Shanties and Sea Songs

"...I soon got used to this singing, for the sailors never touched a rope without it. Sometimes, when no one happened to strike up, and the pulling, whatever it might be, did not seem to be getting forward very well, the mate would always say, 'Come men, can't any of you sing? Sing now and raise the dead.' And then some one of them would begin, and if every man's arms were as much relieved as mine by the song, and he could pull as much better as I did, with such a cheering accompaniment, I am sure the song was well worth the breath expended on it. It is a great thing in a sailor to know how to sing well, for he gets a great name by it from the officers, and a good deal of popularity among his shipmates. Some sea captains, before shipping a man, always ask him whether he can sing out at a rope."

WSJ.com - Threatening eBay's Dominance, More Online Sellers Go It Alone

"In 2002, John Wieber started worrying about his business, which sold refurbished computers through Internet auctioneer eBay Inc. Although he was earning $1 million a year in revenue, profits had started to slip as competitors flocked to the site. EBay also raised its fees, further cutting margins, and fraud was becoming a problem.

So Mr. Wieber revamped his Web site and began selling through other online companies, such as Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Last year, his sales neared $5 million, but his eBay revenue grew at a much slower pace, making up only a quarter of the total. It will likely fall still lower. Of the auction site, where he got his start, Mr. Wieber says: 'Too many sellers, not enough buyers.'"

Details for xoc - SMW

"The complete soundtrack to Super Mario World, covered by one man using dozens of instruments. Roughly in game order, faithful to the originals, with some bizarre artistic license thrown around. A private hobby made public."

CBC Arts: After 100 years, Sartre's being drifts closer to nothingness

"'I have no recollection,' 22-year-old Jean-Francois Vergnoux admitted to the Associated Press. 'It's terrible – it's total emptiness when I think about him.'"

Salon.com People | How to say you're sorry: A refresher course

"Just say you're sorry. Never say you're sorry 'if.' Say you're sorry.

'I'm sorry I was rude' is good.

'I'm sorry if I was rude' is not. It weasels. It implies that maybe you weren't rude. It implies that the person being apologized to has a twisted little worldview if they think 'Oh, shut up, frog-lips' is rude.

An apology should give the sense that you actually feel some form of regret. 'Sorry if' is a conditional apology. Conditional apologies make things worse, not better."

How to help someone use a computer

"Computer people are fine human beings, but they do a lot of harm in the ways they 'help' other people with their computer problems. Now that we're trying to get everyone online, I thought it might be helpful to write down everything I've been taught about helping people use computers."

Introducing the AO/Technorati Open Media 100 :: AO

"Introducing the AO/Technorati Open Media 100
Want to break the lock on mainstream media? So do these folks, and they are inviting us to blow the business wide open."

AFI List of Top 100 Quotes From U.S. Films - Yahoo! News

"The American Film Institute's list of top 100 quotes from U.S. movies, with film title and year of release"

Polaroid-o-nizer™

"Polaroid-o-nize™ an image"

Ardalambion

Ardalambion: "The most comprehensive site about Tolkien's invented languages that you are likely to find on the net."

Holiday Snowglobe

Holiday Snowglobe

The New Yorker: PRINTABLES

"CAPTURING THE UNICORN
by RICHARD PRESTON
How two mathematicians came to the aid of the Met."

Comedy Central - Media Player

"Daily Show: Stewart - A Relatively Closer Look: Hitler References
Someone disagrees with you? Compare 'em to a Nazi. Works like a charm. A Hitler charm."

No Left Turns Archive

"This, by the way, is an example of a move I often encounter in people who object to the mere possibility of 'moral absolutes.' If I believe that something is 'absolutely wrong,' I’m told, I must want to suppress it and ban it legislatively. Freedom, it seems to these folks, demands that we be non-judgmental and indeed relativistic. But I can regard something as morally wrong without thinking that it is the role of government to prevent or prohibit it. Consider, in this connection, this passage from that noted latitudinarian St. Thomas Aquinas:

Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such like."

