A subgenre of the "taking it to the Internet in the name of justice" trend that I pointed out not too long ago is the framing of the struggle against the authority of the Bush administration. When Michael Moore was on Hardball the other day, someone in the audience asked if he thought Bush's low approval numbers (and correspondingly high disapproval numbers) was a sign that the country was ripe for revolt. Moore was amusedly dismissive and answered by emphasizing the importance of voting. I don't see any revolts in our future either but online activist are working to make the case that it's already begun.

In the past day and a half I read about a guy arrested for shouting at Dick Cheney, and a woman given the bum's rush for shouting at Fred Thompson (CNN has video), and I even scrolled through a 20 minute clip of a 74-year-old selling impeachment buttons and eventually being arrested for trespassing or vending without a license or something. [I realize that Fred Thompson isn't part of the Bush administration but the point is that free speech rights are gone under Bush.] Maybe I'm just cynical but I couldn't help but chuckle at the 60s protest music dubbed onto the button seller video.  Will these clips and stories one day be cast in the same valiant "power to the people" light that protests of the 60s and 70s currently enjoy? Is this what it was like then?

I'm still baffled at how this Holly Hunter interview made it out of ABC. Gumption? It's on par with the eternally famous "Boom goes the Dynamite" video.

[We're past the need for Harry Potter spoiler warnings, right?] Fans of Harry Potter are excited to see these follow-up insights from JK herself on what exists beyond the epilogue of the last book. But fans of Jen Brown, whose cube is adjacent to mine here at MSNBC HQ and who know that Jen read books 5 and 6 back to back before the release of 7 and who had to suffer her challenges to prove her theory wrong that Harry is/was the 7th horcrux, are excited to see Jen's byline and especially photo credit on close shots of Rowling.  Way to make the inner circle Jen! You go!

Speaking of fanatical protection of intellectual property, this cartoon leads me to think that brain scans instead of those security tag detectors should be employed at book stores.

It's time to drop the www. Doesn't www serve any useful function? Why does it exist in the first place?

The Darjeeling Limited is garnering online buzz.

I don't mean to contribute to the ridiculous amount of attention paid to Hollywood's rehab roundabout, but there's an interesting trend on this Access Hollywood video that's worth noting. Billy Bush got an e-mail from Lohan while on Larry King's show and reported on it as it came to his mobile device.  Later, Maria Menounos receives a copy of Lohan's mug shot while on the air on The View and shares that through her mobile device. I predict lots more "this just in on my Blackberry" reports.

How to Use a Bidet - OK, yeah, kinda gross, but I've never used one even though I've seen a few in travels. "You can use a bidet to quickly wash your feet."  "Drinking from a bidet is not recommended." See? Lots of good advice here.

The trailer for an upcoming first person mystery adventure game based on ABC's LOST.

"The Malaysian government has warned it could use tough anti-terrorism laws against bloggers who insult Islam or the country's king."

Speaking of bloggers under fire, Fox attacks bloggers - Well, not exactly, but in fighting with liberal bloggers Fox does arguably characterize all of the blogosphere for its viewers. Somehow I think this relationship is working well for all involved, however.

Sharp Decline in Support for Suicide Bombing in Muslim Countries - This is part of a Pew report that shows people in the developing world increasingly satisfied with their lives. I have to give it a closer read though because my understanding was that it has already been established that suicide bombings and other acts of fanaticism are not connected to economic destitution.  The general impression from this report is that there's a correlation so I'll be interested to see if I can find them making the case for one.

Speaking of the war on terror, this is a speech by President Bush about the War on Terror with all the words removed except Iraq, Al Qaeda, 9/11 and Osama bin Laden.  I guess the point is to show the president making an association between the two. I don't really see this as shocking as some people are trying to make it. If anything, the fact that he mentions Osama bin Laden as much as he does is surprising to me. I thought that was something he avoided mentioning.

A purportedly leaked clip of the new Madonna/Justin Timberlake collaboration. If you act quickly you can brag to your kids that you heard it before YouTube deleted it.

Will Bic lighters blend? I love their "don't try this at home logo."  I wonder if I can get that on a t-shirt. Maybe the TSA should have considered a blender for confiscated lighters.

Painful wince of the day. As is usually the case, it's all about the sound.

MySpace looking for TV pilots

Speaking of pilots of a different kind, World's first flying car enters production. As exciting as that headline might seem, the video does not inspire much confidence.

Speaking of headlines on autoblogs that don't quite live up to their billing, Nude woman buys smokes in German gas station, leaves in Ferrari. At the end of the item there's a link to the original German news story with a couple (NSFW) photos. The whole thing looks much more ordinary than I anticipated.

1. Copy the link of the page with the video on it and paste it in the textbox bellow.
2. Choose desired format : AVI, MOV, MP4, 3GP, MP3.
3. Click Convert button.
4. Download the converted file.

I know there are a few sites that do this, but I've been working on an idea for a weekly video compilation of things surfaced in Clicked and had made a mental note to look for a site like this and lo and behold, I found one before I started looking.

"When you have several levels of redundant power, what could bring your customers' servers down other than something like an employee physically ripping the plugs out of the wall?" Here it is blogged in greater detail with a nice collection of error screens from affected sites.

The Best 8 Beverages in the World - I'm embarrassed to say I don't already have a person desert island list for beverages. I can say that for the longest time I knew no better Root Beer than Virgil's and it's associated flavors. (Yes, I do pay that much for a bottle of root beer.) But just a couple weeks ago I found Fitz's Root Beer at a local gourmet supermarket and while it doesn't have the complexity of flavor of Virgil's, I really like the lingering taste of fermentation (or is that just hops?). P.S. Fitz's orange flavor doesn't do it for me, however.

Speaking of the finer points of junk food appreciation, I'm beginning to wonder if my deli is part of some kind of early-release Dorito test network.  Check these babies out:

I haven't tried them yet.  The collector in me wonders if there's any value in collecting unopened bags of new Doritos flavors. Do you think there will be a market for it?

"Welcome to part three of my behind the scenes case study in viral/buzz marketing." I've only read this one, not the previous two, but this is pretty dense so it's going to take me a bit of time to work backward. Even if you're not totally interested in the topic, a quick scroll of the article is revealing in the way that it shows how much there is to consider after hitting the "publish" button.

Kameraflage images only show on digital - This is the coolest.  It reminds me a little of an article I saw once about new technology that would interfere with the digital cameras of paparazzi.  I think it was some kind of reflector or something and its effect would be invisible to the naked eye but would make a mess of digital photo images.

Monkey v. Dog v. Wikipedia - It's the story of a guy who created Wikipedia entries for different combinations of competitive animal fighting but I can't tell where the story ends and the joke begins.

"Why people rent super-stretch limos in a city that's mostly hills I will never know." After college I had the opportunity to drive an RV full of students around the country.  It was a 32-foot mobile home with ten feet of it hanging after the rear wheels.  As we passed through San Francisco, more than once we scraped the under side of that rear bumper.

2504 Steps to closing your Facebook account. "You see, you can't really close your Facebook account once you open it; you can only deactivate it, which I somehow missed when reading their 913 page privacy policy." The general complaint has been raised elsewhere that once you plug yourself into a social site, you can't get yourself out.  I didn't realize someone was actually trying to do perform such an extraction.

Today's Cracked.com linkbait numbered list that I still fell for even though the shamelessness of it all bothers me: The 10 Most Unlikely Celeb Porn Stars. What hooked me was the number of people who did regrettable things before they were famous.  The writing is curse-laden but (and?) fun.

The Strangest Sights in Google Earth - We've seen this kind of thing before of course, but it's noteworthy that they also offer a Google Earth KMZ download so you can see them on the actual map instead of flipping through the slides. In looking for who is finding ways to "think beyond the browser" this is a nice effort.

I'm not familiar with the Giant Napkin but these Onion-like articles are pretty funny.

Speaking of the Onion, Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die

Shark with webbed feet touches off massive evolution debate.

Speaking of the evolution debate, Texas has apparently put a creationist at the head of its Board of Ed, so we can probably expect more textbook debates in the near future.

Remember that paper on how MySpace and Facebook reflect class differences?  A pretty big flare-up of discussion followed that piece and now the researcher is back with a response to criticism. Interestingly, one of the points of confusion has been the mixing of her non-scholarly blog writing with her scholarly paper writing.

Blackle is Google only black, with the idea being that it takes less energy to display a black page than a white one.

Someone needs to explain this Chore Wars site to me. Are these real world chores? The must be, because who would want to do virtual chores.  But then, what's the game for?

Here's a quickie handy graphic that shows how climate change is manifesting generally around the world. The vague area described as "contradictory" is not very helpful, however.

Here's one for the "are you nuts?" tattoo file. It's the text of a Windows error.

If it turns out that time does not exist, can it still be Friday anyway? I'm ready for a weekend.

Speaking of probing the limits of time, this one goes in the other direction, looking farther and farther ahead to what happens to the known universe.

11 things you may not know about "Star Wars" - I justify the inclusion of this link because we like to think about gender roles on this blog and the first item on the list is that there was consideration that Luke should be female. I think I might have actually liked Lucy Skywalker better than Luke, though I don't reckon they'd have done right by her given the date of the movie.

An abandoned village in Italy - from a cool site that collected abandoned images.

Game recommendation from my friend Matt: Stair Fall 2 - How much damage can you do to the stick figure guy by chucking him down the stairs? 471 is my top so far.

And we'll end with a Ralph Recommendation:

Super B: The Box Who Became a Superhero
Box City has been overrun by villains. Help Super B fly around and blast them out of existence!

This one's a fun little flying/shooting game. As you might expect, though, it gets pretty challenging the farther you go. Hope you enjoy it.
-Ralph

Will adds: I like these kinds of games but you totally need a mouse for this.  Touch pad is impossible.

