moving on...

Hi there.

This incarnation of Uncertain Times has passed on.

It will continue over here.

I will no longer be tracking subscribers, visitors or links, so the only way I'll know you're there is if you stop by and comment every once in a while. I'm happily dropping out of the blogos-flow while continuing to post things that I find interesting. No hurry, no pressure, no worry.

Before I go, I must give a big hug and a kiss on the cheek to all of you, visitors and blog-kin alike. You are the ones that have made this a memorable experience. I hope you all stay in touch.

See you on the other side.

Hello out there....

Real Life™ has left me way behind with my online pursuits and will continue to leave me there until after Savannah's mad St. Patrick's Day is over. (We have the second largest SPD celebration in the United States. It goes on for days and it's like a mini Mardi Gras.)

I'm going to try to sneak a few sessions in between, so hang in there with me. I hope to not completely disappear during the next week.

oh, by the way...

Uncertain Times is a full one year old today.

Thanks to all of you loyal friends and visitors who have made this an extraordinarily fun ride. I have learned a great deal over the last year and you have helped this weblog to grow in ways that I had never anticipated.

Initially, I really had no idea what I was going to do with Uncertain Times, but over the months I have grown comfortable with what it has evidently become. I'll choose not to define that too precisely and just leave avenues open for wherever we may go.

As you might have noticed, posting has been down in volume over the last few months and I anticipate that this will remain the trend. There will be stops and spurts, but I'll always do my best to pass along the finest gems I can find, as has been my hope and intention all along.

Thanks again.

p.s. Uncertain Times v.ii has become a storehouse for random items that I find along the way. There has been a fair bit of action there lately.

stray bullets

With the greatest possible respect to Joe Satriani, we have now unfortunately found it necessary to respond publicly to his allegations. If there are any similarities between our two pieces of music, they are entirely coincidental, and just as surprising to us as to him. Joe Satriani is a great musician, but he did not write or have any influence on the song Viva La Vida. We respectfully ask him to accept our assurances of this and wish him well with all future endeavours. Coldplay.

On “The Death of Blogging” A sensible and accurate analysis. (via)

Seth Godin: Warning: The internet is almost full (short and resonant)

Confessions of a Bootlegger “At one point, I was probably responsible for starting up more record labels than David Geffin, Berry Gordy and Suge Knight combined!” (excellent) (via)

Beethoven and the Illuminati How the secret order influenced the great composer.

Shipwreck clues could clear Blackbeard of sinking his ship to swindle his crew For almost 300 years, the British pirate captain has stood accused of deliberately sinking his flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, so he could swindle his crew out of their share of loot they had plundered. But marine archaeologists, who are conducting a diving expedition on the vessel's presumed wreck, now believe it may have run aground by accident. They have even found evidence suggesting that Blackbeard made repeated attempts to rescue the stricken craft.

So you've been buried alive You may think you're exempt from this horror, but live burial doesn't discriminate. It happens to rich and poor, black and white, young and old. The more you prepare for this event, the greater your chances will be of surviving until that magical day when you're buried appropriately.

William Eggleston interview WE: There's plenty of film out there, and quadrillions of cameras that use film-I don't think it makes much sense not to use it. The thing that's going out is the manufacturing of the paper. Incidentally, all these years my wife has told me that I'm color-blind. (via)

also:
George S. Morrison, Admiral and Singer’s Father, Dies at 89
Interesting list of tourist scams (good to know) (via)
Insane Home Office Set-ups (via)
History of Hookah Smoking
antipodr (Find the other side of the world!) (via)
blört's new 404 (creepy)

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. - Albert Einstein (via)

correspondence

The funny thing about technology (in this case blogging, web 2.0 etc.), is that the early adopters are always looking to bail and find something new when the everyone else starts to catch on. In reality, sometimes a technology or a process works so well that it doesn't need to go much further.

That's why we don't have jet-packs and rocket ships and flying cars. Modern automobiles, airplanes and ships serve transportation needs just fine. Sure, we can make them cleaner and more efficient with better design, but in the end, they will still be cars and boats and planes.

