservative French political party at their virtual headquarters.  Though I should caution you that you may suffer a strain from rolling your eyes, it's still pretty interesting.  Plus, after reading the entry I popped open SL and went to Porcupine to check it out.  There are still some protest signs spinning in the air.

Eye-contact device for webcams - It takes the image of the person you're talking to and reflects it on a mirror in front of the lens of your Web cam.  So when you talk to their image, you're looking directly into the camera without having to feel like you're talking to a camera.

Would legalizing (or actually licensing) opium in Afghanistan solve the drug problem there?

Hacking TiVo: 23 Tips to Turbocharge Your DVR - Includes links to assorted tips and tricks from around the Web.  NOTE:  I have not tried any of them and I have little doubt that screwing around with your DVR is not welcomed by any official company involved.  I'm linking because it's cool to see what could be done (and probably will become available commercially eventually).

Speaking of cool stuff I haven't tried, "Packet Garden captures information about how you use the internet and uses this stored information to grow a private world you can later explore."  If it looks like the IT guys are in a good mood tomorrow I'll try to install this on my work machine.

"iJigg is the place for you to find those rare addictive tunes from musicians worldwide."  I'm not sure what the restrictions are but I'm enjoying playing with it, particularly the quick load time of the songs.  I read in the blog that they're working on playlists, but in the mean time, quick load time means it's not that big a deal to flip over to that tab in the browser and click the next song that strikes your fancy.

"How to enter this highly creative flow state, the state where you lose all sense of time, your ego vanishes, and you become one with the task in front of you."  (Seven rules)

Eyebrow raising tales of a young man's Burger King employment.  Perhaps even weirder than the stories is the fact that it's in a bodybuilding forum and they appear to say "reps" as an expression of showing approval.

Speaking of exercise (well, almost), remember the guy who was going to try to lose weight playing with his Wii?  He's reached the six week mark and shares his results - a nine pound loss.

Commuter Click: "In the bedroom, Natalia was a superstar, an escort in demand by Wall Street traders and NFL quarterbacks alike. Her boss, Jason Itzler, who called himself the "King of All Pimps," wanted to turn his brothel into a Playboy-style national empire, with Natalia as its crown jewel—and his wife. A love story."  The thing clicks through 12 pages (talk about click whoring!) but the first page was good so I'll print it and read it on the bus.

A round-up of Sci Fi Channel shows in development.  I should disclose that NBCU owns Sci Fi and is a partner in MSNBC.com.  I actually know a guy who went over to work for the Sci Fi Web site, but I haven't talked to him in a while.

Since I'm not keeping up with sharing mail as well as I'd like, I'm going to try to make a more frequent habit of posting mail a little at a time instead of trying to save it up for a big post that I never get around to compiling.  And because Vivian in the first letter has raised an issue I'm self conscious about, today's the day it starts.

Hi Will,
I love your blog, but I really don't like your new format.  It's sort of misleading because it makes me think that the permalinked page contains only links related to the headline and intro blurb.  Please change it back!  Is this just a ploy to increase page views?
Vivian

Will replies:  Hi Vivian, thanks for the feedback.  I understand your perception that I'm click whoring, and in fact that's why I resisted using that "read more" feature since moving to this new blogware.  And actually, it was bona fide click whoring that made me make the initial switch because a year-end numbers check showed Clicked doing really poorly.  But now that I've made the switch I've learned two key lessons. The first is that the year-end numbers report was wrong, the stat tool was simply not recording this blog's traffic correctly.  The second is that this blogware works a whole lot better when I use that excerpt.  Not only am I getting more accurate traffic reports, but I'm getting much more accurate referral stats to see where traffic is coming from.  And on top of that, because the entry is already open with comments at the bottom it seems like more people are commenting.  That's a lot of wins.

Your point about giving the impression that the whole post is only related to the headline and tease is completely understandable and I'm not sure how to fix it.  Should I use some kind of code when it's a long multi-itemed entry instead of a single thematic one?  I could put a parenthetical "and more" after those headlines I guess, but since a typical Clicked entry is a mish mosh, regular readers can expect to find more than what the headline indicates.  People who are new to Clicked are just going to have to be confused until they become regular readers.

On a related note, some folks have written in asking why MSNBC.com links replace the page while the others open in new windows.  That's a general MSNBC.com site standard that I agree makes a little more sense when the navigation on the page stays the same.  I'm not sure I'll be able to change it, but at least I can say it's on purpose and not a malfunction.

Other highlights:

Hey Will, I thought you might be interested in a site related to the Hornbeck kidnapping. I was googling around for more info on the kidnapping and I found a site called stopsylviabrowne.com.  I guess she is a well known "psychic." Anyway, apparently Shawn's parents were on the Montel Williams show in February of 2003, and Sylvia Browne offered to help find their son. She proceeded to tell them that he was dead, and probably in the woods somewhere. Whoops. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else, I mean, the parents went on national TV and a a famous psychic tells them their son is dead! Some people who might really believe her might stop looking, I am glad that his parents weren't so susceptible to this piece of work.
Thanks Will, keep up the good work.
-Alex

Will replies:  Thanks Alex.  Last time I heard about Sylvia Browne she had made an ass of herself by telling a family member of a firefighting 9/11 victim that their loved one was lost in the water and then tried to explain it by suggesting that he was somehow drowned by his firehose.  I don't understand why anyone pays attention to that woman any more than I understand why the news runs a headline when Pat Robertson claims to talk to God.

Will,
Here's an interesting news article.
My questions is:  If the dealer should win, how will the homeless men come up with the money?
- Aaron S.

Will replies:  It sounds like he's suing for something other than money, like a restraining order.  Regardless, the cops in NYC are pretty strict about drinking in public and stuff like that.  I'm surprised he can't get his local precint to act.