The age of the blogger has passed without much fanfare. You might think that blogs are still popular and prominent, but if you think back to long ago,  before you were born (if you happen to be 4-years-old or less), blogs were the only thing anyone was talking about. And "bloggers" were referred to as if they were some new species. The cable folks would ask me to come on the air and talk about "what the bloggers are saying" about news stories, as if "the bloggers" were some special league of scholars. And the most popular bloggers were celebrities and kingmakers. Lesser bloggers would do anything they could to draw some link love from a big name blogger and watch the avalanche of traffic in his site statistics.  Hundreds!  Thousands of visitors from a single link from an A-lister!

But now, lo, The A list is dead - "Suddenly, the need for A-listers to arbitrate "Who the Cool Kids are" [and who they aren't] is rapidly and thankfully diminished."

These days it's all about the social networks. And though there are still examples of bloggers doing what made the format famous, challenging the media, serving niche markets, etc., in many ways, they've become exactly what the blog evangelists promised would be solved by blogs.

Of course, the blog evangelists themselves have moved on from blogs. Most recently we've been hearing them preach on about the recently YouTube/CNN debates giving voice to "the people" - though not everyone has taken of that particular Kool Aid. I count myself among the cynical here. It was a great marketing stunt and a good way to mix the Web and TV, but there's nothing qualitatively better about having a handful of people with Web cams ask the same questions a TV moderator would have asked. That said, I won't be surprised in the least to see the video question become the new industry standard.

Actually, judging by the online din, the smart money for what is currently leading the online miracle revolution is Facebook.

"Facebook is the New Hotness, and everyone else is simply Scratching at the Door of Cool." I've mentioned at least once that Web geeks are really excited about Facebook.  As an outsider to the programming world and also a relative social recluse, it can be a little difficult for me to appreciate why it's such a big deal.  This essay gives a good sense of what the enthusiasm is all about - at least from the perspective of Web application writers.

From the user perspective, "Facebook is starting to become the one stop shop for content and interaction, be it through feeds, blog creation, image uploading and just plain ol' social networking."

"Welcome to the first edition of Hottest Apps - our weekly look at the fastest growing Facebook applications over the last week."

"On Facebook, you're not a Facebooker — you're just you." Yes!  Why were/are bloggers always referred to as though they were some separate strain of human being? Some new breed or race? That was easily the most obnoxious aspect of the whole blog buzzfest.

But you have no use for social networks like Facebook?  "I've been using [this] list to address adults who say things like 'I don't have time to hang out on a social network.'" He breaks down according to age, reasons to Facebook.

On the subject of having need or use for a social network, the Psychology of Social Computing: What Best Explains the Success of Facebook? Not too dense, a numbered list with brief explainers.

Some folks online are tracking the story of U.S. troops gone bad in Iraq. There are questions about the story's veracity and we're getting close to do or die time for the magazine as it reviews its story and sources.

Witness the iPhone exploit

Speaking of the iPhone, today around the water cooler we were puzzling over this headline "Apple shares drop on iPhone activations." So the more than half a million people we thought bought iPhones are really more like 150,000?  Some experts even guessed that the sales would be in that range and then ended up going with the 500,000 number. I'd love to know the story behind the story on this one.

San Francisco, 1971 (really big picture)

I feel like we've played a "two games at once" game before but since I managed to get in a groove on this one I'm recommending it even if it's for a second time.

Origin of familiar phrases

As Medical Patents Surge, So Do Lawsuits - "Patent lawyers say doctors and scientists are suing to protect everything from laser eye surgery techniques to stent procedures to methods for declawing a cat." Michael Moore has been arguing lately that profit motive is contrary to good healthcare. He further argues that medicine does not need market motivation to continue to advance. Advances will continue because people like to help and people like to solve puzzles.

5 Ways to Develop Independent Thought

Speaking of independent thought, 6 Movie Formulas That Must Be Stopped - Cracked.com is making it's bread and butter out of these kinds of lists but these are all true.

Still speaking of independent thought, "new research reveals even if only one member of a group repeats their opinion, it is more likely to be seen by others as representative of the whole group."

Urban Typography - It took me a minute to realize what these letters are.

There are 12 kinds of ads - I was expecting humor but it's almost like it could be taking from the required reading of an advertising course.

Exclusive: Vitter's 2004 Family Values Campaign Ads Are Unearthed - This is the kind of thing The Daily Show usually digs up and it always surprises me that the major network news shows with their massive tape archives (they do have massive tape archives, right?) don't do the same. That said, none of these ads say "I'm David Vitter and people who visit prostitutes should be judged harshly."

Weekly World News closing - The funny part is the follow-up where an editor is quoted, implying that there's some kind of conspiracy or secret motivation. The aliens made them do it?

Meanwhile this could not be happening at a worse time given all the recent UFO news that needs covering.

Then again, as I mentioned yesterday I've been chalking up strange phenomena lately to magic.

Speaking of Harry Potter, Diagon Alley entrance discovered.

On Faith" and Georgetown University asked dozens of the world's leading scholars to discuss Islam's view of violence, human rights and other religions in "Muslims Speak Out."

Speaking of representing Islam, an interview with Rageboy - Remember that photoblog that pointed out that a huge number of news photos of protesting Muslims included the same guy?  He's come to be known in some blog circles as Rageboy and news agencies have been tracking him since that photo series broke.

"Where Are the Islamist/Jihadist Websites Hosted, and What Can Be Done about It?"
The point of this piece really has to do with American ISPs hosting Jihadist sites, but something I've always wondered is why there isn't a more active online front in the war on terror. I'm sure there are American hackers who disrupt extremist sites in their free time but I don't think I've ever seen a trophy page of hacked extremist Muslim sites.

Speaking of terrorists, Terrorist organization logos - Everything comes down to marketing in the end.

New York Subway Map of the Internet

Speaking of unusual infographics, A Sketch Towards a Taxonomy of Meta-Desserts - The idea is to organize into a chart desserts that reference other desserts in their name. At the end of the entry are links to a photo of the chart, the big version is here.

Trippy apps - That's a pretty good name for it.  It's a collection of sites, some are downloads, some are animation, some are games, all are ... er...

Funniest video since Friday is this rehearsal of a performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller video by the population of a prison in the Philippines. Complete with balding, terrified "girlfriend."

The Times did a great job tracking down the story behind the photo of the muddy, bloody woman from the recent steam pipe explosion in New York City. I don't mean to dwell on the story but it's cool how they found the guy and then found the woman and we get the story behind the photo.)

Remember the guy who refused to pay his taxes and won his case? Not everyone in that movement is having such success. N.H. couple evade death and taxes.

Get ready (finally) for faster Internet speeds at lower prices - This may be a little more detail than some people care about but it's a good look at the beginnings of what we can hope will be a price/bandwidth war.

Speaking of broadband, "Today I'm writing to invite you to participate in an experiment -- an interactive approach to drafting legislation on one of the most significant public policy questions today: What should be America's national broadband strategy?" Interestingly, the diary author who's doing the inviting is Senator Dick Durbin.

Speaking of the bandwidth race, "Miro aims to make online video 'as easy as watching TV,' while at the same time ensuring that the new medium remains accessible to everyone, through its support for open standards." Direct link here.

Mania TV is another Web TV station.

Also Crackle.

Which is not to say that the Web has beaten TV.  LiveStation, which streams live TV on your computer.  (Dear Microsoft colleagues at LiveStation, I can think of a TV station with lots of live content if you're looking for a partner.)

Michael Totten is in Baghdad.  His first post there is an interesting look at what the process is like. He also keeps a running commentary on how his experience differs from the expectations set by mainstream media.

"Nearly ten percent of companies have fired an employee for violating corporate blogging or message board policies, and 19 percent have disciplined an employee for the same infractions." That sounds really high to me. I've heard stories of people being fired and when the company takes back their laptop or cleans out their PC they find all kinds of crazy porn or personal stuff, but I can't think of a story of anyone I know who was fired for what they put online. Then again, maybe I just don't know it. The whole reason my personal blog is a photoblog is that I didn't want to write anything that could one day get me in trouble but I still have a hard time believing the number of people who actually do get in trouble is that high.

For Christians who resented all the Harry Potter spoiler hype, here's a spoiler for you.

I've had one little lyric from "Being Around" by the Lemonheads in my brain for days. I can't find it on iMeem even though I could listen to the "Best of" songs for free, including the Mrs. Robinson cover.

Meanwhile, all these free music services and where do I finally find my song?  YouTube.

If I was a front porch swing would you let me hang?
If I was a dancefloor, would you shake your thang?

Authorities found that banning most devices did little to make flying safer - Do you even need to click a link when the headline tells you what you already knew? But here's an amazing stat I never would have guessed:

"The agency said it costs close to $4 million to dispose of the more than 22,000 lighters it seizes every day." I wonder what they do with them to dispose of them. U.S. Map tetris

There's something funny about spending the weekend reading Harry Potter and then turning on the local weather report to hear the weather man use words like "rare" and "unusual" to describe the out-of-nowhere heavy rains we're getting. The storm arrived with a gust of wind that knocked picture frames off window sills and slammed a door in our apartment. My wife sent me out of the bedroom to investigate the noise.  I did so with wand drawn.

Designed deterioration - Some things -maybe even most things- get cooler with use.  Their design is such that the worn or broken-in look can be a good thing.  The article uses a cast iron skillet as an example.  I thought of jeans or sneakers. But technology, this piece argues, doesn't look better as it wears. I mostly agree, but my work keyboard is a good counter-example.  Not only are most of the letters worn off, but the keys have smooth spots from where my fingers touch them. The keys no longer click, they kind of clunk. I love that keyboard.  But my old TV remote, with dirt halos around the volume and channel buttons and some of the words (like Guide, Menu, exit) worn off, is not similarly endearing.  I'm not sure why. Some of the steam punk designs we've seen probably wear well.  Maybe the answer is that modern gadgets are expected to be obsolete before they develop any wear. What's the oldest piece of modern technology that you still use regularly?