Blogging is like the automobile. You can only tweak it. It's here to stay and no amount of Facebooks or Twitters will change that.

- Johny Zhivago in an email to The Mad Hillbilly

Another ridiculous "death of blogging" item

Rough Type - Who killed the blogosphere?

A few points to ponder about the increasing number of items like this:

☞ Three years is not a long time... ten years is not a long time.

☞ People who consider themselves on the "cutting edge" always reject and turn their noses up at latecomers, even though it was those very latecomers that vaulted them up to their perches.

☞ If you attempt to gauge the true state of the blogosphere - not the statistical - by only looking at the top 100, or even top 10,000 blogs on Technorati, your data set will naturally be tainted and not indicative of what is really happening. Most of the established and popular weblogs don't pay much attention to newcomers, so how could they know? These newcomers are not necessarily doing the same things for the same reasons that their predecessors were. The Technorati top 10,000 is no longer the blogosphere, it is the MAINSTREAM MEDIA. The new form of blogging is largely based on community and no longer about being a columnist or a pseudo-journalist. The usurpers have arrived and most know that the old school is largely irrelevant. This next wave does not mean that blogging is dead, it means that the old wave is dead.

☞ Sure, people tire of blogging. People tire of stamp collecting. However, I am subscribed to over 400 excellent weblogs - most of them are latecomers and show no signs of slowing down. They are blowing away the old-timers. In fact, many of the old guard appropriate and even steal much of their material from these obscure efforts.

☞ I'd wager that many of the people who started what are now abandoned weblogs were motivated by the potential for profit and when they found out that that was not likely to occur, they bailed. Others probably left because they realized that it actually involved work. Many bloggers that are still active are in it for the love and the community.

☞ What we're really hearing from the old-timers that keep ratcheting this increasingly tired argument is that THEY are dead and the secret garden that they cultivated and cherished is changing and moving beyond their control and comprehension. It's time that THEY abandoned their weblogs if they think the medium is dead. While tech gurus pontificate, regular folks, academics and aficionados continue to post fascinating and timely material. In short: Stay in the game and keep up, or go away and leave us alone - we'll take it from here. Stay over by Twitter and shut up.

☞ 140 characters on Twitter cannot replace the wonderful items I find every day in my reader. Please do not insult us with this outrageous dreck.

With all of this in mind, it seems to me that these specious "death of blogging" items are the products of bloggers that are out of touch, misinformed and running out of material. What is truly passé is tired, masturbatory ranting about the death of the blogosphere.

The only reason I stoop to blog about blogging is that I'd like to see young people and newcomers greeted with the notion of "the life of blogging" - arriving to find unfurrowed fields of potential so that we can enjoy what their unique minds have to share. Remember, the rest of the world is coming online, individual by individual, and I'm sure they are going to have something to say.

Perhaps this new era we find ourselves in might also be reflected in how we interact and share our experiences and outlooks online - for it is indeed time for change. Time to slough off the fluff and keep on. Blogging is here to stay. (listen)

Welcome newcomers! Come on in and pull up a chair, there is so much more to explore.

update: I find it amusing that Mr. Carr disabled the back-links for his post after I wrote this.

Weblog Awards

I was quite flattered that my good friend and veteran blogger, Nag on the Lake, nominated Uncertain Times for the 2008 Weblog Awards in the Best New Blog and Best Culture Blog categories. If you are of a like sentiment, it wouldn't hurt if you chimed in and posted your nomination, as well. I did, and I think UT might have a shot, long as it may be.

I don't really care all that much about awards, but what the hey, it's nice to be nominated.

Thanks Naggy!

btw, to make things easier, here's the links they're looking for:

http://un-certaintimes.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/UncertainTimes

Also, in case you didn't get the memo, Uncertain Times now has a presence on Tumblr. Uncertain Times v.ii will be a slightly - and I really mean slightly - less SFW repository for material that generally won't be posted here. I like to keep UT safe, fun and edifying for kids, people with kids around, and folks in the work environment.

update

After coming home from work and finding the same problems, only worse - my connection kept kicking off - I contacted Comcast again and they helped me to reset my modem. My connection was speedier and stable, but I still couldn't upload photos.

