The Internet's librarian

Brewster Kahle wants to create a free, online collection of human knowledge. It sounds impossibly idealistic—but he is making progress…

“For a man who has set himself a seemingly impossible mission, Brewster Kahle seems remarkably laid back. Relaxing in the black leather recliner that serves as his office chair, his stockinged feet wriggling with evident enthusiasm, the founder of the Internet Archive explains what has driven him for more than a decade. “We are trying to build Alexandria 2.0,” says Mr Kahle with a wide-eyed, boyish grin. Sure, and plenty of people are trying to abolish hunger, too.

It would be easy to dismiss Mr Kahle as an idealistic fruitcake, but for one thing: he has an impressive record when it comes to setting lofty goals and then lining up the people and technology needed to get the job done. “Brewster is a visionary who looks at things differently,” says Carole Moore, chief librarian at the University of Toronto. “He is able to imagine doing things that everyone else thinks are impossible. But then he does them.”

Mr Kahle is an unostentatious millionaire who does not “wear his money on clothes”, as one acquaintance graciously puts it. But behind his dishevelled demeanour is a skilled technologist, an ardent activist and a successful serial entrepreneur. Having founded and sold technology companies to AOL and Amazon, he has now devoted himself to building a non-profit digital archive of free materials—books, films, concerts and so on—to rival the legendary Alexandrian library of antiquity. This has brought him into conflict with Google, the giant internet company which is pursuing a similar goal, but in a rather different (and more commercially oriented) way…”

Economist.com - The Internet's librarian

via Roamin

Google Image Ripper

Google Image Ripper

Instant inspiration. No more thumbnails, straight to the good stuff.

This has been around for a while, but in case you haven't found it yet... it's an excellent tool for a blogger, or anyone looking for an image - be it specific, a particular type, or anything in general.

thanks to Great Map for the reminder

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Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp Beyond those trillion pages lies an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines.... Now a new breed of technologies is taking shape that will extend the reach of search engines into the Web’s hidden corners. When that happens, it will do more than just improve the quality of search results — it may ultimately reshape the way many companies do business online. (via) (prev)

Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci discovered in Basilicata What may be a hitherto unknown portrait of Leonardo da Vinci in middle age shows that the Renaissance genius had piercing blue eyes, a long nose and long greying hair with a droopy moustache.

A design for life (The history of the smiley face symbol) Feelgood corporate logo, acid house icon and txt msg emoticon: one chirpy yellow emblem has kept grinning since the first summer of love. Jon Savage celebrates the life of Smiley.

Q&A: Dennis Hopper I don't spend a lot. Most of my art collection I got by trading it or through knowing the artist. I got Andy Warhol's first soup can painting for $75. I lost it to my first wife.

History of the Internet

video: PICOL

In a nice little nutshell.

via Mia Makila's Blogorama!

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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)

Internet

Will Lion's photostream

I saw this on someone's blog before I went offline but I can't remember where. I thought about this quote a fair bit during the last ten days.

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.

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That Rothschild clan in full: eccentricity, money, influence and scandal Nat Rothschild’s career path – from playboy to plutocrat – has to be seen against the backdrop of his family history, studded as it is with eccentrics who were torn between loyalty to an immense and powerful name and the urge to break away from the clan. An interesting look at the 3rd Baron Rothschild and the celebrated, reviled and feared family of global players and manipulators. (via)

Turkish police may have beaten encryption key out of TJ Maxx suspect Otherwise known as rubber-hose cryptanalysis. (via)

Is surfing the Internet altering your brain? The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.