In a related way, what piece of technology would you tattoo on the back of your neck and still feel good about ten years from now? I recently saw a hipster with a giant spark plug tattoo on her shoulder and thought it would be a cool artifact when she's old and we no longer use combustion engines. I wonder if a Sidekick will have the same nostalgia. Some people feel that way about old video game controllers though, right?

This is so great I can't stand it.  It's reverse celebrity photoshopping - that is, photoshopping celebrities to make them look normal. It looks like they use pictures of normal people and replace the faces with celebrities. I saw it on this page, but the source blog has more, great stuff.

Harry Potter corner:

• TechCrunch gets a letter from the Harry Potter lawyers. I wonder if it has to do with publishing that photo.
• Speaking of Harry Potter, a guy who sold one of the DeepDiscount Harry Potter books on eBay tells his story.
• This book reviewer thought Harry Potter would never catch on, kicks himself regularly now. I'm relieved to report that waaay back about a billion years ago when the first Harry Potter movie came out I had slightly better foresight and had Robbie Coltrane in the MSNBC.com chat room. Though I do kick myself for not saving the audio recording after writing up the transcript. Toward the end, Dan Akroyd walks into Coltrane's hotel room and you can suddenly tell there's a real Hollywood scene going on.  That would be great audio to have now. I don't imagine he'd give us that much time these days.

I don't know how durable this massive rubber duck is, but it'd be great if they cut it loose to float around the earth after the art exhibit ends.

Most of the time when someone comes up with a terrible idea for a Web application, people just ignore it. So I can't think of another app that's been as openly mocked as 3D Mailbox.

Companies Claim Right to Interfere with eBay Auctions for Charging Too Little - We spend a lot of time focusing on how the Internet is allowing the subversion of traditional media but equally significant is the way the Internet is empowering small time retailers and individual entrepreneurs. This piece is a well explained look into some of the conflict taking place in that realm.

Speaking of claiming dubious rights, anti-war activists are really lit over this: Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq - Though I'm sure the White House argues that it's a necessary law enforcement tactic, folks who've heard their position on the war described as undermining and traitorious fear the White House wants to intimidate and suppress protest by confiscating people's stuff.

Speaking of being displeased with the White House, "below is a quick review of the extent of the White House's efforts to politicize the federal agencies."

"Bill Moyers gets perspective on the role of impeachment in American political life." 24 minute video.

The title calls this the floating ball trick but I've always known it as "contact juggling."

"It took an average of 50 computers nearly two decades to sift through the 500 billion billion possible draughts positions to come up with..." a computer program that never loses at checkers. Next assignment: world peace.

Original Transformers Boxed Collection Sold for $1,000,000 - Vindication for anyone who's ever argued "this will be worth something some day."

Speaking of Transformer links on Gizmodo, I guess you'd have to call a 59-foot Transformer "life sized." (It's not actually a transformer, it's from a different series called Gundam.

I didn't get it at first, but it's the first two pages of the Old Testament written in LOLcat language.

Speaking of religion, Top ten intelligent designs - What, you thought there was only one?

Here's one for the Clicked Feminism Debate Team: Is a video game of women slapping each other's faces misogynistic or... nothing?

The Hulk cow - Of course immediately brings to mind that crazy muscle dog. I hope it's not inhumane to say I think this is totally cool.

Weekend creative writing starting point: 1 Missed Call - It's the cell phone trigger for a roadside bomb.

Charlie Brown as anime - The Charlie Brown shirt with the vertical zig is the coolest.

While I don't want to be in the position of trying to defend or explain the war, couldn't this chart of daily attacks on US forces be an indication of a strategy of increased engagement rather than a strengthening resistance?

Why the heck does New York have steam pipes, anyway?

Another story of someone getting a hassle for taking a picture of a building. Y'know, if there's such sensitive stuff going on in these buildings, shouldn't they be located in the center of a mountain in North Dakota or something?

Things I hate about Star Trek

Mexico wants the world to know what food is authentic - In case you didn't know, Taco Bell isn't Mexican food. Then again, there's nothing more disappointing than being in the mood for a nice plate of nachos and when you sit down in the Mexican restaurant and look at the menu you realize they make real Mexican food. D'oh!

Speaking of food, Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less - My current apartment is kind of old and we don't have an air conditioner in the kitchen so we have to try to keep hot cooking to a minimum on really hot days.  This looks like just the trick.

From food to drink, I have to think that part of the point of the drinking map is to highlight the U.S. drinking age and what few other countries share that age. I don't think I've ever thought to myself, "What we need is more drunk 18-year-olds," but the map does make me wonder how we managed to pick 21 as our cut-off.

Speaking of global comparisons, police cars from around the world

"You know those kooks who go around not paying their taxes and saying there's no law to make them? Well, one of them just won."

Have you heard about the White Stripes doing little surprise shows?  The random appearance on a bus was kind of cool -even if the video is full of cursing and blubbering as a loud-mouthed fan has a meltdown- but a one-note concert seems a little jerky. Apparently the audience knew it would just be one note and didn't mind.

Ralph's recommendation for wasting the rest of Friday (NOTE: Ralph offers some hints but I wasn't sure if everyone would want them so I changed the color of that paragraph to white.  Drag your mouse over the blank space for Ralph's hints.):

Covert Front: WWI Spy Mystery
It's 1904, and you're tracking down an elusive German scientist. Break into his house and find out what he's been up to in this "escape the room" style mystery game.

Note: You'll find "key" items in the kitchen and the entrance to the basement. Also, the library puzzle is tricky, but you can solve it if you pay attention to all your surroundings.

Have fun... but be prepared to get sucked in!
-Ralph

From this morning's mailbag:

Hey where's clicked?  Did you get booted off for the Harry Potter
story or the political videos?
-Heather

Will's reply: Funny, I was just wondering the same thing.  We occasionally have hosting trouble with these blogs, but it appears to be pretty specific to Clicked this time and much longer than usual.  I see Torrent Freak was blasted for their story about the Harry Potter book.  I didn't think my post was that bad -no links, no spoilers- but now I'm wondering if it made someone upset.

At least torrent freak got a threatening e-mail. I'm left here just wondering.
-Will

Will adds: Doesn't look like BoingBoing is suffering any trouble and they link right to the Pirate Bay page and I don't enjoy anywhere near the attention of that site.

Will adds one more: Hopefully by my next post I'll have more info from the server guys on what happened.

As I mentioned in my update to the previous post, many of us around the water cooler are thinking the pirated copy that's making so much news is a fake.  And a few of the more conspiratorial-minded among us suspect there may be an actual conspiracy by online potter fans, not only to attack sites that try to spoil the book but to misdirect pirates by flooding the online zone with bogus spoilers and fake books. Contributing to that suspicion is the rising popularity of a page of supposed spoilers. The page includes different photos of the same pirated book, but if you read the text you see that some of the spoilers are contradicted by what's in the photos. Might that be an indication of a deliberate effort to muddy the waters?

(A separate, somewhat smirkingly suggested conspiracy theory is that the whole thing is a ruse to embarrass the media who in many cases are demonstrating their ignorance of the series as well as the pirated copy in the reports they're filing.)

To say the least, security measures surrounding the book have been extreme. But the article makes no mention of cyber-ops measures.  Maybe we'll get the whole story after the book is released.

Speaking of investigating the leak, assuming there's any crime to be prosecuted (impersonating a Harry Potter book?) one investigative tactic will surely be examining the hidden (EXIF) info in the photographs. If this leads to the arrest of the pirate it could replace the Cat-Schwartz-lesson-for-us-all as the biggest EXIF oversight ever.

Speaking of spoiling Potter, Harry Potter spoiler generator - It's just a jokey widget, the spoilers aren't real spoilers.

Speaking of Potter-related jokes, fake book covers to disguise your Harry Potter book. NOTE: Some of the titles contain curses or innuendo, don't forward this to your kids to show them how hip you are.

MIT team designs sleek, skintight spacesuit - Not exactly Barbarella.

Speaking of sexy space outfits (kinda), Farscape to return as Webisodes? I wonder how the finances of this works.  Does SciFi see it as a stunt or do they need a certain kind of ratings?

Speaking of money from the Web, How top bloggers earn money - Not really a how-to, more like a voyeuristic look at how much these people are making.

"The Guardian's award-winning photographer and filmmaker Sean Smith spent two months embedded with US troops in Baghdad and Anbar province. His harrowing documentary exposes the exhaustion and disillusionment of the soldiers." Some bloody graphic images but so street-level authentic it's really powerful.

Speaking of vivid images of war, never before seen WWI photos. There's another link seeing some extra traffic out there with the same title but it's a whole series of war-dead photos. As much as I recognize the dangers of ignoring the ugly side of war, my interactions with my readers have left me confident that we're aware of the horrible severity of war, so no link for that one.

10 Articles That Changed My Life

Andrew Sullivan on whether Obama can be a consideration for conservatives who don't like the Republican choices so far.

Speaking of Republican candidates, If Clicks Were Votes - Republican Candidates - I love these. Fascinating set of infographics that show where the visitors to Republican candidate sites are from. Hard to say what it really shows, but still interesting.

Judge Awards $68,685.23 in Attorneys Fees Against RIAA in Capitol v. Foster - Part of the "chilling affect" of the record industry lawsuits is that even if you're innocent, you wouldn't be able to afford the legal fees to defend yourself.  This ruling certainly dulls the edge of that particular weapon in the RIAA's arsenal.

The Future of Search - This is an interview with a guy from Google Research. Translation and voice is the part of the answer I found most exciting. I'm ready for a real-time voice input language translator even if technology isn't quite yet.

What I imagined the people around me were saying when I was... It's a funny piece about what teens think people are thinking about them.

The federal tax on each cigar could rise from 5 cents to $10. Am I a sucker for thinking cigars are not the same as cigarettes? I find cigar shops and even cigar smoking to be a quaint pleasure. Of course, I don't find mouth cancer to be a quaint pleasure, so you won't find me on a picket line or anything over this.