Frustrated to the point of giving up, I figured out another possible workaround and gave it a try. I found that I had over 5000 "starred items" in Google Reader, dating back to February. I un-starred them and deleted all of my gadgets on iGoogle. I also found that I had close to 1100 RSS subscriptions, so I dropped those down to under 500. On top of all that, I uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox, in case there was a problem with Java, in the process losing hundreds of bookmarks. All of this time consuming work made everything run much more smoothly, but still the same trouble with pics.

Any of you that saw my previous message - now deleted - know that I am not yet at the point of reformatting, but the option is still on the table. If you'd like to read it, it's still up on Technorati.

After a long nap, I find that I can upload photos again, but I'm not convinced that this is a permanent condition. Regardless, I'll keep trying to post.

After all of this, the only thing known for certain is that I really have no idea what I'm doing. I'm shooting in the dark. If any of these measures remedy the situation, in the end, whatever the cause or the solution turns out to be will remain unknown. One thing's for sure, my high-speed internet is now truly high-speed, so that's a bonus.

Wish me luck, and I'll keep my fingers crossed and my hopes up.

ok, hopefully this will be the last programming note...

Last night my connectivity problems flared up again. The whole time it was a major struggle. I was losing my connection and couldn't get anything to work right.

At my wit's end, I contacted Comcast to see if they could help. They said that my modem health was fine and directed me to their help section on their website. I followed all the instructions to check the connection on my end and all was well. Since then, everything is blazing. I can safely surmise that they were throttling me and when I called them out they eased up. The bastards. I can't be sure about this, but if I get home from work and have no problems, I'd wager that this is the case.

I don't download p2p all that much, although I do subscribe to a few mp3 blogs, and of course, I upload a fair bit. A short while back, some of you might remember, my connection was shut off for a day. When it came back up, my IP address had changed and not to long after that all of these problems cropped up. This is all conjecture on my part, but I wouldn't put it past them.

Wish me luck, and with any, I'll be back on the axe for some Saturday morning posting. Now I'm going to crash. Have a wonderful day, all, and thanks for the kind and encouraging comments.

a (hopefully) final note on recent difficulties

Earlier tonight, I had written a post crying my woes as I moved into day four of my recent struggles with Blogger. I tried Flickr and Tumblr and all sorts of suggestions concerning Java and networks and malware, basically everything short of shamanic intervention, all with no luck. I was just about to throw my hands in the air and try reformatting my computer.

After I posted this missive, I tried one more time and wouldn't you know it, it worked fine and continues to do so. All I can hope for is that this smooth sailing maintains and the sargasso I found myself in over the last few days is now behind me.

In the process, however, I found myself in the midst of passing a kidney stone, which leaves me in moaning agony for hours at a time. Time when the pain had subsided was spent cursing at my computer. Hopefully, this too will pass and I can get on with my life. So, in the balance, posting will be sporadic and when I'm capable of any sort of clear and painless thought.

These last few days have been rough.

Oh, btw, I guess I have a Tumblr now. I'm not sure how I'm going to use it yet, but it's out there:

http://uncertaintimes.tumblr.com/

third day in a row

This is getting to be a bit frustrating. I still have a rather large backlog of material and I can't get photos to upload. I have been trying off and on since last night. On top of that it takes about thirty tries to get a post up. If this keeps on I'm going to consider moving to Tumblr.

Check back later. Sorry.

Programming Note

It seems that Blogger, and everything else Google-related is crawling at a geologic pace. I have spent the better part of the last thirty minutes trying to upload a photo, which is a bummer because I have a boatload of material to post.

I'm going to keep trying, but if it keeps up like this I going to bag it for the day and try again tomorrow.

Anyone else having problems?

stray bullets

Lift could take passengers straight into space Japanese scientists are attempting to build a lift (elevator for us Americans) that will take passengers 62,000 miles into space.