Will - this is interesting.
-Craig

Will expands:  It's a 7 page presentation called "A Corporate Guide to the Global Blogosphere" published as a sort of virtual magazine with pages that turn.

Its like claymation without the clay...
-Yyuuuu

When Laura Snarked Condi (Kausfiles is maddening for its lack of permalinks.  Here's a link to the nearest entry.  Scroll up.)  - Having heard the full Barbara Boxer quote I think the question of whether she was attacking Condi Rice for being unmarried and childless is a red herring to distract from criticism of the war, but the fact that it has blown up the way it has is an indication that the country is itching to have this fight.  The Times had a story on the cover this morning about how 51% of women in the U.S. are living without a spouse.  Add to that the stat that married people are now in the minority in America.  Add to that the debates over gay marriage and gay adoption and the questions of what it means to be a family.  And then add on top of that consider the record number of women in Congress and the likelihood that a Hillary Clinton campaign will make some use of her role as mother.  I blame the media and pandering politicians for degrading the subject into an over-simplified judgment about morals and values but if we look beyond that damaging and divisive rhetoric we find that this country's culture is changing and its citizens want to talk about what it means to have family experience and how that experience should be valued.

Speaking of American trends, "Americans conducted 6.7 billion searches online in December."  I feel like that is indicative of something but I'm not sure what.  It seems like a lot.  Are we an especially inquisitive people?

The Science Blogging Anthology is now for sale.  It contains highlights of the best science blogging in 2006.  I don't hate this idea.  I like books and I like reading from books, but I have to wonder what the Web futurists think of digital media taking a step backward to dead trees.  And science blogs no less!

Real-world Halo suit for military use

Islam-watching bloggers are alarmed (though not surprised) at a three part British documentary on UK mosques that are regarded as "moderate."  This is Part 1.  See the related video list for parts two and three.

The Found Bin is a massive lost & found database.  Or at least, it could be once people start using it.  One thing I'd like to know is how they clean up the list once things are found or just old.

The Inscrutable 8-Ball Revealed - They perform an autopsy on the toy.  The part about the blue fluid is pretty disturbing.

Dream home brings a big tax hike - I think about this every time I see those Makeover shows turn a small house into a McMansion.  I also wonder about the huge energy costs of those houses and how the neighbors feel about seeing the structure rise next to them - particularly in lower income urban areas where everyone has a small house on what looks like an 8th of an acre.  I don't begrudge anyone the help of those shows and I reckon Ty Pennington could win the presidency if he ran.  I just wonder what it's like when the cameras go home.  The idea of offering some kind of tax break on houses renovated by charities is probably not a bad idea.

Speaking of building houses, "Engineers are racing to unveil the world's first robot capable of building a house at the touch of a button."  The article doesn't really mention helping the poor or developing nations but that seems pretty obvious to me.  The mention of fewer architectural restraints is interesting.

Speaking of constructing objects at the touch of a button, I've read this described as a 3-D printer.  Though the description of how it works is completely different, it reminds me of this nanofactory animation I clicked not too long ago.

A Worth 1000-style photoshop contest in which celebrities' faces are mixed together.  Actually, I really like the news part of this site and always wondered if we could pull off something similar here at MSNBC.com.  Do enough people out there know how to do Photoshop caricatures (I don't) that we'd get enough submissions?

Barry Ritholtz shares a map of the U.S. on which each state's economic output is analogized to another country's GDP.  Somehow I don't think the people of Kansas would appreciate being compared to Malaysia (no offense Alex) but it's still interesting.

What could possibly go wrong with strapping a woman into a giant sling shot an winding it up with an ATV*?  Whatever it is, it doesn't happen in this clip.  I can't decide if this is safer or more dangerous than vertical bungee jumping.  It looks like the fall wouldn't be as far, but the velocity is really impressive.
(*Water cooler bet:  Am I the only one who grew up calling these things quadrunners?)

History in the making: Unsigned band reaches UK top 40 - Could this happen in the United States?  Headphones NOTE:  I clicked to their MySpace page to hear what they sound like and the song that plays first has some pretty distinct curses.

Speaking of the tastes of the crowd, what Digg doesn't like.

Speaking of identifying features of the crowd, the above link called to mind a recent click, "Digg is for kids, Reddit is for grown ups."  Leaving the specific evaluation aside, the idea of identifying a community's character is interesting, particularly as an increasing number of people rely on these communities to sort their news.

Speaking of watching how people perceive online communities, given the number of people actively using MySpace and Facebook, there's a lot riding on whether those services are perceived as "for kids" and whether another social network (like LinkedIn) can capitalize by casting itself as the social site for adults.

A science fair video of a hexafluoride demonstration has been floating around for the last few days.  The gas is heavier than air so in a lot of ways it behaves kind of like water.  I didn't think the video was flashy enough for Clicked until I saw this longer version that includes someone breathing it and talking.  Though I wouldn't have guessed it, it makes total sense that it has the opposite effect as breathing helium (which is lighter than air).

I spent the morning poking through the outstanding research of Devlin/Hornbeck online profiles done at Boing Boing.  It turns out there are a large number of gamer profiles and social site pages that are connected to the case, though there's some question about whether they were lures set up by creepy Michael Devlin or for the entertainment of his abductee Shawn Hornbeck.  Some are speculative, like this poem posted by the alias devlindev10 that makes reference to "Shawn."  But the highlight is probably this GamerTagsPics profile in which Shawn is pictured in front of Devlin's house.  The profile is researched more deeply here.

One news account I read mentioned a posting on the Hornbeck family's own site that appear to have been from Shawn himself, perhaps a cry for help.  I understand that part of the site is down, but the cache is here (scroll for the name highlighted in yellow).  The site's main page has been updated.

I also clicked the coverage at Steve Huff's True Crime Blog.  In true blog fashion Steve followed the story as it broke with multiple updates, tips, help from comments, other blogs, mainstream media and transparent corrections of false leads.  It's a real nice example of the how the art of blogging is performed.