What I've Learned: John Malkovich There will be people who will hate anything you do. And some people will really love it. But that's not really different from the people who really hate it. You could learn a thing or two from what he's learned. (via)

also:
Judge Slams RIAA Tactics (via)
A guide to the Hippocratic Oath
Seven of the greatest scientific hoaxes
Top 10 Science Hoaxes
Evolution of Logos (pictoral history of well known logo designs) (via)
How to Take Better Photographs
Audio Slideshow: Photos compete for the Prix Pictet
Listen to Genius (audio library) (via)
Andrei Codrescu: Life Without Smell May Not Be Worth It (audio)
Pinewood Dialogues (conversations with film, TV, digital media innovators and creators) (audio) (via)

A by-product of obsessively, constantly surfing the net to discover the bright and the shiny is a steady flow of promising new ideas. Mostly slight variations on existing great ideas that tickle your fancy. Rands In Repose: FriendDA (via)

viddy:
FreakyFlicks (obscure torrents) (via)
Studs Terkel a/v linkdump
Film, Art and Creative Television (exclusive videos and interviews with artists and filmmakers) (via)
The greatest choreography in film history
Kids in the Hall - Sausages
Pig Fights Lion (wow)
Good for Nothing, Peanut-Stealing Cat (via)
Klaus Nomi's Lime Tart Recipe (doc)

"Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think." - John Cage, 'Rules for Students and Teachers' (via)

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Did Bach’s wife write his music?
The Duke in His Domain (Capote profiles Brando, 1957) (via)
The Atlas of Cyberspace (free pdf, beautifully illustrated) (via)
The Ultimate Camper (via)
Rare recordings of some of the 20th Century's greatest writers
A Ferment of World Jazz Yields a Trove of Tapes
Cassell's Dictionary of Slang (fair bit of it)
The Multicolr Search Lab (search Flickr by color; easy and impressive) (via)

Futility Closet: “The Continental Salamander” In the year 1826, one Monsieur Chabert … performed the following feats at the White Conduit Gardens: Having partaken of a hearty meal of phosphorus, washed down with a copious draught of oxalic acid in a solution of arsenic, he drank... (read more)

viddy:
Making ofs (videos about the making of videos, incl. Gondry, Cunningham)
Ways of seeing (John Berger TV documentary) (via)
A Half Century of Video Games (footage of the first video game)
Jeff Mills: Critical Arrangements Interview
Elliott Smith & Friends (“backstage” video)

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At Home With Wayne Coyne
When trees grew in Antarctica (via)
Emily Dickinson's Secret Lover! (via)
Historical Fiction for Teenage Girls
Historical Fiction for Teens
Create your own search engine
FM 100-30 Nuclear Operations (via)
Make Your Own Hard Cider (via)

viddy:
Daedelus Talks Vinyl And Culture (crate-digging)
Jack Kerouac - American Haikus
Laptop Orchestra
Che - Steven Soderbergh @ NYFF Q&A
How cocaine is made
Motoman: Robot Bartender

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Life in Somalia's pirate town This is a more elaborate and lucrative operation than you might imagine. Quite the cottage industry they have going on there, complete with a support system and an economy of its own.

Thanks for the advice on Josh I wanted to thank all of you who took the time to email me with your comments on how best to deal with Josh. They were so good, I thought I would share a few of them with everyone. Including the email addresses of those who were bold enough to use real email addresses. Josh realizes his comments were wrong, he understands why people are upset. He knows he has made a mistake, has apologized and will work with us. Beyond that, its a private issue. What about the people who gave me the following advice? Mark Cuban posts some of the emails he received in reference to the Josh Howard situation, complete with addies.

The future of online video The Official Google Blog weighs in. In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. Even more people will have the opportunity to record and share even more video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world. (via)

Journalist retraces the steps of the original 'Zen' author in an engrossing tale Re-enacting the journey from Minneapolis to San Francisco chronicled by Pirsig in his cult classic, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," Mark Richardson digs deep to unearth the motives behind his tormented mentor's search for quality while embarking on a search of his own. (via)

Deletionpedia is an archive of about 63,555 pages which have been deleted from the English-language Wikipedia. Deletionpedia is not a wiki: you cannot edit the pages uploaded here. An automated bot uploads pages as they are deleted from Wikipedia.