MI6 agent's cover slips during BBC interview In his dangerous job the MI6 spy's identity needs to remain a closely guarded secret. So you can imagine his surprise when, during an interview with the national broadcaster, his carefully chosen disguise of a fake moustache failed him spectacularly.

Blogging about blogging What do young people think about blogging? Let’s have a look; here’s what one 18 year old has to say. This one happens to be my son, but I don’t think that prevents him from representing his generation: ‘People no longer are just able to blog, but blogging is increasingly becoming accepted as a legitimate medium of information; albeit quite different to others. At the cost of the credibility associated with major news services and other more traditional ways of getting our information, a whole new world is opened up- of personal opinion, a perspective into the lives and experiences of others and original creativity. When subjective experience and opinion is sought over objective fact, blogging becomes a medium very difficult to beat.’ Blogging is passé? I suspect that many of the old-timers have become a bit tired and unimaginative-- it's just getting started. (Let's encourage young bloggers instead of greeting them with statements like "Blogging is dead")

Ike Really Tore Up Louisville You will find a collection of pictures I took after the storm here. Unfortunately, some streets still look like this a week later. Though we got electricity back about 12 hours after it went out, most houses and businesses around us are still dark. LG&E, our local utility, has been saying it may be another week before all power is restored.

Au revoir to cool hand Luc Besson Luc Besson is in denial. The 49-year-old French film potentate and master of pop cinema (see Nikita, Léon, The Big Blue) has made yet another peerless action classic in the Paris-set kidnap drama Taken. Written and produced by Besson, it stars Liam Neeson as a semi-retired CIA hatchet man who will stop at nothing to bring his missing daughter back home, and send her captors to hell. It is directed by Besson’s former Steadicam operator Pierre Morel, but with its luxurious mix of slick style, emotional melodrama and bone-crunching thrills, it’s got Besson’s fingerprints all over it.

Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof On a hillside overlooking this college town on the banks of the Hudson, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has erected a technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses. Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac, resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set. But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers.

TinEye is an image search engine. Search the web for images using an image. Finally! It's still getting its legs-- a lot of images are still not indexed and it's difficult to find an original source, but this is certainly a start. (via)

Why Sitemeter, why?

We interrupt this broadcast for a personal message:

The new Sitemeter SUCKS!!!

What were they thinking?

They took a simple, clear and easy to use design and made it look and function like a 1996 kludge nightmare.

I have a maxim:

Any attempt to improve something that already works rarely does and usually makes it worse.

or:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Can we have a Sitemeter Classic setting? Please?

Apologies to those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

update: I posted this very early in the day, so there wasn't a great deal of response yet, but now that I look again:

Google Blog Search
Twitter Search

There seems to be a consensus.

update: Hoo-ray! They're going back to the old Sitemeter! Kudos to them for responding. Do you think Microsoft would have done that?

stray bullets

How the Music Business Spent the Summer Killing Itself Labels Pull Albums off iTunes, RIAA Goes After Internet Radio -- When Will They Ever Learn? Idiots. I think this lunacy is driven by lawyers who convince behind-the-times executives that the world is ending in order to fatten their bank accounts with the fees they collect filing cease and desist notices, removing videos from YouTube, and prosecuting their customer base.

The mass graveyard of the blogosphere How many dead blogs do you think exist in the blogosphere today? Take a guess… A couple of million perhaps…? Try again. According to Technorati and PC Mag, in 2007 the number stood at 200 million! Yes, 200 million! Which means blogs are now officially abandoned more often than red headed step children. More research from Perseus on blogging abandonment behaviour found that 66% of blogs hadn’t been updated for two months. So why is it that the blogosphere represents a mass graveyard of unfulfilled intentions? (via)

Clueless smugglers find 'gold' is uranium One thing puzzled them. At night, a report on a local government website said, “they were surprised that, when the lights went out, the treasure sparkled and glittered”. One of the men, identified as Mr Wang, “chipped a piece from it and kept it beside his bed — sometimes playing with it”.... “To prevent the sample being lost or stolen on the way, Mr Wang used tape to stick the unidentified treasure to his body, and it never left him night or day.”