You may be aware that there are two competing high definition formats that have the DVD industry in a bit of a log jam.  In short the two formats are HD DVD and Blu-ray.  They're not at all interchangeable and they require different players and if you buy into one and the other ends up being the industry standard you could be out a few thousand dollars.
While one of the stars of the big Consumer Electronics Show last week was a dual format player and dual format discs, most of what I've read says a compromise is not likely.  Some Web reports are speculating that the deciding factor may have taken place this week as we've learned that Sony (Blu-ray) won't put adult content on their discs.  Since porn is credited by some for shifting the critical mass to VHS***, this could be a bad (business) move by Sony.  On the other hand, CNBC interviewed the guy from Vivid and he hasn't given up on Blu-ray.  It sounds like that's what they really want to go with even if Sony doesn't want to.  Anyway, it's always interesting when the mainstream has to acknowledge porn as a market force.  NOTE:  The links in this paragraph are safe for the first click only.  Clicking deeper, especially on the names of these porn companies like Digital Playground will put you in NSFW territory.  Oddly, the least safe link in the bunch above is the CNBC video, which is spiced up with some random non-nude pornish clips while they do the interview.

*** Since "credited by some" is pretty weak sourcing I looked for any more concrete stats or research on this.  There's no question it's part of the conventional wisdom, so much so that analysts have been waiting for the adult industry to weigh in.  After spending a few minutes reading about the history of the relationship between porn and technology I finally clicked this recent blog entry on the same subject.  I like the first comment on that entry that points out that it's not just a matter of how much porn is consumed but that a porn consumer wouldn't want a separate format for their other media.  The selling point is more along the lines of "...and you can play your porn on it."

Speaking of the power of porn, I suppose it's not a shocker that a news outlet took liberties to make a story more scary and threatening, but I don't think that means there's no story there.  Among the many other angles this story could take and keep its porn hook, the original story of porn sites producing a Wii friendly format is interesting in itself.  To my mind the real lead is either that the Web isn't just for computers anymore or that video games aren't just for kids anymore.

Speaking of the pervasiveness of video games, World of Warcraft surpasses 8 million subscribers worldwide.  Interesting breakdown:

• North America now exceeds 2 million
• Europe passes the 1.5 million player mark
• China passes the 3.5 million player mark

The blogosphere had a strong reaction to the U.S. military attacking Iranian government offices in northern Iraq, but then, so did everyone else who is paying attention so I don't want to be redundant in this space.  Two clicks that resonated for me:

• Not that we'd ever want history to get in the way of important decisions of international diplomacy but it's probably a good idea to start learning about the Iran/Iraq war.
• "It is worth underscoring what the administration's views are as to its authority to attack Iran."

"Don't let faux Klingons send real Americans to war.  It's wrong."  I wonder if anyone keeps track of the nerdiest speeches in Congress.

Photos of Iran that you don't often see (in the U.S.).  These remind me of a collection from a British photoblogger of Iranian descent.  Also here.  There really is a lot of beauty there.

With all the coverage of skinny models last week (and if you can view the photo on that story without cringing you're a stronger soul than I) I didn't see much mention of the public inconvenience caused by women pursuing this ridiculous ideal.  Still, this feels wrong.

Maybe in a different country (New Zealand) sheep are scarier or at least less silly than they are in the U.S.

Speaking of ridiculous movies, Blades of Glory.  I'm surprised this one hasn't already been made, it seems like such an easy target.  I looked for an official site and didn't find one, so I'm not sure where this trailer came from.  The real question is whether you've already seen all the funny parts once you've watched the trailer.

Treehugger readers offer recommendations of natural Earth-safe shampoos.  Reading the initial query, I'm wondering if the guy wouldn't be better off just rubbing his bar of soap over his head.  The part about proteins and bacteria was news to me.

Speaking of learning new things, Must-know terms for the 21st Century intellectual: Redux - It's "a list of the most fundamental and crucial terms that are coming to define and will soon re-define the human condition, and that subsequently should be known by anyone who thinks of themselves as an intellectual."  These aren't marketing buzzwords, they're mostly philosophical labels and tech trends.

Robert Anton Wilson died last week.  I only really knew his name as one of the authors of The Illuminatus! Trilogy but a lot of folks online took a moment to praise and remember him.  I wonder what he would have thought of The Number 23.  (trailer)  Also, this is the first death-bed blog I've ever seen.  Deeper coverage at 10 Zen Monkeys.

David Carr (New York Times media critic) talks about the look and feel of his video blogging.  In short, production values are secondary.  I don't think he's saying anything terribly new, but what's significant is that he's saying it from the New York Times.

This photo of an ant and a microchip is strangely familiar after seen the crack addicted spider with a gun the other day.

Ziploc Omelets may be Toxic - I never heard of this trick but it sounds like it could be done with something that is more heat safe.  My favorite egg cooking trick is to make scrambled eggs in the microwave.  You have to stir them pretty often because they cook more slowly in the middle, but they make a kind of egg foam that's lighter than when you use a pan.  (Well, what do you think this is, the Reluctant Gourmet?)

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope - Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III  - When was the last time you read a thoughtful consideration of the Star Wars movies?

"This is Charlie, shooting a rocker launcher in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He paid 200 USD for it."  Pretty straightforward.  NOTE:  Contains a couple out-loud curses.  NON-NOTE: The link calls up a really dramatic content warning page, but other than the couple curses there's nothing graphic or mature going on here.

"Playing games can be deadly, particularly when you take a wiimote in the chest."

Leaked publicity pics for Pirates of the Carribean 3 - Is that May 25, 2007? (Yes.)  Sheesh they really churn these things out.