Speaking of cancer, get this:  I'm reading this story about the possibility that eating grapefruit actually increases the risk of cancer and I check MSNBC.com for the story to see if I can give the attention to the home team first. Instead I find this story that suggests drinking grapefruit juice with your cancer medicine to make it more effective. As if the specter of cancer wasn't scary enough...

Is there no one who can't be offended by a cartoon? At least the pagans only threaten rain magic. (I don't mean to say Pagans don't have grounds for offense.)

Speaking of cartoons, life imitates comic. It's all fun and games until someone gets a rook in the eye.

Still speaking of cartoons, Lifted: an absolutely hysterical Pixar short.

Speaking of video shorts and being left stranded, here's a fictional story made with Google Earth. Takes a pretty horrific turn, but nice use of the medium. (And by the way, if, like me, you had trouble getting Slate to load yesterday, I wonder if it had to do with the launch of this new video channel.)

Speaking of Google's maps, Google Streetview camera car fleet set to invade America - If you see one of these cars coming, smile and tuck in your shirt.

Greatest Living American Ignored - This kind of falls into the category of "good news is not news" or, as Jon Stewart said, no one reports the truck that isn't on fire, but still, it does seem worth giving some attention to good people every once in a while -especially when an American is being given a peace prize by an international organization. That might be news in itself.

Cool basically real if small and kind of fragile looking transformer.

15 Unfortunately Placed Ads - Some of these you may have seen before but I love that it includes a gallery of Web sites. The ability to automatically place ads on pages based on the text on the page has been a real time saver, but there's always the danger that the story about the plane crash will draw airplane ads or the story about the serial slasher will draw and ad for steak knives.

Photoshop of horrors - It's the job they did on Faith Hill for the Redbook cover. I've been meaning to make a separate category for these. Here's another good one that shows the retouches part by part.

"When you print on a color laser printer, it's likely that you are also printing a pattern of invisible yellow dots. These marks exist to allow the printer companies and governments to track and identify you." This site is proposing activism against such identification.

The Top 10 Weirdest and Funniest Japanese Condoms - It's not really the condoms so much as the packaging.

This is probably spam, but the idea of a goth dating site struck me as funny.

I didn't cover too much of the iPhone hype, so I don't want to give too much attention to the subsequent iPhone bashing backlash (leave that to the gadget bloggers) but this page (NOTE: Contains coarse language) does such an aggressive job of explaining why the Nokia E70 is better that it's worth a look.

Speaking of funny disses, this time favoring Apple, protect your iPod from theft by disguising it as a Zune.

"Imagine a library that collected all the world's information about all the world's books and made it available for everyone to view and update. We're building that library."

"This is the documentation of every intimate relationship I have ever had. The data spans 23 years." I'd be interested to see the reactions of the women who can look themselves up on this guy's chart.

I'm not going to link to this one directly because it feels much more authentic to me.  Plus, you'll feel much more satisfied if you hunt it down yourself.  What I'll say is that unlike other bootleg versions where someone (or someones) transcribed the book, in this case someone took photographs of the book.  Every single page.  The Bit Torrent download is a huge thread of image files.

For my own adventure, I tried the Bit Torrent download from the biggest torrent site I know and was thwarted by my corporate network security.  My ITs were apologetic but couldn't help me, even when I insisted it was a matter of news and journalism. So instead I copied the name of the file that was on BitTorrent and plugged that into Google.  What comes up are a million RapidShare links.  Those are direct downloads, not filesharing, so in a couple minutes I had it on my thumb drive. I see some of the links are being killed already, but if you're persistent you can probably find it.

UPDATE: Our crack team of Harry Potter fans are actually trying to read these blurry photos and for various reasons the general consensus is that this is not the real one. What has me thinking this is fake is the odd block of text on the copyright page.  For those who've bothered, what is that second block of text that cites all those other titles?  Could it be the fanfic author crediting his/her inspiration? Reply through comments or mail.  No spoilers will be published here.

UPDATE 2 7/19: The newspapers are beginning to break the embargo as retailers do the same.  The New York Times has a review up as does the Baltimore Sun.  They're not revealing the ending exactly but they do offter clues that suggest that the photographed version is indeed the real one. And from what I can tell, that means the typed "first ten chapters" (which I found via an inadvertent tip in the comments of this blog) are also real. Anyway, I mention all of this by way of admitting that it looks like I was wrong in thinking the photographed version is a fake. Which also means all of my exciting conspiracy theories were wrong. Rats.

It feels a little ironic to post this in light of the brush fire I lit in the comments of the previous post but since the TV folks appear to be flogging the heck out of these videos I feel somewhat obliged to link out to the full versions.

The full Obama Girl/Giuliani Girl video is here:

[YouTube:ekSxxlj6rGE]

Not only is it a clever tactic to take advantage of a slow news period and a chronically unsexy subject and turn it to their advantage, but they appear to know what they're doing online.  I never signed up for anything on the BarelyPolitical.com site but they traced the traffic I sent to them last time and put me on their mailing list to announce this new video.

The latest in the genre is this odd lesbian appeal to Hillary.
[YouTube:-Sudw4ghVe8]
As we've observed of others of its kind, this is of pretty dubious assistance to the campaign.

But what else is worth noting is that contrary to their wiggling images, the protagonists involved in these projects are no push-overs.

Chris Matthews interviewed the the Hillary fan last night.

And in this one the makers of the Obama Girl video present a scathing rebuttal to Joy Behar essentially calling Obama Girl a hooker.
[YouTube:ue59pNRZtfc]

As you know, the links in Clicked are drawn largely from meme trackers and link aggregators.  Today I learned of a new-to-me tracker called Wattpad, which I gather is devoted to content that's meant to be read on a mobile phone. Among the week's most popular links are a number of authentically lengthy Harry Potter fan-written fiction books, some of which credit HarryPotterFanFiction.com as the source. We've got a new Potter book coming in a week so you might not be in the market for extra material at the moment, but once it sets in that you'll never have another new Harry Potter book, this may be worth keeping in mind. ADDING: This is not the same as the fake Chinese books though the idea of ancient Chinese magic in the Harry Potter setting does have an appeal. (These also aren't the erotic/porn fan fiction we've mentioned before - "het" and "slash" and that stuff.)

Though this article makes it clear that giving this lady the world's fastest internet connection is mainly a stunt, can you imagine what that kind of speed would be like in our day-to-day lives?

Reprieve granted for online radio. What do you know, take Congress out of the picture and reasonable things start to happen. (This sentence was not really correct enough to keep. See the comments.)

Christian protestors heckle a Hindu priest in the U.S. Senate, of all places.

Speaking of religious activism, "It basically said anybody who doesn't believe in our religious belief is wrong and should be taken care of." The religious group wasn't named. UPDATE: More here.

While at that Breitbart site I saw this video of the ecstasy kid demonstrating that she can do the eye roll on command. In keeping the story on the wrong side of ridiculous the mother pointed out that the eyerolling was inspired by a horror movie they'd just allowed the girl to watch. D'oh!

11 Craziest Ways To Browse Flickr Photos - Like this blogger I also ended up wasting a stupid amount of time on Flickr Combat (some NSFW).  It's funny how important it feels to render a thoughtful judgment.

"The patient had second-degree burns on his chest and left leg. In addition, two linear burns extended along his anterior chest and neck to the sides of his face, terminating in substantial burns in the external auditory meatus bilaterally... Both of his tympanic membranes were ruptured, and he had a severe conductive hearing deficit. He also had a mandibular fracture."
Before you click, see if you can guess what caused that burn pattern on this lightning strike victim.

Breaking news: The Internet has crashed.

Girl knits a Ferrari - The coolest part is that she welded the frame herself. When the world ends, I want this girl in my refugee camp.

Banana security is face recognition security for your computer. I wonder how long you'd have to use it before you got too old for it to recognize you. Sounds like this might work as an aid to face blindness as well.

"64squares is a completely free, fully featured and easy to use online chess site with a clean simple interface."

Coin operated jiggle machines may be the most ridiculous exercise idea since those jiggling belt machines.

McDonalds set to give new meaning to the phrase "eat here, get gas." "Over in the UK, McDonald's announced today that it will start using its own waste cooking oil to make biodiesel, which will be then used in its entire truck fleet of 155 vehicles."

Another day, another advance in solar technology.  I don't mean to be flip but it does seem like we see this kind of headline often. Has anyone noticed this stuff hitting the market?  Are we still too far back in the research phase?

Meanwhile, speaking of sensing light, I happened upon this slightly old story about advances in digital camera sensitivity. An improvement of 2-4 times in low light conditions would just about warrant the purchase of a new camera I reckon.

Have you ever seen that Real Sex segment on HBO of the guy who makes the ultra-realistic dolls?  I think Howard Stern got one. Anyway, apparently those have surpassed the novelty phase, completely transcended the sex toy phase and for some men has reached the level of "acceptable dating pool." The clip at this link doesn't have any nudity or sex acts but obviously does touch on some adult themes.  From there it links to a blog with the full documentary (about 45 minutes long) but I haven't watched that.

The more things change, the more they stay the same - a photo series from the future. Cool photoblog.  I think it's all advertisements. NOTE: There's one boobie shot on the front page.

This'll be an interesting bit of collective journalism.  This blogger is wondering why there's been a spike in the budget outlays for the Executive Office of the President.

The latest twist in 9/11 conspiracy theories is the recollection that bin Laden initially denied involvement in the attacks. It's amazing to read all the little explanations in this article; who bin Laden is, what the Taliban is.

High speed photos of glasses breaking

Following on the horror of seeing an aging Metallica, The Princess Bride is 20 years old.  ABC has then/now photos.

"Ours is the largest artificial weather program in the world in terms of equipment, size and budget." "The United States, which pioneered cloud-seeding techniques in the 1940s and 1950s, has long cooled in its enthusiasm for the science behind artificial rain." I wonder what that's about.

Remember that kid who bagged groceries at the local supermarket and would always put the bread on the bottom and the gallon of milk at the top?  Looks like he got a job in shipping.