Do No Harm To Humans: Real-life Robots Obey Asimov’s Laws European researchers have developed technology enabling robots to obey Asimov’s golden rules of robotics: to do no harm to humans and to obey them.

Shadow analysis could spot terrorists by their walk By analysing the movements of human shadows in aerial and satellite footage, JPL engineer Adrian Stoica says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk - a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person's walking style is very hard to disguise. (via)

Dairy farmers: True IT pioneers The dairy industry was an early adopter of information technology, and dairy farms have been among the most aggressive businesses in the agricultural industry at applying IT. Dairy IT got its start in the 1950s, when an IBM mainframe was used to develop the first dairy records management system and a genetics database...

also:
Nazi-era photos surface in Bolivia
The Global Album Cover Map (via)
Psychic investigator looks into spooky painting (via)
Finding a new position as a mature job hunter
John Titor weighs in on the LHC (entertaining) (via)

stray bullets

Science close to unveiling invisible man Invisibilty devices, long the realm of science fiction and fantasy, have moved closer after scientists engineered a material that can bend visible light around objects.

How to blow it It's the most winnable presidential election in American history - but the Democrats are old hands at losing. Michael Moore offers some helpful hints on how they might gift it all to the Republicans. (via)

Covert operation floats network-sniffing balloon Hidden in the back of a 22-foot moving truck, Hill and his team of about a dozen volunteers launched the balloon Friday morning, sending it 150 feet into the air for about 20 minutes to use special antennas and scanning software to scope out the Las Vegas skyline for unsecured wireless networks, an activity Hill calls "warballooning." Hackers have practiced wardriving for years, driving around in cars with computers and specialized software that sniffs for networks.

Controller praised for texting pilot down safely Five people on a flight from Kerry to Jersey received mobile phone text instructions from a quick-thinking air traffic controller when he guided them in to a safe landing at Cork. (via)

What's the big deal? It's the little things Again and again, American history has turned on the dime of such tiny things. The Watergate conspiracy might have unraveled no matter what, but it was a strip of tape on a Watergate building office door that alerted a security guard that burglars were about. Jimmy Carter's presidency might have crashed and burned anyway, but it was a crashing and burning helicopter in the sands of Iran during a failed rescue of American hostages that may have sealed his loss in 1980... The way small causes yield huge effects is itself only one piece of the much grander idea of simplexity, a science that is increasingly being studied at universities and institutes around the world... (via)

Is That a Real Reality, or Did You Make It Up Yourself? The idea that music can transform reality predates by many millennia the category "music" as we know it. Before art was understood as a phenomenon in itself apart from its ritual application (a relatively recent and culturally specific development), what we now call music was indistinguishable from magic. (via)

Vin Mariani A good 20 years before the original cocaine-infused Coca-Cola taught the world to grind its teeth and give ineffectual bathroom-stall handjobs in per•fect har•mo•ny, there was another drink of choice among those wishing to feel invigorated and overconfident for no good reason. It was called “coca wine” and it was loved not only by self-important blowhards wearing too much jewelry but by Kings and Popes and…

also:
Two Great Stories - BOTH TRUE - and worth reading!
I don’t care about fonts (via)
Penniless author sells shares in next novel (good idea) (via)
Athlete-bloggers at the Beijing Olympics
The Hardest Places in the World to Find a Bathroom
A Look at the Secret Service, and More from CRS

viddy:
Lecture on Marcus Auprelius (via)
Reggie Watts - F*$K,S#%T,STACK (NSFW) (via)
daedelus on the monome

stray bullets

Anthrax Evidence Called Mostly Circumstantial The evidence amassed by F.B.I. investigators against Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, the Army scientist who killed himself last week after learning that he was likely to be charged in the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, was largely circumstantial, and a grand jury in Washington was planning to hear several more weeks of testimony before issuing an indictment, a person who has been briefed on the investigation said on Sunday. (also) (also) all (via)