Negotiations have begun in the purchase of the micronation of Sealand by file trading service PirateBay.com.  Negotiations have begun in the tenancy of the legally disputed micronation of Sealand by the mega Bittorrent Tracker site Pirate Bay which seeks to make the deal in order to circumnavigate international copyright laws.

The Banksy online shop is offering prints for free.

How to market your blog in 2007 - Advice on promoting your blog doesn't really change much over time but it's good to share a link like this periodically as the blogging population is constantly turning over.

RFID billboards that respond to you as you drive by.  Funny description here too.  How does this work and yet I only have an 85% success rate on the EZ Pass lane into the Holland Tunnel going 2 mph?

Even though I know this is a trick of perspective and what appears square is not, I can't make my eyes see it.

What questions are Chinese people trying to answer with Google?  Lists of their most popular questions.

Why your computer still knows your surfing sins even if you clear the cache and browser history.

Folks are saying she appears inebriated in this interview.  I think some of her awkwardness comes from a bit of satellite lag in what she's hearing in her ear.  She also seems to be trying to appear enthusiastic about something she doesn't really care that much about.  Those two alone are enough to make a viewer ask, "What's wrong with this guy."  Anyway, it's not my job to make excuses for Paula Abdul.  Draw your own conclusions. 

I've said before that I'm not very gadget savvy but it was hard not to notice that the entire online world came to a slack-jawed, neck snapping halt at the announcement of the new Apple iPhone.  To the extent that I'm as dazzled by shiny new things as anyone else, I fully admit that this looks really cool and exciting and I want one.  Recognizing that there's not much rationality to that opinion, now that the dust is settling I've mostly clicked critical items to balance my enthusiasm.  What I clicked:

iPhone is awesome (restrictions apply)  (If you use iPhone at the beginning of a sentence, should you capitalize it?)

What's Missing From the iPhone - This is a shorter list than the one above.  3G is a kind of cell phone service.  It's been explained to me as broadband for cell phones.

The iPhone is not a smartphone - It's at least worth noting that the definition of smartphone is one that accepts software downloads.  There is apparently some debate about whether (or how quickly) the lock on this phone that prevents downloads will be hacked.

It looks like the stock market's reaction to the iPhone was similar to my initial exuberance.

iPhone and the End of PC Era - He's talking about people moving away from computers and doing their computing on hand held devices instead.  When I saw the headline I thought he was going to make the case that public exposure to Apple's operating system, OS X, through the iPhone would make it a gateway to using Macs.  Have you (I'm talking to Windows users now) ever gone to the Apple store and tried one of their cool-looking computers and immediately walked away when you realized everything on it was foreign?

Speaking of the iPhone bringing and end to things, iPhone is death of the ringtone industry.

iPhone & LG KE850: separated at birth?

Kottke's iPhone model - He made one of cardboard to get a better sense of its size.

iPhone debate: I'm a Mac vs. Bill Gates - This is supposed to be funny, but as someone in a catch-up position I found this really informative.

Speaking of learning about new Apple products, I also clicked Questions about the AppleTV.  The idea behind this one is to take what's on your computer (though iTunes) and put it on your TV.

Speaking of trying to keep up, Gary says your hard drive is obsolete.  He was actually talking to me about this (he sits two cubes away) before he left for CES.  My personal non-work laptop is a few years old but it's already obsolete for some of the applications I'd like to run so I'm trying to pay closer attention to what's coming up so my next computer lasts a little longer.  (My secret desire is to build my own machine.  Click that link and tell me it doesn't look easy.)

Speaking of the future of technology, sensational new "fact-power" unleashed.

The latest Keith Olbermann clip to storm the Internet is his review of the president's credibility on Iraq.  Of course, everyone is linking to the Crooks & Liars version, but for the sake of home team support, here's the MSNBC.com version.

Here's a clever scam that's probably worked on a few desperate people.  In short, someone offers to rent you an apartment but can't show it to you because they're out of town.  But send them a month's rent and they'll send you the keys.  In this case the story is told from an interesting perspective.

Creative writing assignment for the next bad weather day:  Write a story that explains the presence of RFID chips in Canadian coins held by American defense contractors.  UPDATE:  The cable folks had a guy on to talk about it earlier today.

Tapping this beer bottle on the counter is enough agitation to get it to freeze.  If you're going to try it, I reckon there's some risk here of the bottle shattering (from the expanding ice, not the counter tap).

A map of where U.S. casualties came from.  I'm not sure what conclusion could be drawn from this other than that it appears to align with overall population distribution in the U.S.
All the tabs on this page are pretty interesting.  I don't know what to make of the "frequency" chart that shows no particularly deadly day of the week.

How to win Wii Tennis (at any cost) - This is satire, but if you think about it, it's just a matter of time before we hear about Wii-related injuries.

Was this librarian put on the FBI watch list for ordering books with the word Jihad in the title?  Folks in the comments are skeptical, but the blogger is a priest.  UPDATE:  Thanks to the Howlin' Hobit for pointing out in the comments that this story has been retracted with apologies.

What happens when a country bans guns?  More sword headlines.

O'Reilly and Colbert are going to be guests on each other's shows next week.  I don't actually watch the O'Reilly show, so it'll be interesting to see them side by side to see how much Colbert has actually taken for his character.

African traffic jam - This is an interesting site from a photography student perspective.  See on the right under the judge for best and worst photo archive and explanations for why they were accepted or rejected from this company's stock photography database.

Speaking of the death of giant animals, "Human habitation has been, and is increasingly, playing a direct role not only in the extinction of species, but in their evolution. By our own actions, we may be accompanied into the future by ever more diverse pests and pathogens, and may leave behind what we value most—elephants, tigers, and others of the earth's great megabeasts."

Speaking of changing life on the planet, I eat rubbish - In the comments there's a bit of a debate about just how much garbage this thing pulls out of the Thames River, but there's no denying it's a valuable tool.  We need more robots cleaning up the earth.  (OK, it's "passive" so it's probably not a robot, but that doesn't mean robots are off the hook.  C'mon robots, do your part.)