All week I've been thinking about the impact of Nielsen/NetRatings dropping the page view measure for the "time spent" measure.  My first thought was that this can only make the Web better for the average surfer.  Y'know how sometimes you'll go to a page with a top ten list and only get the first two before it asks you to click and view the next page?  That pagination strategy is meant to drive up the page view stat for the site.  As obnoxious as it seems, the system has made it necessary.  The way sites are ranked and ultimately ads are sold is on page views. But the system has been gamed so hard the stats are almost meaningless.  So on the surface it seems that judging a site by how long people stay on it will mean less useless clicking and more engaging content and presentation.  But surely this new measure is as open to abuse as the page view system, so I'm trying to figure what the downside will be.  Might a site retard page load times? Surely we'll see  more video since it keeps you on a page longer (you can't even print it out to read later). I wonder if we'll see more flashy introductions to videos and interactive applications. Since we'll be seeing stats about how much time people spend online, we can probably also look forward to more "are you addicted to the Web?" stories in the news.

Speaking of the future of the Web, The future of the Web as seen by its creator - Tim Berners-Lee explains the Semantic Web.

Speaking of predicting the future of the Web, how about this look ahead from 1994? "A global electronic mall is under construction."  Nah, it'll never catch on.

Speaking of a glimpse of the future, looking at the trailer for the new Blade Runner Final Cut DVD, it's amazing how this movie could totally be released today and be on par with other offerings in the genre. UPDATE:  I just realized they actually are releasing this movie to theaters.  Very exciting. (There are a bunch of versions of this in YouTube but I don't see an official site yet.  Anyone?)

Here's one to watch if you're avoiding Summer junk TV (and if you can stand the annoying monotone and stilted cadence of Wolf Blitzer's voice): Michael Moore suffers a bit of an ambush on CNN but recovers well and ends up blasting CNN for doing a poor job covering the lead-up to the war in Iraq. If you care to follow it, Moore's put his facts on his site as promised, and there's a follow-up video here. I hear Moore and CNN's medical correspondent Dr. Gupta will be on Larry King at some point so we'll look for a bootleg of that sometime soon. (UPDATE: It's on Moore's site now.  Gupta stands up for himself well.)

Watching the above, I wonder if an under-reported angle on the story of the Web media revolution is a new disrespect for being on TV. Can interviewers no longer count on the advantage of the medium's dazzling effects on their guests.

I should also add, this probably looks like some kind of Michael Moore hero worship, but to be honest I haven't seen this movie or even the last one on the war.  I like that Moore is an iconoclast but I don't look to him for governance because he's a filmmaker, not a legislator. I give credit to Moore for dragging this issue onto the national radar when literally no one else has, but I don't pay very close attention to discussions of his proposed solutions because there will never be a politician bragging about co-signing the Moore Healthcare Act.

What evolution left behind on humans - Kind of a funny twist on the "left behind" title. What's most amazing to me is how many of the items on the list explain that small percentages of humans still have some of these ancient traits.  The idea that we lost some of our ability to smell in the course of evolution is odd to me.  What would be the evolutionary advantage of not being able to smell as well?  A willingness to make with more (smellier) partners?

"The screeners at Albany International confiscated the water bottle but missed the bomb. In all, the inspectors slipped four banned items through the main checkpoint during the test, sources said."

Maybe if someone had been there to take a picture of the decoy bomb they'd have caught it.

Speaking of security and pictures, "FreedomToPhotograph.com was created to allow photographers to tell their stories about run-ins with law enforcement agencies and what really happened."

Some of the international examples on this site feel a little irrelevant but I was interested to find their pointer to this NPR piece.

Speaking of protecting us to death, Commuter Click: "I've Got Nothing to Hide" and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy - It says "short essay" but the pdf prints out to 21 pages.  That includes notes, but still longer that I'd like to read off a screen.

Still on the theme of whipping ourselves into a frenzy of panic, I admit that I found James Hetfield's beard terrifying when I saw their performance in the Live Earth concert. Not because he looks like a terrorist but because it's GRAY!  If the young rock star I listened to when I was a young aspiring rock star is now old and gray... terrifying. But according to widespread reports some airport security found him literally terrifying and stopped him on his way into the country.

All of the stories cite "The Times" but it took me forever to find the source.  It turns out it's the very last item on this page.  I'll print the whole thing and you tell me if the story is being reported correctly:

"— James Hetfield, the frontman with US metal rockers Metallica, was apparently questioned by security officials at Luton airport when arriving for the Live Earth gig at Wembley. Friends put it down to his "Taliban-like beard". We're thinking of a particular scene in This Is Spinal Tap."

Better picture here.

"A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change." Not that it really matters I guess.  Everyone's got their studies that show what they want to believe.

Man floats 193 miles using chair, balloons - I feel like I've heard of someone else doing this. I love how non-crazy it sounds in the article.  The guy has a GPS and a parachute and snacks. What else could he need?

"To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Radiohead's OK Computer we've asked some of our favorite musicians to participate in a song-by-song covers compilation."

Giant badgers terrorise Iraqi port city - The headline should be "Irrational rumors of giant badgers..." And besides, anyone who's been around the Web for any amount of time knows that snakes are scarier than badgers.

Even seeing the name of this film (advertisement) I didn't get it until the very very end. The Wind. Brilliant.

5 news aggregation methods compared - The examples are all sports news, so sports fans who've noticed my woeful ignorance of the field might want to check it out.  The overall idea is that you can take a bunch of news sources and mix them together to make one really useful, extra rich news source.  The variation comes in how the sources are selected and how the mix is presented.

Civics lesson for our time: The president is not America.

Laughing at the misfortune of others video of the day. I feel somewhat justified in laughing because this morning I was walking and texting and walked into a tree branch hanging over the sidewalk.  Damn near poked myself in the brain.

I haven't seen any mention of the new Harley FXCWC in any of the magazines I read (all two of them) so I think it's only recently been released. I'm still getting used to the idea of the 2007 models with the big engines and tires.  Their site is a pain but if you start at the 2008 model page, pull down the softtail menu and choose the bottom item you'll see it. Or check out this big picture from this Italian review.  Ladies and other small riding partners, how does that passenger seat look to you?

Speaking of motorcycles, Speedy motorcycle

Oops, one more.  I agree that reverse trikes are the future. I see the T-Rex every now and then even in New York City. I'm not crazy about something that sits me at SUV exhaust pipe height, but something along the lines of this guy's motorcycle hybrid has real appeal. $35-50 grand for it is a stretch though. I wonder what that front end assembly costs alone.

Speaking of vehicles, how married are Americans to their cars? They don't even get out to play basketball.

On to other means of transport... Inside the World of Mileage Running - Wired Magazine gives the guy 500 bucks to exploit the sky miles system as best he can.  "Now with more than 6,000 miles and 31 hours booked, my only problem was how to spend the other $224."

"This is apparently the new 'fun' internet thing to do. Find old videos and sync them up to new songs." The "smack my hippie" video he mentions is this (no actual hippie smacking). The original for that is here in case you've never seen it. Apache!

A letter to Optimus Prime from his Geico Auto Insurance agent

Creepy hand soap - There's probably a funny Photoshop contest in this: literal interpretations of products with body part names.  Skin lotion?  Tooth paste?

Did you see the story of the 10,000 year-old baby mammoth found? Does it just go without saying at this point that there's no chance of there being DNA for cloning in something like that? The article doesn't even mention it.  I must be the only one who thinks "Jurassic Park" every times something is found sticking out of a melting ice cap.

"Fat from the tummy or bottom could be used to grow new breasts in a treatment which could be carried out in an hour - or a lunch break." Scoff if you must, but you know the only thing that's going to give stem cell research a real push is if there's a pot of gold at the end in the form of bigger breasts and penises.  Personally I'm holding out for stem cell injections in my scalp to bring back my widow's peak.

I don't think there's been another link sent to me more than the iPhone in a blender video.  Rather than wait for today's entry, let's get it out there:
[YouTube:qg1ckCkm8YI]
The official Will It Blend site is here.

In a similar vein to our following of the cop/skater story that sprang from a YouTube video posting, there's another story following the same path.  In this case a little girl in a crowded mini-van rolls her head eyes in her eyes head while family members moosh her cheeks and otherwise play with her face.  At one point someone jokes that she shouldn't have taken X, which some interpret to mean that the baby has been drugged and is rolling her eyes in a chemical haze.

The YouTube video, as well as the sister's MySpace page have been wiped from the Web but for those of us who prefer primary sources, there's a copy of the video here at Deleted You Tube (NOTE: The site has an ad with a be-thonged butt on it.  ANOTHER NOTE:  It's been pointed out that there are porn ads on it as well. I only see text ads on the side, so there must be some kind of ad rotation with a few clunkers.).

As fascinating as it is to see how the Web community took it upon themselves to contact authorities on the matter, I'm not sure I'm on board with this charge. It looks like kids playing to me - even if she is being a little rough with the cheek pinching.

The cable folks are running the story on the air today including some footage of the family being chased from a parking lot by the media.  I have a feeling this won't end up being one of the Web's prouder moments.

Google is working on improving its social network. Yahoo is adding one called Mosh. I secretly hope these both do terribly because if I have to create another online profile I'm going to go nuts.

Speaking of needing online social help, how nervy is it to pay other people to leave comments on blogs on your behalf?

Speaking of how to conduct yourself online, it used to be that all the good advice online was to make short frequent blog posts.  And now this: Write Articles, Not Blog Postings - It's important to note that he's talking about a strategy for a particular kind of business or niche, but the general idea is that authority is better than awareness.  Engaging in conversational blog banter might boost your blog popularity but if you want more status you should spend your time writing the definitive essay on your subject.  (Is it just me or does that sounds like the newspaper columnist model?)