Frank Deford: Blemish, Anyone? Bets Show Dark Side Of Tennis (audio and text) In the many years I covered tennis, I heard it all: who was pulling the strings, who was double-dealing, who was taking drugs, who was sleeping with whom. But for all the genial corruption, never did I hear — or know anyone else who heard — that some player fixed a match for money, until Internet betting arrived a few years ago. And, I'll bet you didn't know that Humphrey Bogart was the first person to say "Tennis anyone?"

also:
Britain's luckiest man cheated death 14 times
What's new at the Internet Archive
Personality variation by region (USA) (maps) (via)

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India’s Novel Use of Brain Scans in Courts Is Debated The new technology is, to its critics, Orwellian. Others view it as a silver bullet against terrorism that could render waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods obsolete. Some scientists predict the end of lying as we know it. Now, well before any consensus on the technology’s readiness, India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question. (via)

The Internet -- A Private Eye's Best Friend For private investigator Steven Rambam, the Internet is his most valuable tool in helping to find missing persons, cheating husbands, and your competitor's dirty secrets.... "Anything you put on the Internet will be grabbed, indexed, cataloged, and out of your control before you know it," he told CNET News after the July 19 session. "The genie is out of the bottle. Data doesn't stay in one location. It migrates to hundreds of places."...."I used to pay the police $500 for a driver's license photo. Now I just have to go to MySpace," he said. "I can find your location without leaving my desk." (via)

also:
Dog dials 911 to save owner's life
Autonomic NanoTechnology Swarm (ANTS) (via)
The Savants of Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition

viddy:
Orson Welles on the Merv Griffin Show - 1985 (He died two hours after the taping of this interview.) (via)
18 covers of "Earache My Eye" (prev)
An Introduction to Early Musical Instruments (via)
People Who Do Noise - Trailer (via)
Ultravox - My Sex (1977) (classic)

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A New Addiction: Internet Junkies While compulsive gambling is only beginning to be addressed by mental health professionals, they must now face a new affliction: Internet addiction. This is news?

Judge: Copyright owners must consider 'fair use' A federal judge on Wednesday gave more weight to the concept of "fair use" when he threw a lifeline to a Pennsylvania mother's lawsuit against Universal Music. The judge refused to dismiss Stephanie Lenz's suit claiming that Universal abused the Digital Millennium Copyright Act when it issued a takedown notice to YouTube over a 30-second video of Lenz's baby dancing to a Prince song. Right on. (via)

Brightest gamma-ray burst was aimed at Earth Astronomers think they know what caused the brightest ever gamma-ray burst, which was observed in March: a tightly beamed jet of matter that happened to be aimed almost directly at Earth. Kinda strange.

Benjamin Franklin: City Slicker So when Franklin, at 17, ran out on his printing indentures (a serious felony) and fled from Boston to Philadelphia, he was hardly the “poor ignorant boy” he purported to be. (via)

also:
The Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs
The uncanny valley: why almost-human-looking robots scare people more than mechanical-looking robots
H.P. Lovecraft Vintage Fonts (via)
World Names Profiler (enter your surname) (via)

viddy:
Secret Military Technology On 60 Minutes, in an interview with Scott Pelley, reporter Bob Woodward claimed that the U.S. military has a new secret technique that's so revolutionary, it's on par with the tank and the airplane. Schneier takes a stab and the commenters take the piss.
Large Hadron Collider: Peter Higgs interview
William S. Burroughs demonstrates his famous literary "cut-ups"
Early demonstration of the Mellotron
Chinese Popeye (via Nick's Brown Bag)

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The Internet's New Shortcut Now, professors Arvind Krishnamurthy of the University of Washington and Richard Yang of Yale say they have a better way to solve broadband providers' woes. Their algorithm, which they call P4P or "local file-sharing," tracks users' locations to find the shortest path across the Internet. The result, they say, should please both sides of the peer-to-peer debate: Users can download files about 20% faster than conventional file-sharing, while cutting the bandwidth requirements by more than a factor of five. Broadband providers are stoked... content providers, not so much, I'm sure.