Speaking of saving the Earth, Sweden plans to go green.

Speaking of the dying planet, here's a well done global warming ad that shows people doing ordinary things in the midst of natural disasters.

Still speaking green, here's a lengthy piece on GM's plug-in hybrid concept.

Speaking of the car show, the only thing I'm interested in about car shows are the concept cars.  I'm liking number 4 in this slide show.  This is cool too.

One more CES link: "Among the many things to be unveiled at this week's Consumer Electronics Show is a new sound-leveling technology from Dolby Laboratories that goes into a TV that ensures that loud announcers and commercials won't leave you scrambling for the volume control on your remote."

"Cancer Cured" headline of the week: How spicy foods can kill cancers

The best thing to come from the Rosie/Trump ridiculousness is this game that lets you fight them.

Wedding mapper - No more hand drawn maps tucked in with the invitation.  You know those aggravating wedding maps that are all out of scale and show random landmarks?

I ended up with a lot of YouTube video in my notes today so I decided to use them all in one shot.

Have you heard anything about the movie Children of Men?  I hadn't until last night when I clicked this compilation of scenes and critical acclaim (NOTE: the creator warns that it contains spoilers).  Then I clicked the trailer and it sounds like a great story.  Great story, great movie, but I haven't heard much about it?  Apparently for a lot of people online, that's just too much to bear.  Some people found the movie so good and so compelling that they've launched a Web campaign to raise its profile in spite of the lack of marketing from the studio.  If this actually works and the movie becomes a break-out hit as a result of online word of mouth, we can probably look forward to a whole new era in movie marketing (not to mention a new tune from the MPAA on piracy).  UPDATE:  As I code up this entry it occurs to me that there was no greater Web campaign for a movie than Snakes on a Plane and I'm not sure the studios learned any positive lessons from that.

Though I'm not aware of one, it seems like Saturday Night Live is hosting a contest for responses to their Justin Timberlake "box" video.  I clicked one called How to Get a Guy in Silicon Valley, which should be titled "Mac in my top" if only to help you understand what the heck they're saying.  Slightly less popular, but better sung and produced (and funnier) is My box in a box.  It's basically safe, but fraught with innuendo and "make love to the camera" type moves.

Speaking of funnier, this guy's silly laugh entertained an audience for nine minutes, upstaging the actual comedian who'd planned to use him as a prop, and now almost a half million people have laughed along with him.  If there was a show on TV that was nothing but people laughing, I'd watch it.

Speaking of risqué online video parodies, PS3 vs. Wii - Done in the style of the PC/Mac commercials, Wii is a scantily clad boopsie.  No nudity, and really not any more racy than would impress a 13-year-old boy, but ... well, don't share it with your 13-year-old boy.  I wonder what Xbox would be in this scenario.

I've seen the Spiders on Drugs link floating around for a couple weeks, but I thought it was old lab video and I wasn't really interested.  Today on a whim I clicked it and tried to fast forward just to see if the spiders on drugs built funny webs.  Turns out the whole thing is funny and at under 2 minutes it's a worthwhile click for a chuckle.

Second Life: 'Unless you're a sexual deviant, boring as hell' - While I agree that it's hard to find things to do in Second Life, I don't agree that that makes it useless.  It's not really a game, so it's not correct to judge it as such.

Speaking of virtual worlds and games, Presentation given by Joi Ito at the 23rd Chaos Communications Congress on World of Warcraft.  If I could have a video version of the Commuter Click, this would be it.  He makes it clear from the beginning that Second Life and World of Warcraft are like apples and oranges.  That may be true, but they both have that aura of "if you're not paying attention to this you're missing something important."

Baby panda sneezes.

As long as we're dealing in cute, Real world Bambi and Thumper

Wicked hard Jet Ski game

Yahoo is adding some "wisdom of the crowds" to its local listings.  I think the idea is cool and should make for better listings.  I wanted to give a good example or something, but while I was able to edit the entry of one recently closed restaurant in my neighborhood, I found their local listings generally a mess and hard to deal with.  Maybe this new feature will be the first step in their improvement. If I were cynical I'd wonder if Yahoo already knows their listings are a mess and they found a great free way to fix them with a timely Web gimmick.

Speaking of contributing info on your local scene, I read Susan Mernit's announcement of Placeblogger which aims to index (with your help) all of the handy hyperlocal news sites and blogs that you use on a regular basis to get news that's relevant to where you live.  I have mixed feelings about this one.  As an avid fan of local reporting who is very familiar with my local offerings this doesn't look particularly useful.  As a reporter who often looks for regional blogs where news takes place, this is probably one of the first places I'd go. It has a real retro feel in the way it makes raw lists.  No tag clouds that might sort the locations more visually, no map mash-ups which would be the obvious interface.  It reminds me of years ago when blogs were for socializing and people submitted their blogs to regional sites with the goal of mixing with and getting linked by their neighbors.  When I was writing the Blogspotting blog for MSNBC.com in 2002/2003 I would regularly report on new cities with new lists of bloggers.  Boston, New York, Dallas/Ft.Worth...  Recently we saw a nice Cleveland round up.  Anyway, it's interesting to see that model with a new journalistic mission.  The folks commenting at PressThink seem enthusiastic about the term "placebloggers."  Could that be the term I was looking for in place of Time Magazine's incorrectly imprecise "you"?  "Oh, my husband isn't here right now, he's down the street taking pictures of the flooded creek.  He's a placeblogger.  I am a placeblogging widow."

Since I got a lot of critical mail last time I used the phrase "wisdom of crowds" let me quickly offer The Dumbness of Crowds.  It contrasts collective intelligence with the averaged blandness that is collective negotiation.