What I find most interesting about the above links is that we're beginning to see real, practical differentiation in the online community toolbox.  Maybe you just want a social network presence (and then, maybe you only want one in a very specific social network), or maybe you want a brief tumble blog or Twitter experience, or the traditional blog route serves your purposes best, or maybe it's regularly releasing richer content that feeds online discussion.  Maybe I'm being naive, but as the choices become too numerous to do everything, people are going to put some thought into how the various options suit them instead of simply following the latest fad technology.

Speaking of being well versed in tech tools, in the information age, librarians are the new rock stars.

Speaking of well versed, Paris Hilton rock opera

As much as I don't really want to care about Katie Couric, I'm going to read this profile of her.

I used to really believe the idea that opportunity or some kind of social well being was the solution to terrorism, but my optimism about that has been really flagging lately. Still it's probably the majority opinion that the promise of a good future either at home or here in the U.S. overrides jihads and other murderous mandates.

"Mininova is the fist BitTorrent site to enter the list of 100 most visited sites on the Internet."
Anyone care to hazard some analysis of what this means?  How about if we add this one: Mass Video Streaming On The Web Reaches New Heights

"You can't dead lift 600 pounds if your abs aren't strong, but you will never see a 600-pound dead-lifter doing crunches and sit-ups." Military "core strengthening" exercises. When you read this, do you hear it in your head in a gravelly voice?

Speaking of toughguys, The story of Sak is another clever marketing move by the Philips Bodygroom people. You may recall the last one was an interactive guy in a robe whose coarse terms for male body parts were bleeped out with images of fruit.  This one also has bleeps over coarse words (such that this item should have a NOTE, though I can't think of a specific warning.  Don't show it to your kids I guess.) but the point of the video is to tell the fictional story of the invention of male body grooming.

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature - Guaranteed to offend you on some level.

Speaking of being offended, my headline for this story would be "Man sells wife for $4802." It wasn't exactly a sale. He made his wife join him in a swinging lifestyle, she ran off with one of the new partners.  The husband sued for something called "alienation of affection" and was awarded the four grand. So by another interpretation, after shopping her around, that's the price he got for her.

"Here's your Election Central guide to all the possible legislative initiatives to end the Iraq War that are being worked out behind the scenes by Dem Congressional leaders and may be launched in the coming days."

"It started with a biologist sitting on a grassy river bank in York, eating a sandwich. It ended in the discovery of a "scruffy little weed with no distinguishing features" that is the first new species to have been naturally created in Britain for more than 50 years."

Since my recent remarks about Starbucks revealed some coffee lovers among my readership, "Without the bitterness produced by hot water, the cold-brewed coffee had hints of chocolate, even caramel. I dropped my sugar packet — no need for it. The best brews hardly need cream." The idea is that you steep the grounds in cold water overnight and filter the next morning for cold-brewed iced coffee instead of cold hot brewed coffee. (Bonus points if you don't use bottled water.)

Digg stories as a Tetris game - When I try to read the headlines, that's when I mess up the game.  There's probably a lesson in that.  And yes, there is a reason this idea seems familiar.

How a 'gay rights' leader became straight - It's not hard to imagine how this is causing discussion online.  In fact the more honest headline is the one on the related news headline that uses "quits homosexuality" instead of "became straight."  His essay is more about suppressing sexual urges than finding a new sexuality with women.

Speaking of gay conversions, Homo sex is...

Today's iPhone link collection:

• Knit iPhone
• iPhone the musical
• But it doesn't top the Stupid iPhone Lady video because some people just make you root for their downfall. (oops, this guy has a working version)

This guy changed his middle name to Megatron

With this chat with Ted Kerasote about his dog Merle the video solution makes more sense because he was able to give me a bunch of photos to show against the audio.

You may have heard of this book already because it's already a bestseller.  If you're a dog person at all you'll appreciate it.  I admit, I don't always think smiling dogs are actually smiling, so I had a hard time with some of the anthropomorphization. But he also did a lot of research into the science and history of dogs, which I found very interesting. The interview has a mix of the two perspectives.

I've been trying to find a way to add a video component to the audio interviews I do.  I used my interview with Jean Pfaelzer, author of Diven Out, as the first, most basic test.  The video is just the cover of her book, but I think you'll see that listening through the video player is better than waiting for the audio file to load.

As for the interview itself, Pfaelzer's book was really interesting and it was hard to interview her without just saying, "Oh, tell about this part, now tell about this part." (You can tell by the way my questions run on too long.)  I was expecting to just talk about the current immigration debate, but really, the history of discrimination against Chinese Americans is fascinating and something I knew nothing about.

I regularly receive mail from readers but often forget to include it in regular posts. Since this is a pretty quiet week, now's a good time to share some of the highlights from the past month, including a batch of Ralph's recommendations at the end to help you get through the week if 90% of your office decided to go on vacation this week leaving you bored and alone.

Other Apple designs
I really like the iPiano with only three keys.
-Eric

Will replies:  These are fun. I've heard a lot of good things about the galleries at La Repubblica.  In this case, it looks like they stole some of the better entries in the Worth1000.com contest.  I wonder if they have a deal with the site.

Will,
I'm certain that you have already seen the article "Judging Books by Their Covers," but I found it interesting because it read to me as a narrative on the "wisdom of the crowd".  That Feynman wrote this in 1964 really makes it just a commentary of the human condition.   But in current terms, "when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don't improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging" sure sounds like the political debate going on in the blogosphere today.
-Chris  

Will suppresses a "speaking of" and pastes the next one...

This is from the Chronicle of Higher Education and was Library Link Of The Day. It's an awesome Commuter Click, too.

(It just struck me that as more authoritative pages link to it, its authority quotient goes up. That's pretty much the thesis in a tiny nutshell -- although it's a much bigger nut than that.)
-Heidel

Will adds: The Web 2.0 model of authority according to vote (by linking, digging, etc.) seems like a poor fit for scholarly material.

From a press release:  T.K. Kenyon, novelist, is auctioning off the naming rights for a character in her next novel, due out in 2008. Her first novel, RABID, garnered excellent, starred reviews as 'a philosophical, genre-bending story, part thriller, part literary slapdown.'" The auction is to benefit The Polaris Project, which combats human trafficking and modern-day slavery.

Will adds: On a lighter, completely unrelated (except for the fact that it's about naming something) note, I finally found a 99 cent bag of the new Doritos X-13D flavor chips (because there's no way I'm spending $3.49 for a huge bag of mystery flavor in a black bag). It's actually probably the best new flavor I've tasted since Cool Ranch. I won't ruin the game of guessing what the flavor actually is, but you can go to the site, get a clue, play a game and submit what you think it should be named. The prize is a year's supply of Doritos, which is not enough to tempt me to submit all the personal info they want on the site to play the contest.  Still, a fun idea.

Disclosure: I see they're running some kind of design-a-video-game contest with Xbox, which is a Microsoft product, which MSNBC.com partly is as well.  I have nothing to do with that contest and I'm not saying you should go buy these Doritos or anything.  I just mention it because last time I mentioned new Doritos flavors I got a pretty big response so I thought some readers would be interested.

Speaking of video games...

Though this article is taken from the point of view of gaming retailers, but certainly this supreme court decision has much further reaching consequences.  Enjoy.
~DanE from Chicago

Hi Will!   Love the blog, I read it almost every day.   Here's a story/link you might like to use for Clicked:

In 1992, crates containing 29,000 rubber ducks were blown off a Chinese cargo ship in a storm.  The crates broke open and over the years, the ducks are turning up at beaches all over the world. - Daily Mail.
~Carmine

Will replies:  Thanks Carmine.  Better rubber ducks than an oil slick I guess.  My brother-in-law is about to get his PhD in something very similar to the science of how these ducks are getting around the world. Changing global temperatures and melting ice caps mean weird things for water currents, weather patterns, salinization layers. I reckon there are a lot of concerned people paying close attention to those ducks.

Hey folks!
Bev has served up a wonderful plate of invertebrate delicacies at Burning Silo for Circus of the Spineless #22. Please give it a check here.
-Tony G

Will points out:  He means literally spineless, it's not about politics or anything like that.

Hi Will,
I thought you might find this funny (ironically!)
Actually, the whole website is a hoot. Who woulda thunk it?
JE, Detroit

Will replies: I love the company name: Despair Inc.

Not sure how many other people have pointed it out yet, but the new version of Desktop Tower Defense is now up!
-Randall K.
St. Louis, MO

Will grumbles:  ... it's harder. :(  P.S. Revenge of the Stickmen is a recent Ralph Recommendation that's basically Desktop Tower Defense with a twist.

I'm a long time fan of clicked but I'm behind so I don't know if you've seen
this yet or not.
Thanks!
Lara Alldredge

Will replies: Thanks Lara, we touched on the subject of Internet radio and the troubles its facing a while ago but I know the countdown is getting close so it's worth the reminder.

Will,
I am a long-time reader of Clicked and wanted to share a video with you and, if you deem it worthy, your blog audience.

This is a comedic 'documentary', featuring kite aerial videography. I have a tendency to attach my camera to anything I can, filming all kinds of weird video, so I compiled some of my kitecam footage and edited it into an short film. Enjoy. :)
-Mike

Will replies: Mike, that's great, but where's the final "success" footage? I'm a big fan of kite photography so I'd love to see what your videos look like.

Will,
I recently launched a website that I think you might be interested in checking out.  It is an online crime prevention network that allows people to post photo and/or video of crimes that have been committed against them or at their homes and businesses on the internet.  The public can in turn search by address or zip code and view the crime postings nearest to them, and can submit tips if they feel that they have information that could lead to an arrest or help police in catching the criminals.  The service is free to both search and post crimes.
-Ben Sharpe

Will expands:  This is an excerpt of a longer mail Ben sent.  It's like a national, digital post office wanted board. It's a neat idea in the abstract and I'm sure crime victims would appreciate something like this to help them find each other, but I wonder about the liability Ben is taking on and how the database is kept fresh.