Falcon 1 suffers another setback Lost aboard the Falcon was the U.S. military's Trailblazer satellite, two small NASA payloads and a cache of cremated human remains, including the ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper and Star Trek actor James Doohan. (via)

For Wealthy Brazilian, Money From Ore and Might From the Cosmos “I AM connected to the divine, to these forces here,” João Carlos Cavalcanti, the Brazilian mining magnate, said as he swept an arm out across the lily pad-covered lake behind his $15 million mansion. (via)

Lunch with Heather Perry (self-trepanner) It didn't take that long at all, probably about 20 minutes. Eventually I could feel a lot of fluid moving around. Apparently, there was a bit too much fluid shifting around, because they'd gone a little bit too far and I was leaking some through the hole, but this wasn't especially dangerous as there are three layer of meninges before you get to the brain. (via)

also:
Franz Kafka’s porn brought out of the closet (via)
Moscow's House of Fairy-tales (ht)
Blogging Merit Badge (out of stock) (via)
Make bookends from old vinyl records (via)
KLF - The Manual (How to have a Number One the easy way) (via)

viddy:
Balls Deep--Sewers of Bogota: Part 1 of 5 (don't miss it) (via)
How Buildings Learn - Uploaded by Stewart Brand Himself
Ask an Astronomer - What Will Happen to the Earth When the Sun Dies?
Iain Banks interview (audio)
20 Ways to Die Trying to Dunk a Basketball (via)

stray bullets

Nukes Are Not the Best Way to Stop an Asteroid Although Schweickart has a great deal of faith in the agency, enough to risk his life piloting their lunar lander, he feels that they issued the misleading statement -- under immense political pressure. It was a nefarious excuse to put nuclear weapons in space.

Adventurer Steve Fossett 'may have faked his own death' "I've been doing this search and rescue for 14 years. Fossett should have been found.... "It's not like we didn't have our eyes open. We found six other planes while we were looking for him. We're pretty good at what we do." (via)

Headline of the Day: Human sperm from dental pulp via mouse testicles

Despite pain, woman believes in better days thanks to 'X-Files' Rock on, Kathy Green. (via)

Her Own Society A new reading of Emily Dickinson.

also:
"Comments on Comments" (a must)
Does everyone have claustrophobia?
Schneier Interviewed by RU Sirius (transcript) (via)
RU Sirius banned from Facebook for using a pseudonym (via)
Tomb reveals ancient trade network (via)
Smithsonian Podcasts (wow) (via)
Medpedia (via) (via)
Twitter me Ishmael Starting today, this Twitter account will post one paragraph from Moby-Dick every hour from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

viddy:
Last.fm + YouTube = music tv goodness (via)
Joel Hodgson's Jollyfilter Test Video proof of concept is sound (via) (via)
Hans Richter - Vormittagsspuk (1928) The nazis destroyed the sound version of this film as "degenerate art".

Of course unmoderated anonymous comments on the internet can be incomprehensibly awful and frustratingly stupid. They can also be heartbreakingly sincere and shatteringly honest. That’s because they’re written by real people, and real people are complicated, messy, and weird. -- Derek Powazek (via) (good one, Guy)

stray bullets

8 things Chinese people shouldn't ask Olympic tourists Posters displayed on bulletin boards in the neighborhood which includes tourist magnet the Forbidden City, and which will host Olympics boxing events, counsel locals against a wide range of potentially awkward conversation topics with foreigners. (via)