Speaking of collective creations, I spent some time Friday installing software on a new laptop (It's got one of those dual core hard drives microprocessors in it.  Hoo!!).  I got this machine so I could better monitor news in places like Second Life, so I popped in there for a bit.  Realizing I had yet to see the Reuters facilities I teleported there.  If I'd done a bit more exploring I might have seen their reporter filing this very story:  Anshe Chung Studios cracks down on griefing photos.  The story is so full of fascinating issues I can hardly list them all, but at the heart of the matter is the idea that in Second Life you own your character's image so there's a chance that people who "photograph" your character are infringing your copyright if they reproduce that photo.  To my mind, it's fair to use a picture of someone if they're in the news, even if that someone is only a "second" someone.  See also Boing Boing's reporting.

Speaking of Second Life, "Stepping up the development of the Second Life Grid to everyone interested, I am proud to announce the availability of the Second Life client source code for you to download, inspect, compile, modify, and use within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2."  There's still some question about what this means exactly, but from the user/observer perspective it can only get more interesting.

Still speaking of Second Life, next time in I'm going to check out Sears.

Welcome to Wi-Fi-Ville Pop. 300 towns and growing - Eventually the Internet will be a public utility and you'll be able to say you remember when it wasn't.

"But when confronted with contrary evidence, we become "motivated skeptics" ... picking apart possible flaws in the study, recoding variables, and only when all the counterarguing fails do we rethink our beliefs..."

See also: Selective Amnesia

In talking about online atheism in my previous post I could have also pointed out the distinction between the atheists and the very vocal critics of the American Christian right.

Just how much money can you make from blogging?  Don't quit your day job.

I missed the premiere of the new Rolling Stone reality show, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up.  Meanwhile, I understand it's possible to play along at home on their Web site:  "At noon every Monday, we'll announce the week's competition, based on writing assignments the kids received on the show the night before. Entries are due Friday at noon, with weekly winners announced the following week."  It's past noon now but I'm not seeing anything.  Maybe they mean West Coast time?  UPDATE:  Here it is.

Wait a minute, I just realized that this is a reality show based on writing ability.  No eating bugs, selling ice cream in animal costumes, so wrestling in the sand in bikinis?  I'm almost afraid to watch the show to find out I'm wrong, but can you imagine if reality shows were cerebral instead of stupid?

Isn't there a Gary Larson cartoon somewhere of an astronaut looking at the bottom of his moon boot and saying, "Oops."

"More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.  The survey also finds that older teens, particularly girls, are more likely to use these sites. For girls, social networking sites are primarily places to reinforce pre-existing friendships; for boys, the networks also provide opportunities for flirting and making new friends."

Speaking of social networking and who's doing it, I don't have a LinkedIn page, but I'm beginning to think I need one. Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn

Speaking of not keeping up with the cool kids, yet another means by which people can assess my utter uncoolness:  achievement points.

The Law Catches Up To Private Militaries, Embeds - "They're now subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the same set of laws that governs soldiers. But here's the catch: embedded reporters are now under those regulations, too."

Currently listening to DJ Steveboy.  I clicked somewhere that he had mixes that are good to run to, but got sidetracked by the Kate Bush remix.  NOTE: If you're playing dance music out loud at work you probably don't need this warning, but there's a sample of a moaning woman in the Kate Bush mix that may make the person on the other side of the cube wall ask you what the heck you're listening to.

Double maze - Level 1 took me forever so I didn't play beyond that but I did get the hang of it by the time I completed that level so the others would probably go a little more quickly.

Mariah wins porn battle - Not that I care, but this feels like justice to me.  I never really understood why porn stars needed to have pun names.

Speaking of justice at war, Leahy Introduces Bill To Combat War Profiteering - Though I don't doubt that a company savvy enough to be in a position to commit this crime would be savvy enough to avoid being punished for it, it's still a nice sentiment.

Techniques for interviewing kids on camera

Funny puberty instructional animation, probably NSFW.

No, goats do not climb trees.  I refuse.

How death by hanging works - No photos or anything but still pretty disturbing.  I don't recall if it was reported how long it took Saddam to die.  By the way, there's another Saddam video out there, but I'm not bothering with a link.  The camera catches up with his dead body on a gurney and pulls back the sheet.  We see him still in his suit, his head turned sideways and a weird red spot on the side of his neck, which I decided was too gross to link to.  It's all over the place though, so you shouldn't have a hard time finding it. I even clicked it by accident once wondering what "News Adam" could mean.

How to go to M.I.T. for free - Answer:  take the courses online.  No degree though.

This should be a holiday tradition in every office.

This guy drew a map on an envelope instead of an address and it still got there.  I'm guessing this is also the reason why this page of random things sent in the mail is in circulation lately.

"Cancer cured" headline of the week:  Remotely Activated Nanoparticles Destroy Cancer - Targeted nanotech-based treatments will enter clinical trials in 2007.

Remember the article a few days ago asking if the U.S. was playing any role in the war in Somalia?  I guess we have our answer.

Will AdBrite spell the end of freebee Web video and herald a new age of ads on amateur video content?  I don't know, but hey look, Google Video Running Commercials

Mohan Seneviratne was a man of the highest caliber.  He will be sorely missed and fondly remembered.  He set an inspiring example of the standard to which we should hold our lives.  On his model I nag myself not to settle and remind myself to appreciate what's here now.

How many bloggers does it take to replace all the light bulbs in America?  Seth Godin is leading a blog-wide awareness campaign to boost the use of energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs - the one Wal-Mart is also helping promote.  Did you know they're only 2 bucks now?  Since the exercise calls for writing a bit about the bulbs here's my contribution:

Godin floats a semi-rhetorical question about the slow adoption of these superior bulbs.  Obviously he feels awareness is a significant obstacle.  I'd offer that the real reason for slow adoption is that no one is going to throw away a bulb that's working, so first all the bulbs that are currently in use have to burn out.  Then we also have to use up all those extra bulbs in the pantry closet.  Then, provided the new CF bulbs actually fit in the lamps we have, we might pick some up next time there's a sale.  Ironically, it's the desire to get our money's worth from the bulbs we've got that keeps us from buying bulbs that get us more for our money.