Australian "hot rocks" offer 26,000 yrs of power Barely one percent of Australia's untapped geothermal energy could produce 26,000 years worth of clean electricity... (via)

Last work of surrealist Marcel Duchamp discovered The last ever art work created by the influential French surrealist Marcel Duchamp has been discovered in an apartment in in northeastern Spain.

Selections From H.P. Lovecraft's Brief Tenure as a Whitman's Sampler Copywriter. Toffee Nugget: Few men dare ask the question "What is toffee, exactly?" All those who have investigated this substance are now either dead or insane. (via)

also:
Advice for writers about research (via)
Who were the Neanderthals?
French Authorities Uncover a Bizarre Serial Killer's Trail

viddy:
Man Ray: "Home Movies"

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We've got our wires crossed: The bizarre stories of people whose brains have rewired themselves (don't miss it) Meet the Englishman who emerged from a stroke speaking with a French Accent, (Foreign Accent Syndrome is a rare but recognized medical condition) and the man who can taste words.

Cooking and Cognition: How Humans Got So Smart For a long time, we were pretty dumb. Humans did little but make "the same very boring stone tools for almost 2 million years," he said. Then, only about 150,000 years ago, a different type of spurt happened — our big brains suddenly got smart. We started innovating. We tried different materials, such as bone, and invented many new tools, including needles for beadwork. Responding to, presumably, our first abstract thoughts, we started creating art and maybe even religion.

Is Our Solar System a Rarity in Milky Way? Three Northwestern University researchers have learned that our solar system in which the Earth orbits our sun is the exception in the Milky Way rather than the rule.

A Bridge between Virtual Worlds The first steps to developing virtual-world interoperability are now being tested between Second Life and other independent virtual worlds... I remember hearing a radio interview with one of the founders of Second Life where he claimed that some characters from World of Warcraft found their way into Second Life and started hacking people up. I still can't figure out if he was just bullshitting or not. Maybe not. (via)

Mystery Surrounds Leavenworth's Underground City Some Leavenworth residents have been unknowingly walking around above an underground city, and no one seems to know who created it or why. I'm surprised we haven't heard more about this. (via)

The World’s Six Most Wanted War Criminals
How to Think Like a Genius Thomas Pynchon maintains that genius lives in work rather than talent. (couldn't find the quote, read it years ago) (via)
Jessica Duchen's top 10 literary Gypsies
Excellent post on John Cage (don't miss it if you're a music fan) John Cage died 16 years ago today.
Iain Banks links
Daily Writing Tips (via)
The Prisoner Production Hazard Checklist
Overheard Comments from United Airlines Employees (figures)
The Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites Not quite as "undiscovered" as I had hoped, but there are some interesting items in there. (via)

viddy:
A Day In The Life Of An MC Escher Drawing (silly) (via)
Creepy Mogwai video
The Yodeling Belgian Cowboy (awesome)

The first map of the Internet

The first node on the ARPANET.

read more at Next Nature

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Pirates won't rob writers of riches Of course, if ebooks catch on, most publishing firms will go out of business. But I cannot think of many writers who will be sorry to see them go. Whenever authors gather around a bottle of wine, the sole topic of conversation is how terrible their publishers are. Their editors are illiterates, the publicity departments are staffed by airheads and the people responsible for designing their dust jackets should be shot. I blaze through ebooks about four times as fast I do print. I'm blind in one eye and dyslexic, so the medium is a help for me, but most people I know can't read ebooks. (via)

Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light It is possible to travel faster than light. You just wouldn't travel faster than light. (via)

Glass Does Not Flow. Except in Space? In 1999, Christie’s East in Manhattan auctioned off an assortment of space memorabilia, including a flashlight that Buzz Aldrin used during a Gemini 12 spacewalk in 1966. The auction catalog mentions: The flashlight lens became deformed while in the vacuum of space. I saw the flashlight in person. The lens is definitely deformed, just as if the glass had flowed. It’s not cracked. It’s deformed.