How to Frame the Internet: Attention and the New News Cycle The challenge is designing a news website that encourage immediate and full attention. The Washington Post’s web chats with authors and public figures is a good example of this. The opportunity to communicate directly with a person of prominence cannot be done later, nor can one participate in a chat with only half his attention. I would also point to the book readings and events staged in Second Life, if Second Life didn’t seem so pet rock to me. A smart website would start using video conferencing software to have its writers interact with readers. The trick is not to archive the footage immediately. Make viewers mark in their calendars for it. Make them miss it if they miss it. Some interesting points in this post. However, what often seems to be missing in the internet news cycle is the follow-up. Posts are archived and we can go back to what was missed, but as we all know, with the blivets of stories that keep popping up, we as the internet audience tend to drift off and not come back. I often hope for follow-ups to many items I find, but they rarely materialize. I think many bloggers fear being the one that beats a story to death and therefore don't give it the proper earthing out. I'm sure we could have learned more about George Carlin apart from the hundreds of YouTube videos and quotes from his comedy routines, but after a while, no one will touch the story because everyone has moved on. Our hyper-awareness seems to lead to hyper-abandonment.

Printer Toner and Contemplative Prayer: Interview with LaserMonks.com Monasteries all over the world have been self-supporting for centuries, and the practice of monks running a small business is nothing new. Most of them, however, don’t end up experiencing 700% annual sales growth, selling 30,000 products, and competing with Fortune 500 companies. Instead of baking fruitcakes for the occasional visitor, the monks from Our Lady of Spring Bank Cistercian Abbey sell laser toner and business supplies throughout the United States. They’ve creatively branded themselves as LaserMonks, but they offer more than just a great story. They also help businesses save an average of 40% off printer ink and toner, and in turn, the monks donate all of their profits to charity. Laser Monks website

also:
China Miéville's top 10 weird fiction books Telling.
How to Read a Book (via)
Literature Map Very interesting, but based on what readers read, rather than what writers write. (via)
Portuguese team makes first paper based transistor (via)
MoocherHunter - Detect & Track Rogue Wifi Users
Couple choose to live off the government grid Some things you might not have known about your SSN. (via)
Cyber Clean Sanitize your filthy keyboard and peripherals.
You Are Beautiful Spread the word. (via)

viddy:
Peter Gabriel Video on the state of the music industry Not completely boring, like this sort of stuff can be.
The future of knife crime A knife that is also a gun.
Flashback: The KLF Burn A Million Quid
Camera-equipped micro air vehicle weighs only three grams

stray bullets

Everyone should (link)blog The best response I've read. This is quite funny. I'm not going to comment on this again. If you'd like to know my thoughts, look here and here and read the comments, though you're better off just reading the above posts. He says what I wish I had. (big thx)

Identity is That Which is Given On the mutability and transformation of culture, why we're all multi-culturalists, identity and decay, and just what does culture mean these days? A touch on the academic side, but a worthwhile read. (via)

Return of the ivory trade The world trade in ivory, banned 19 years ago to save the African elephant from extinction, is about to take off again, with the emergence of China as a major ivory buyer.... The unleashing of a massive Chinese demand for ivory, in the form of trinkets, name seals, expensive carvings and polished ivory tusks, is likely to give an enormous boost to the illegal trade, which is entirely poaching-based, conservationists say. Tragic and stupid. A real head-shaker. (via)

Copper thieves take down Sainsbury’s This is only going to get worse, everywhere. Some day down the road, there will be paper thieves. (via) see also (via)

History's Weirdest Deaths We are a strange lot. History and legend, mind you. I'm sure you could expand this list a thousand-fold.

How To Work 52 Jobs in One Year: Interview with Sean Aiken Last year, Sean Aiken from Vancouver, Canada, graduated from college with a business degree and wasn’t sure what he wanted to do next. Like a lot of us of all ages, Sean had a good work ethic, but was uncomfortable with being locked into a career that offered little variety. Sean was also a bit of an adventurer, so he decided to do something different for his first year of full-time employment.

also:
In Pictures: Eight Ways To Quit Mousing Around "touchless" tech (via)
Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta Photographs by Ed Kashi (via)
Totoro Forest Project (via)

Futility Closet (a favorite):

Owen Parfitt In June 1768, bedridden tailor Owen Parfitt was put into a chair at the door of his Somerset cottage while his sister made his bed. She emerged after 15 minutes to find only the empty chair. A search continued throughout the rural village through the night and all the following day. No trace of him was ever found.