Mark Harden's Artchive: "Artchive"

Mark Harden's Artchive: "Artchive"

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena

"55 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena"

We Are Our History -- Don't Forget It

"Not knowing history is worse than ignorance of math, literature or almost anything else. Ignorance of history is undermining Western society's ability to talk straight and think straight. Parents must attack the problem by teaching their own children the facts. Only fools would rely on the schools."

PodcastAlley.com -- The place to find Podcasts

"Podcast Alley is the podcast lovers portal. Featuring the best Podcast Directory and the Top 10 podcasts (as voted on by the listeners). You will also find podcast software, the podcast forum and great podcasting info. "

freesound :: home page

"The Freesound Project - a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds."

zipdecode | ben fry

"This project began a very short sketch (a few hours) that I created because I was curious about how the numbering works for zip codes in the states.

This version adds several features over the original, including zoom, some new colors (thanks to Eugene Kuo for suggestions), and a better zip code database (because of all the people who emailed and were sad that they couldn't find themselves)."

AAAHHH!!!! [wmv]

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! [wmv]"

Ian's Shoelace Site - Shoe Lacing Methods

"How many possible ways are there to lace an average shoe? This simple question, when answered with mathematics, results in some surprisingly big numbers - on an average shoe with six pairs of eyelets, there are 1,961,990,553,600 ways to feed a shoelace though those 12 eyelets."

Next Generation of Conservatives (By the Dormful) - New York Times

"The summer interns of the Heritage Foundation have arrived, forming an elite corps inside the capital's premier conservative research group. The 64 interns are each paid a 10-week stipend of $2,500, and about half are housed in a subsidized dorm at the group's headquarters, complete with a fitness room."

Star Trekkin'

"Did anyone mention Star Trekkin'?"

California Voters Get “F” in Education ~ Issue June 10, 05

"As a wonderfully sneaky test of awareness, PPIC asked Californians in a recent survey how much of the state budget is spent on public schools. They were clueless. Only one in three knew that public education is by far the biggest item, sucking up half the budget--very roughly, $50 billion of $100 billion."

Figure This! Math Challenges for Families - About Figure This!

"Helping families enjoy mathematics outside school through a series of fun and engaging, high-quality challenges"

Internet Archive: Details: Tom Lehrer

"Tom Lehrer performing at a Maths lecture, some of the only footage of him anywhere on the internet.
"

AtomFilms - Anakin Dynamite

"An awkward apprentice struggles with older Jedis, school elections and idiots!"

BLACKFIVE: The Third Rule of War

"The first rule of war is that young men and women die. The second rule of war is that surgeons cannot change the first rule. I think the third rule of war should be that those who have given their all for our freedom are never forgotten, and they are always honored."

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town: Cookie Master

"As a vice-president at Wonton Food, Inc., in Long Island City, Donald Lau manages the company’s accounts payable and receivable, negotiates with insurers, and, somewhat incidentally, composes the fortunes that go inside the fortune cookies, of which Wonton is the world’s largest manufacturer."

Athenians and Visigoths: Neil Postman’s Graduation Speech

"Although he had been forced to sit through dozen of such speeches, the late communications theorist Neil Postman was never invited to provide a commencement address. He did prepare some remarks, though, that he planned to use if ever given the opportunity. In typical Postman fashion he even provides it as a true “open source” document: “If you think my graduation speech is good, I hereby grant you permission to use it, without further approval from or credit to me, should you be in an appropriate situation.”"

BBC NEWS | Magazine | A step-by-step guide to charisma

"A charismatic person has three attributes, says the professor:

* they feel emotions themselves quite strongly;
* they induce them in others;
* and they are impervious to the influences of other charismatic people."

qwantz.com - poster child mario question blocks!

"How to Make Your Own Totally Sweet Mario Question Blocks and Put Them Up Around Town

Because It's Really Awesome"

MilkandCookies - Shatner Does Seven

"Soon after the movie Seven came out, the MTV Movie Awards got William Shatner to do this parody. He plays the lead roles as each of his more famous characters: Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, and himself as the host of Rescue 911."