Police: Man Stole Miami-Dade Buses, Drove Them On Routes Police: Teen Dressed As Bus Driver, Returned Buses At End Of Day I really hope they don't send this kid to prison. (via)

Hiphop LX (linguistics) In Hiphop the WORD is the message. Language is a system of sounds and symbols and communication in any language is based on how to use that system. If you know the system, you have power over ideas and imagination. You can build, change, plan, play and destroy. Many words and expressions in hiphop represent regions, neighborhoods and cities. Hiphop Lx is dedicated to representing the words and expressions that represent and serve as a symbol for a region and area. It explores the language system of hiphop and how the word came into being, meanings and the overall development of the word and expression. It challenges everyone to represent their region with true bona fide words and present them to be researched, examined, challenged and celebrated. (via)

also:
Renaissance Men Are Evolving Into Renaissance Networks (via)
Top 100 Executives by Total Compensation (via)
The Top 10 Mad Scientists (via)
10 Things You Should Know About the Internet
25 Ways To Earn Money When You’re Broke On The Road
Dalí: Painting and Film (via)
Frank Zappa's Jukebox out Aug. 4 (via) (via)

viddy:
Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Pedal Up (awesome funky)
Wanda Jackson - Mean Mean Man
Dr. Ronald Chevalier – The Art of Relaxating (wth?)
Traffic in Tehran (traffic in UT)
Francis Fukuyama: What Kind of World Power China Will Be?
Marshall McLuhan Quotes
Woz the Wiz meets Captain Crunch (via)
Bill Drummond on Robert Anton Wilson
Man with No Arms Plays Guitar well (via)
Patti Smith Sings 'You Light Up My Life' (don't miss it)
Amazing Audio Illusion (it is amazing) (via)

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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

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A quarter of planet to be online by 2012, and able to understand each's other's language

New Chernobyl Video Report

When Spies Don’t Play Well With Their Allies As they complete their training at “The Farm,” the Central Intelligence Agency’s base in the Virginia tidewater, young agency recruits are taught a lesson they are expected never to forget during assignments overseas: there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.... But most C.I.A. veterans agree that no relationship between the spy agency and a foreign intelligence service is quite as byzantine, or as maddening, as that between the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I. (via)

Britain on alert for deadly new knife with exploding tip that freezes victims' organs It's for real, and I'd wager that sales are exploding. (via)

Lost in Space There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at –270 degrees C (–454ºF); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the original lost cosmonaut, whose rocket went up and, instead of coming back down, just kept on going. (via)

5 Ways Travelers Can Avoid Being Caught With Drugs Many foreigners arrested on drug charges believe they were wrongly convicted. Learn how you can avoid being a victim.

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The Twisted Journey Of 'Napoleon's Privates' "Whenever someone implies that history is boring, I bring up Napoleon's penis..." (via)

10 Badasses From the Pages of History A few surprises in there. A few that I never heard of.

Studs Terkel interviews Frank Zappa In August of 1968, Chicago's WFMT-FM broadcast of Studs Terkel's Wax Museum featuring composer, guitarist and full-time anarchist Frank Zappa. (via)

How Hunter S. Thompson beat back his writer’s block Writers sometimes suffer bouts of major paralysis. They want to write, are desperate to get down something great, but it’s just not coming easily, in fact not at all. (via)

Richard K. Morgan blogging on Amazon US (via)

Baseball diamonds: the lefthander's best friend "Ninety percent of the human population is right-handed, but in baseball 25 percent of the players, both pitchers, and hitters, are left-handed..." There are a number of purely physical reasons why the game favors lefties. Mechanical engineer David A. Peters breaks it down for us.

Pothead Ph.D. I never would have made it this far in graduate school without the aid of marijuana. Not a cautionary tale. Forget all the cliches and misinformation, this guy pretty much nails it. (via)

Japanese etiquette on entering a home or room, take off your shoes A quick primer, with video, for us gaijin barbarians.

also: World Conflicts Today (via); Richard Tomlinson v. MI6 The whereabouts of Richard Tomlinson is unknown, and whether he is alive or dead. (via); The Memory Hole is back!

lagniappe: Down for everyone or just me? (via)