Hi Will,
I enjoy your blog, it gives me something to do during my lunch hour :)  I found this little game thanks the slashdot.  You get to redistrict the mythical state of Jefferson, which by the way was almost not mythical if it wasn't for WWII.
Sincerely,
Padraic
Portland, Oregon

Will gives a head's up:  The redistricting game is a great learning/teaching aid but a real time sink to play.

Will,
I know the topic has been done to death...but this photoshop work is so remarkable it borders on artistry.
Alex

Will replies: Alex, I never get sick of this topic.  I've switched our your link for the more friendly YouTube version. NOTE: This is the photoshopping of a woman in lingerie.  Her bare butt is basically exposed.  Not for kids or work but you could probably explain why you were looking at it if you mom or wife caught you watching it. OK, here's the link.

It's not really clear to me what brush the guy is using.  It looks like he's got some kind of reverse fish eye effect happening. What I like about this video is that in the end the girl looks kind of weird. While there's the temptation to say hey, they made the fat lady skinny, there's an element of "wait, what does a real woman/human look like again?"

This is a weird story.
Have a nice day...
- Antoine

Will expands:  It's the story of the military looking into producing a "gay bomb" that turns the enemy gay.  This has psyops written all over it. If the U.S. military leaked a story of the development of a gay bomb and then flew over a battle zone spraying simple water and leaflets informing the enemy they'd been exposed to a gay-making agent I bet it would wreak havoc by virtue of the placebo effect alone, nevermind the tacit permission for actual gay soldiers to come out. I'm not saying the battlefield would erupt into a gay sex orgy but it would definitely put the enemy off their game.

Will,
Have you reported this yet?

My friend put her phone up to my computer speaker for 10 seconds and the phone returned the name, artist and album of the song currently playing!
 
Mind blowing stuff
-Keego, KY

Will replies:  That is really cool!  I wonder how long before the other providers come up with something similar. In my head I'm picturing a phone bank of music geeks working at Verizon listening to people's VCast calls and guessing what the song is. I bet marketers would love to get their hands on what people are submitting for identification.

New Yorkers that can't remember 9/11 details…..
-Tom

Will replies: Tom, I've seen other parts of this series online.  I think it's like Jay Leno's Jaywalking segment.  In the one I remember they ask Americans to point out Iraq and many of them end up pointing to Australia.  It's interesting that some foreign press likes to portray Americans as stupid.  Others often play up the gun-toting sadist angle.

Remember that ridiculous episode of the British car program visiting the South? UPDATE: Looks like all the links are dead there, part of it can be viewed again here.

Not to be a wet blanket on what is basically a funny clip, but when I saw the line Tom wrote, I thought it was going to be about some kind of PTSD. The memory problem I had after 9/11 was that I couldn't stop dwelling on the details of the World Trade Center before it was destroyed. What ended up helping me a great deal was a trick I learned after having my backpack stolen in Spain. I couldn't stop mentally cataloging what had been lost so I wrote down every single thing that was in the backpack.  After that my head cleared.  Similarly, after writing down everything I could remember about the World Trade Center I was less preoccupied and better able to move on. I imagine mental health professions prescribe a similar exercise in some cases.

Ralph's Recommendations:

Abstract Sea: Stay Alive in Enemy Waters
Your little digital boat has drifted into enemy waters. Blast the enemy ships before they destroy you!
 
Hope you enjoy it!
-Ralph

Will rates:  I love this game. The arcade games I loved as a kid were the high volume shooting kind like Tempest and Centipede.  I never got into the fight game craze which now seems to have taken over.

Ammo Chase: Shoot and Catch the Robbers!
The robbers are getting away! Shoot their car (and their landmines) to slow them down so you can catch them.

Hope you enjoy it.
-Ralph

Will rates:  Also a high volume shoot game.  In fact, I advise hitting the mute button on this because it's totally crazy with noise. The strategy in this is pretty novel but I had a hard time being successful at it either because I'm using a touchpad instead of a mouse or simply because I suck.

Runner: Car Crash Game
Everyone in town hates your car. Do your best to avoid getting hit as you escape the city.

This game's really tough... but I've actually beaten it. Once.
-Ralph

Will adds: I hate car driving games unless I'm at the arcade with a steering wheel in my hand, but at least this one doesn't really care if you stay on the track. The fact that Ralph beat it made me keep trying but I still don't generally last more than three minutes or so. It needs a rear view mirror and a map.

Bloons: Player Pack 1
The fans at Bloonsworld have come up with 50 new levels of the popular Bloons game. As always, help the monkey pop as many bloons as you can. Remember that some bloons have special features, like bombs, boomerangs, multi-darts, freezers, spike-balls and more!
 
I think you'll really enjoy this one!
-Ralph

Will warns:  This is the one that will cost you the rest of your days productivity. The hazard is that you don't really lose. Instead the game quickly sets you up to try again.  "Well... ok, just one more time, I know I can get this level if I just hit that one spot." You're doomed.

Sorry for the length of this one, this has been one of those weeks where I've had time for notes but no time to write them up.

Africans to Bono: 'For God's sake please stop!' This is a really long version of the "teach a man to fish" maxim. Interesting to hear about China's role in Africa.

Speaking of Africa, I don't recommend scam baiting unless you know what you're doing but they've got some really satisfying stories. There's a weird thread of sympathy for these scammers when they're humiliated by the baiters.  Heck with that, they get no sympathy from me.

Speaking of the death of e-mail, "Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You'll create a network of the people you know  and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast." What's drawing attention to it is that it's from Digg creator Kevin Rose. Particularly helpful, I found, is this comparison of Pownce with Twitter.

The reason I mention this in the context of e-mail is that a lot of people agree that e-mail is broken.  Too much junk, too much wasted bandwidth.  When RSS first appeared there was an idea that it would take the place of e-mail so you'd only get messages from people whose feeds you've added to your reader.  Increasingly, IM and its variants like Twitter are looking like a good idea - still working from that list of trusted friends.

Man founds a city in MN, population 4

News of a Harry Potter worm is not really all that remarkable. I think it happens every time there's a new book. I will say that last time there was a new Potter book there were a few headlines about the eBook advocates taking turns typing it manually into a document and publishing it on the Web.  I have one of those because I thought it would be cool to one day find a really fancy font and print the thing out a foot thick with a hand-made binding.  Anyway, right now it's just a zip in a random folder on my desktop but I tell that story to point out that people do trade in digital bootleg Harry Potter books.

Speaking of writing books online, it seems the ultimate display of social media mob-wisdom to come up with system whereby the population of the Internet can write a book together, one word at a time, with each new word subject to a vote.  Check out Add One Word to see how well it works. (Note: I'm being a little snide here.  It doesn't work. The thing makes no sense and when it does make sense it's obscene.)

Speaking of the wisdom of the mob, Commuter Click: "A single ant or bee isn't smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots."

Beach click:  We are meant to be here - "People are not the result of a cosmic accident, but of laws of the universe that grant our lives meaning and purpose, says physicist Paul Davies." But apparently it's not an Intelligent Design argument either.

Speaking of books working in gray areas of religion, a new book called Mad Church Disease appears to be taking some parts of the Web by storm. From what I gather, it's about loving God (Christian, I think) but hating church.

Robert Novak Dishes on Valerie Plame and Hubby - Some sneak peeks at his forthcoming book.

I'm not so shocked by the Google/Sicko scandal, but that may be because I never really drank the "Google does no evil" Kool-aid. In short, an ad sales person at Google blogged that healthcare companies who feel maligned by Michael Moore's movie would do well to buy ads against Moore-related search terms so they might make their case against more to people who are searching for his movie.  This sounds exactly like how ad sales people think, but I guess the idea that Google would offer its services in support of a greedy, corrupt industry push some people over the edge. The best thing to come of it is this handy Company Blogging 101 tip sheet about how not to create a scandal like this when posting to the company blog.

Speaking of making a fuss over Sicko, "Outside the restroom doors… the theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room." I haven't seen the movie.  Has anyone else experienced this at their theater?

Taking the top off a small cumulus cloud. These airplane cloud swirl photos are increasingly common online.  I wonder if it has to do with more pilots carrying personal cameras.

I was catching up on my John from Cincinnati DVR and last week's episode ends with probably the best cover of Feelin' Good I've heard (with Nina Simone's version being the standard to beat).  There are a lot of tepid versions of the song out there from jazz people who try to sing it pretty.  One such version has been torturing me in an advertisement in heavy rotation on MSNBC lately. But it's not a pretty song, it's a butt-kicking energy triumph song. As should be the case with a good cover song, the HBO version (by a band called Muse) does something very different with it but does a good job preserving the energy.

Speaking of music, Starbucks creates an interesting ambivalence in people. I know in some parts of the country it's the only place to get good coffee.  Where I live, there are indie coffee places everywhere, so I avoid Starbucks on principle - because I want my neighborhood to remain distinct in character.  But how far does that principle extend? If an uncool place does cool things, does that make it cool or does it make the cool thing uncool? At one point in this Slate podcast about Starbucks CDs Culture Editor Julia Turner asks, "Do I need to feel ashamed of liking music that's spun regularly in Starbucks?"

(It's Feist's 1234 that creates the conflict for her.)

Flip is essentially useless but still strangely attractive.  Enter some text and Flip turns it upside-down.

Tie a knot that can't be untied.

For the new Simpsons movie some 7-11 stores are being done up like Kwik-E-Marts. Folks online are delighting in this Flickr set. Here's a list to find the one nearest you - which may not be very near at all.

It's hard to say the blogosphere is contributing very much reporting to the terror situation in the UK. On one side some bloggers are taking this as an opportunity to highlight the indiscriminant danger of radical Islam. Others are focused on the lack of sophistication of the terrorists (How did these guys get to be doctors and yet be so lousy learning the chemistry of explosives?) and the contrast between how the matter is handled in the UK versus the US. Though it should be said, not everyone agrees the UK press has acted with restraint.