Silent Star Wars - (It'd be cool to hear a ragtime rendition of some of the soundtrack.)

And of course, speaking of Star Wars, you saw the Rose Bowl parade, right?

I know we've looked at the phenomenon of people accidentally flinging their Wii video game controllers through their TV sets, but I don't remember if I pointed out that the name for someone who does this is called by the unfortunate pun "wiitard" as in, "Your mom's a wiitard."  Apologies to the mentally challenged, that's just what they call it and kids are cruel.

I keep bumping into this link on New York City blogs, but really it doesn't require you be a New Yorker.  The photographer asked people how they feel about their faces and put the copy along with the portrait he took.  Obviously he picked the interesting ones.  I wonder how many boring ones he rejected.  I'd love to see this as a Flickr pool or something on a mass scale that everyone can contribute to.

In a similar vein, a reader named Dr. Charles wrote to me today about a fledgling project he's started.  "It's a project that aims to creatively examine the human scar."  Here's the link.  It's not as gross as it sounds.

Remember that Dove video of the normal woman who undergoes all manner of manipulation before the image is posted on a billboard?  Here's a funny twist on that idea.

TV ban on adverts for cheese, the latest 'junk food' - It's hard to argue with the "high salt, high fat" point.  I wonder if this seems absurd because of all the Dairy Council propaganda we've consumed as Americans or if it's because cheese is such an obvious dietary stable anyway.

God inc. - "A comedy about life in the corporate offices of God." - This is episode one.  Episode 2 came out the other day.  It's a little like "The Office" but just a little.

Speaking of not taking God seriously, Digg and YouTube Powering Atheism 2.0 - I was glad to see this headline because it's certainly been my anecdotal experience that there's a rising tide of atheism online.  I don't know if there's any study that is actually keeping track of the actual number of atheists in the world, but this piece does a good job of rounding up links that support the impression of growing ranks.  Also pointed out is the surprising prevalence of Richard Dawkins and his writings among social sites.  It's certainly interesting that the guy is a bona fide celebrity online but I'm pretty sure most people in the mainstream would think you were talking about the Family Feud guy.

Speaking of Richard Dawkins, here's the latest from him receiving wide online attention:  Executing Saddam Hussein was an act of vandalism - Here's his point:  "I want to add another and less obvious reason why we should not have executed Saddam Hussein.  His mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research: a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars."  The Hannibal Lecter theory.

Speaking of giving serious thought to religion, I'm informed by mail that, "FYI: The thirteenth Biblical Studies Carnival has been posted at Codex: Biblical Studies Blogspot. This Carnival highlights over 70 posts relating to academic biblical studies in the blogosphere for the month of December 2006.  There is also a "Biblical Studies Carnival: Best of 2006" post coming in the next day or two."

Speaking of studying the Bible.  It took me a minute for me to figure out how to use the Bible Map, but try something like Acts 13 and you'll see some hyperlinked text.  It's slow to load, but it'll zoom the map.  Cool mash-up.

Speaking of cool maps, the map of happiness asks you if you're happy and then color codes your response on a map based (I'm guessing) on your IP.

Five Hackers Who Left a Mark on 2006 - Includes one female for those of you with daughters looking for impressive, non-bikini wearing figures in computer sciences.

Web pilots and their unruly passengers - NOTE:  This is a great story that includes some Web culture history and a mention of "The September that never ended" that you don't hear often in day to day online chatter, so I'm including the link.  If you just read the text of the story, all is well and you'll be satisfied with a tale of justice exacted on the sloppily incompetent.  The story has to do with someone linking directly to one of this fellow's images without his permission and putting a huge strain on his bandwidth.  To punish them, he replaced the image with the most unholy awful obscene terrible psyche scarring image known to mankind.  More foul than even the most advanced science could match.  So NOTE:  In this story, after some warning from the author, are the words, " See what I replaced the Grim Reaper with."  You should not click these words under any circumstances.  If you understand that it's a terrible image, that's enough to understand the rest of the story.  I'm not winkingly telling you to click it.  Take my words at face value.  If you're worried you might get these instructions wrong, just skip this one.  OK, here's the link to the story.

Alan hits another one out of the park with his coverage of Blue Origin.  That's the name of the space tourism venture undertaken by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

Speaking of turning our eyes toward space, on the heel's of yesterday's focus on the Chicago UFO sightings comes this story of an unidentified piece of space lump falling through someone's roof.

And speaking of stuff from space crashing to Earth, a UFO reportedly crashed in South Africa on Saturday.

And before we stop speaking about strangeness from space, how about the mystery of Planet X?  (Should I have "speaking of" segued these to the religion links above?)

Wow, here's one for the water cooler or a long car ride:  Parents defend decision to keep girl a child - The crux of the matter:

The reason for the controversy is this: three years ago, when Ashley began to display early signs of puberty, her parents instructed doctors to remove her uterus, appendix and still-forming breasts, then treat her with high doses of oestrogen to stunt her growth.

In other words, Ashley was sterilised and frozen in time, for ever to remain a child. She was only 6.

The reason is that Ashley has a severe brain impairment and her parents didn't want to have to deal with her condition in an adult.  Obviously I'm simplifying something much more complicated.  Here's the blog of her parents if you're interested.

My colleagues in the health section ran this story back in November before the Ashley's identity was known.  Note that there's a message board on that story if there's no one hanging around your water cooler.  UPDATE:  Oops, looks like they picked it up again.  Here's the new story and some medical ethicist commentary.  They're calling it "Peter Pan" surgery.

