stray bullets

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)

Sunday Excursions: Beat the Sunday Blues

another usual morning
via FFFFOUND!

Do you get the Sunday Blues?

Years back, I always felt a little depressed on Sundays. When I was a kid it always meant I had to go back to school the next day. Years later, it meant work tomorrow. I always knew that it was just another day and it wasn't really that much different from Saturday... but it was.

Over the last 8 years or so, I've largely lived outside the 9-5/M-F world. In the interim I've managed to deprogram my reflexive Sunday Blues, but I still feel a twinge of it any odd week or another.
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Wetter-Foto.de













I have no idea what these guys are saying, but they have some magnificent weather photos.

via Ursi's Blog
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Sunday linkage:

Top 10 Myths About the Romans
via Interesting Pile

YouTube video timelines with Time Tube
via The Presurfer

Club Internet, a temporary “online gallery” of net art, is up now thru June 14. (Hit reload to view another work.)
via Delicious Ghost
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From the people who brought us GovernmentAttic.org
(I think):

Get Grandpa's FBI File

Get My FBI File

You can do it, and they'll help you. You can get other alphabet-soup files, as well. Very useful stuff if you'd like to be informed of the government's version of your personal and family history.

See also:

TV Show Complaints

See what uptight, no-life goobers have to whine about your favorite TV shows.
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I was just reading something about this optical illusion, but for the life of me I can't remember the details or find the source. If anyone knows what this is, and what it's origins are, I'd greatly appreciate any info.



Animated Optical Illusion
via Random Good Stuff
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Highlights of Digital Scriptorium

An impressive collection of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. I could look at this stuff for hours.

via MINDFVCK
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Cepolina Photo: 5800 free images for private/commercial use

Good ones, too.

via linkfilter.net
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Charles Schillings - Spin it right


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Rock on, everybody, and have a great week!

UT Web Favorites: Cryptome

Cryptome has been quietly leaking, disclosing and revealing for close to a dozen years.

In their own words:

Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance -- open, secret and classified documents -- but not limited to those. Documents are removed from this site only by order served directly by a US court having jurisdiction. No court order has ever been served; any order served will be published here -- or elsewhere if gagged by order. Bluffs will be published if comical but otherwise ignored.

They have frequently updated news and links, as well. They also have an RSS feed but I prefer to scan the site.

With a sparse old-timey plain-text look, Cryptome delivers the nugs with a high signal to noise ratio.

For a $25 dollar donation you can get the Cryptome DVD with over 43,000 files covering their 11.5 year history. (But wait, there's more: they'll also throw in 18,000 pages of declassified counter-intel docs dating from 1945-85 from our friends at INSCOM.)

Though it may lean a bit too far toward the activist/conspiracy theory reality tunnel for some, don't be deceived, Cryptome is a great resource for researchers, aficionados, informed citizens and paranoids alike.