Oh, and there's this... "As at this very moment, 1729 hours BST, in the Paypal account are the names of one thousand and thirty five people who have paid their dues to Smeato."  What? John Smeaton is an airport worker who helped police wrestle one of the Glasgow terrorists. There's a bit of a cultural gap that's leaving me feeling left out of the joke, but it appears that he's a pretty regular guy and folks are tickled to see so much attention on someone so pedestrian. The links page helps round out the picture.

Speaking of stupid terrorists, another good reason to wean off cars is that every wackadoo terrorist wannabe appears to be adopting the car-as-weapon strategy.

Speaking of cars as weapons, Car Crashes Kill 400 Times More Than Terrorism 

Speaking of saving ourselves from cars, Hey America, Make With the !*~$ High-Speed Rail Already - This line is odd to me: "That the US lacks them is due neither to conspiracy nor accident." Considering how much the public would benefit from a quality rail system, the fact that we don't have one -on purpose- means the decision was made in consideration of someone's interests. To my mind, decisions like that are made by conspiracy lest the public realize what's going on. I'm open to dissuasion on this, however.

Speaking of getting around, how shoes ruin your feet and make you walk wrong.

Here's a classic "blogger beats MSM" story.  Bob Owens read a story about beheadings in Iraq and didn't think the sourcing sounded very reliable.  It wasn't, and ultimately he got the AP and Reuters to retract their stories.

How to photograph fireworks

Let there be web divisions - The overall point here is that companies either don't handle their own Web sites or they see it as an add-on to IT or marketing. From where I sit it can be easy to believe that everyone is busy integrating the Web into their lives and business.  It's amazing how distant we really are from that being the case.

"Sony Italy is handing out fake books complete with fake hands to disguise PSP play from those pesky authority figures."

Europeans see US as threat to peace - I recognize that there's a lot of anti-Americanism in the world and I can even understand the opinion that a reckless U.S. would be dangerous to the world at large.  But if only 32 percent think the U.S. is the biggest threat, isn't that a small number?  That's not most Europeans. And that line about the youngest respondents isn't honest either.  35 percent of young Americans agree with 32 percent of Europeans? I wonder how small a number it would have taken for this story not to have been written.  Again, I'm not trying to be a Bush defender here, I'm just saying those numbers don't mean to me what this article is trying to tell me they mean.

Alternatives to anti-homeless benches are benches that homeless people can actually sleep in/under. I have to think there are homeless advocates who aren't thrilled with the idea that rather than house the homeless we just give them better benches to sleep on or what looks like inflated garbage bags.

CNN tries to pull a fast one with their new redesign.

Speaking of silly news, "Police say they've collared the man they believe administered a fatal beating to a peacock because he thought it was a vampire." An easy mistake to make.

And finally... Ark. Cop Cleared of Choking Skateboarder - Basically they didn't think the cop used all that much force. So, with that matter settled, cops and skateboarders can live in peace forever... or can they?

The iPhone hype has passed.  Let's take a look at some of the coverage highlights:

• Best coverage of the event definitely goes to the Engadget iPhone multi-city lineblog.
• Apple is a religion. Not really.
• Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder waited on line even though he'll eventually get a free one from the company.
• The iPhone rendered by the Etch-A-Sketchist
• Philadelphia mayor caught camping for an iPhone
• Here's an iPhone in pieces, in case you were curious.
• Oh, and Europe gets a better one.
• CNBC interviewed the Digg guys without apparently realizing it.

Speaking of CNBC interviews, Michael Moore went to the NYSE to tell investors to get out of HMO stocks and to be interviewed by Maria Bartiromo.  Security (or someone) wouldn't let him in the building.  Good interview from Maria too. (You want the video at the bottom of this page.)

Speaking of awkward cable news interviews, Guy Swipes Reporter's Mic During iPhone Live Shot

One more awkward interview: I like turtles.

Speaking of microphone mishaps, a lip-synching 50 Cent has to wander around stage aimlessly at the BET awards when his sing-along track cuts out.  His mic still worked though. Imagine if he'd just gone ahead and rapped his own song in his own voice. Naw, that's crazy talk.

When you get to the bottom of this piece on Stephen Colbert it shows that it runs 9 pages. I almost didn't turn the page because I don't really have 9 pages of curious about Stephen Colbert that needs to be satisfied. But it's actually a bunch of sample pages of a new Tek Jansen comic series that comes out July 11.

Speaking of comics, Friday Night Fights: Uppercut is a weekly comic blog round-up.

Strange that we were just looking at the question of the legality of public photography and now New York City comes up with an odd permit/insurance requirement for some photographers and filmmakers. When you read the article there's a really scary gap between what the rule is intended to do and what would be possible if someone chose to abuse it.

Prince to launch album as free newspaper giveaway - I got his last one for free at the concert. Prince has the benefit of being rich enough (I assume) to try new things but that doesn't mean he shouldn't get credit for trying them in the first place. I do wonder how the numbers work out for him in the end; a promotional fee from the newspaper plus increased concert attendance versus whatever his cut would be from traditional record store sales. There's a certain tragedy in seeing the dying retail music industry battling the dying newspaper industry.

"As police knocked at his door and a "Dateline" camera crew waited in the street, Conradt shot himself." Wow.  I wonder how they're going to deal with that on the show.

I own every Led Zeppelin album (well, cassette tape) but I don't think a reunion is such a good idea.  The one they did last time was not really a thriller.

Speaking of Led Zep, a guitar shop finally puts its foot down. Looks like it's still open season on Louie Louie.  But what if you're playing an AK-47 guitar?

New google maps feature: to change the driving directions, just drag the line. This must have been hard to do because it seems really obvious that someone would want a mapping program with this function.

Speaking of obvious inventions, a transparent toaster so you can see if your toast is done.

Hysterical complaint letter to Continental Airlines includes the winning phrase "the ass on my body factor."

What's in Red Bull - Most amazing is that it contains an ingredient that did actually used to come from bulls. Not answered is what to call the flavor of Red Bull.

I had made a note that mystery writers should consider making a plot twist of a murder that is announced half a day in advance online (inspired by the Benoit/Wikipedia story). But given the subsequent report that it was just random coincidence that some goofball was adding bogus facts to wikipedia entries (hello? time to find a hobby) I'm thinking there's a potential Stephen King novel in this one about the goofball who writes pranks online that become true hours later.

The site for the Simpsons movie is mostly under construction but the games work.

Why New Music Doesn't Sound As Good As It Did - What you really want is the video here. A really clear demonstration in only a couple minutes.

Speaking of clear explanations, check out how this guy measures the speed of light using his microwave oven.

Speaking of microwaves, someone's going to have to explain to me why a lit match under a glass in a microwave practically goes nuclear. I'm wondering if there's lead or something in the glass.

Speaking of things going practically nuclear (which means nothing like nuclear, but you know what I'm saying), The explosive results of dropping a Gummy Bear in molten potassium chlorate.  You can actually hear the gummi bear scream.

Folks are calling this light graffiti.  I'm not sure it's graffiti if it's not still there when you leave, but it's fun nonetheless. I like the dog walker.

"A new way to examine humanity's impact on the environment is to consider how the world would fare if all the people disappeared." Fan of post-apocalypse imagery, this is a must-click if for the images alone.

Why Your Electricity Meter Sucks - The idea is that new meters would allow for "dynamic pricing" so peak use charges could be levied, encouraging people to cut back. There's also an idea that new meters would also show how little energy is being used at night so powerplants could cut back on production.

"What to do you call it when you get a whole bunch of redheads together in one place?" The Redhedd site itself has kind of an odd tag line though: "Welcome to Redhedd.com, a new community devoted to cheerleading a beautiful noble rarified and dying breed." But it's a funny contrast to the "gingerism" item we saw a couple weeks ago.

Speaking of follow-ups, the officer in the video with the skateboarders has been put on administrative leave. That was apparently before the release of some store security video (text only at that link) that shows some time before the skateboarder's video of the officer choking one of them. More on how this is blowing up.

How the Mexican Immigration Problem Will Solve Itself - Short version: A decline in Mexican fertility rates is not only a sign of higher quality of life but also an indication that there will be more opportunity at home.

Roswell aliens theory revived by deathbed confession

Trailer for the new Grand Theft Auto game

Speaking of video games, a Wii light saber game is in the works.  That could be what finally drives me to buy a Wii.

Speaking of the Wii, Check-in time with the Wii-weight-loss guy. "I have lost 10 pounds per month for the last 4 months, by doing nothing more than using the Nintendo Wii as exercise and making some minor lifestyle adjustment changes with my eating habits and also with the way that I think."

Speaking of weight and video games, Welcome to Fatworld! Experience Refreshing Moral Discomfort! It's about a guy who writes weird social commentary video games.  Most intriguing line: "'The question of fun hangs like a cloud over this medium,' Bogost says, pointing out that 'fun' would hardly be accepted as the highest possible praise for a song, novel, or movie."

What's the deal with Iran enraging its citizens by rationing gasoline? I thought they were swimming in it? The answer is that while they may be swimming in oil, they're not swimming in refineries.

Here's a map of the world, showing the dominant social networks by country.

Speaking of different appeal in different parts of the world, Bipasha Basu has reasons to smile. Who?  And why is it relevant to report that she'll wear contacts? Winner of the Ford Supermodel of the World contest, among other things. The contacts part is still lost on me.

This really cool site is probably a hint of the next big thing from HBO.  I haven't watched every bit of it so there may be some nudity or something somewhere in here but it would probably be too small to cause problems at work.

Orange Introduces Windmill Charger! When is someone going to come up with a cell phone charger powered by a little gear that rubs on your bicycle tire?

The unfinished zebra - God has ADD.

That Romney dog torture story is here. "A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours."

This is your brain on politics - "A new book applies neuroscience to politics to figure out why the Democrats struggle to push the buttons in voters' brains."

The Mashable folks continue with their big lists of resources:

• Video Toolbox: 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources
• Analytics Toolbox: 50+ Ways to Track Website Traffic