Plastic Logic raises $100 million to enable the first "take anywhere, read anywhere" electronic reader products - This is a press release, not a news story, but the exciting part is that they're ready to begin manufacturing on a commercial scale.  I'm not sure what that means in terms of when it'll be in your local Best Buy, but at least it's that much closer to being a real product and not some futuristic tech show prototype.

How to beat the claw game - Can this really be true?  I'm skeptical that there'd be an actual knob that says how often to allow a winning grab.  Isn't that fraud?

The first 12 issues of Thrasher Magazine - that's 1981.

I don't know if you've seen one of those new Tickle Me Elmos, but they're really freaky to see on fire.

Petri Dish art

Nielsen BuzzMetrics' Top Blog Posts of the Year - Remarkably lacking in diversity.

Speaking of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, I'm going put up these links so far and then read through this one before chasing down some of today's other hot links: Nielsen BuzzMetrics Tries to Measure Buzz in Social Media

Dun Dun Dun!!  Just when you thought it was safe to ululate, Saddam is not dead. As you might guess, it points out that we haven't seen the actual neck snapping.  The reasoning is similar to the kind we've seen with the 9/11 Truth movement.  Lots of rhetorical questions.

Speaking of the execution, Iraqi blogger Riverbend's reaction to Saddam's execution is what Richard Engel predicted.  Her correction of CNN's translation is also very interesting.  (Not every Iraqi blogger shares her feelings.)

The 2007 Bloggies are taking nominations.  Yeah, doesn't it seem like there were Weblog awards a few weeks ago?  This is the one they give out at SXSW.

Can it really be that this movie made only 30 bucks?

Speaking of stories I didn't quite believe when I saw it, reportedly someone burned up half an island with a gas cooker.  Looking at the photo I thought this was surely a photoshop job.  Could people really be living so densely on such a small island?  Sure enough, it's a place.  Unfortunately I couldn't find a map program with satellite view of any worthwhile resolution.

Panoramas.dk has shots up from this weekend.  I love these and often argue that we should have them on this site too.  I actually prefer them to video.  Check out all those camera phones in the Sydney scene.  Will the future look back on that and believe it?  How many people watched the new year arrive on a two inch screen?  It's also interesting to note the different degrees of security in each scene, though I don't know enough about each location to know if it's really a fair comparison.

Speaking of foreign and borderline irrational technology, imagine if you were owning a TV for the first time in 32 years.  I often joke that asking, "What's the buzz online" is like asking, "What's on TV" but with many more channels so it was fun to read this guy try to describe what's on TV.

The 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of 2006

Every now and then blog activity flares up around a ridiculous statement by a public official.  Generally, when these are especially absurd I don't bother linking.  But sometimes they persist.  Such is the case with Congressman Virgil Goode who seems to view the election of a Musilm congressman as a sign of some kind of enemy infiltration.

Speaking of Ahmadinejad, I also clicked this:  "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has suggested that 'Jesus would return to the world along with the emergence of the descendant of the Islam's holy prophet, Imam Mahdi'."  The entry is about an Islamic vision of the Apocalypse.

And speaking of Imam Mahdi, understanding his significance puts news about the Golden Dome mosque in better perspective.  The Golden Dome mosque "is associated with the Hidden Twelfth Imam, who is expected by Shiites to appear at the end of time to restore the world to justice."

French marchers say 'non' to 2007 - If we all rally together we can stop the madness.  Call it a global War on Time.

I've clicked this Amazon warehouse photo in a variety of formats in the past view days.  Remember the end of Indiana Jones?  We've got a diner in my neighborhood that sells everything from goulash to lobster and I imagine this is what their refrigerator looks like.

Speaking of viral photos, best haircut ever?

Listening so far this morning:  Liberation from Talib Kweli & Madlib - Running the link through Technorati it looks like everyone in the world is imploring you to listen to this rap release.  It took forever to download, I think because it's got a Mac version and a PC version.  (To be honest, this morning I also listened to a review copy of "L Tunes: Music from and inspired by The L Word" that came in the mail yesterday.  You can skip that one.)

This year's Edge annual question from the World Question Center: What are you optimistic about? Why?  Looking at last year's Clicked I found the link to the previous question, What is your dangerous idea?

It looks like most people are adopting a "we'll see" attitude about a proposed virtual reality network.  I don't intend to contribute to any hype but for the sake of recognizing it when it comes up in conversation, here's a quick primer.

Speaking of technical themes to be aware of, this BBC clip on Bluesnarfing is from last Spring, but I don't find the term in an MSNBC.com search so let's get it on the record, particularly for those of you who got Bluetooth headsets for Christmas.  (Bluesnarfing is when hackers hijack your phone by connecting through your Bluetooth signal without your knowledge.)

Speaking of Engadget links, is your office cold or maybe you sit under the AC vent?  How about a hand warming mouse?

Growing tea at home

There's some debate in the comments about whether pin-up girls rendered in typography (NSFW even though they're just letters) is creative and clever.  One critic recommended Bembo's Zoo and Words At Play instead.  (Both SFW)

The State of Jihad: A look at the state of the major theaters, and some under the radar, in the Long War

Play old video games in your browser - It works, but it's a small screen.  Probably best if you have some emotional connection to the game you choose.

Speaking of throwbacks, when was the last time you saw this as the headline on a blog entry: What Is The Definition Of A Blog?  The real point of the post is that there's renewed debate about whether have comments enabled is definitional to blogs.  While I agree that using a blog to interact with readers is definitional to blogging, I don't agree that it necessarily has to be done through comments.

Alan has all you could care about with regard to the Chicago UFO story that had stratospheric traffic yesterday on MSNBC.com, but I did also click the Chicago Tribune blog entry on it (mostly attracted by the video link, which turned out to be a Q&A with the Tribune transportation writer).