★ The Joy of Tech! ★

"What stage of Intel Mac are you in?
Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining.
Depression.
Acceptance.
Bewilderment.
Geek Glee."

Press Pop Gallery

Press Pop Gallery: "50 YEARS OF ELECTRONIC GENIUS!
This is the official Bob Moog doll authorized by Moog Music Inc. Bob Moog is the genius inventor of many electronical musical instrument including the Moog synthesizer respected by many musicians. This doll was made to celebrate the 50 years of his electronic genius."

Friedman's 'heresy' hits mainstream / Private Social Security accounts were his idea

"San Francisco seems an unlikely home for the man who in 1962 first proposed the privatization of Social Security.

Asked why he dwells in liberalism's den, Milton Friedman, 92, the Nobel laureate economist and father of modern conservatism, didn't skip a beat.

'Not much competition here,' he quipped."

Rapid afterimage

"The illusion illustrates Troxler fading, complementary colours, negative after-effects, and is capable of showing colours outside the display gamut."

Abbreviations and Acronyms of the U.S. Government

"AAPC Accounting and Auditing Policy Committee
ABMC American Battle Monuments Commission
ACC Air Combat Command
ACDA United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
..."

GotUsed - POOM! | State University of New York at Buffalo

GotUsed - POOM! | State University of New York at Buffalo

The Adventures of ACTION ITEM!

"Welcome to the official home of the Adventures of Action Item comic strip!"

How Well Do You Know: Monsters, Inc.

"If the earlier films hadn't already done so, Monsters, Inc. solidified Pixar offerings as critical and popular darlings. Great vocal talent, superb CGI and substance behind the plot and characters makes MI a modern classic. You may or may no longer be afraid of whatever it is creeping around behind your closet door, but how well do you know Monsters, Inc.? "

ACM Queue - Beyond Relational Databases - There is more to data access than SQL.

"As soon as the discussion turns to data storage and retrieval, relational databases come to mind. Relational databases have been tremendously successful over the past three decades, and SQL has become the lingua franca for data access. While data management has become almost synonymous with RDBMS, however, there are an increasing number of applications for which lighter-weight alternatives are more appropriate."

Pirate Ballerina » CNews 4June05

"The Rocky Mountain News kicks off a week of investigative reports on Ward Churchill"

Batman Quotes

"Robin: 'You can't get away from Batman that easy!'
Batman: 'Easily.'
Robin: 'Easily.'
Batman: 'Good grammar is essential, Robin.'
Robin: 'Thank you.'
Batman: 'You're welcome.'"

MercuryNews.com | 05/31/2005 | Assembly sticks nose into textbooks

"For instance, who knew that making a textbook longer than 200 pages was such a bad idea that there needs to be a law against it?

Well, 42 Assembly Democrats knew. On Thursday they approved AB 756, a bill by Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, that says: Neither the State Board of Education nor a local school district ``may adopt instructional materials that exceed 200 pages in length.''"

Trebuchet

"The Trebuchet was a medieval siege weapon that hurled rocks at castle walls.
This machine will hurl a grape 30 feet.
Look at the instructions.
Build time 1 hour."

IRAQ THE MODEL: Salafis talk on TV...

"The clerics said that they clarified to Jafari that their groups are trying hard to raise the voice of reason among the extreme mosque preachers and that they're leading an educational campaign to counteract the 'takfiri' ideology (takfiri means considering anyone who disagrees with your view of religion an infidel)."

Michael Yon : Online Magazine: A Fork in the Road

"Dohuk, Northern Iraq

Approaching Dohuk, a short drive north of Mosul, brings to mind the countryside in Italy. The war is over in Dohuk. After suffering perhaps a half century of fighting, the people have finally gotten the peace they wanted long ago. With the old Iraqi government vanquished, Dohuk is thriving. In fact, this Iraqi city appears to be doing at least as well as--perhaps remarkably better than--many comparably-sized towns in Italy. A visit to this place affords more than a break from the rugged routine of war; it also provides a postcard of a possible future for all of Iraq."

Tiny ninjas minimize Shakespeare's Hamlet

"Whatever it was, New York-based Tiny Ninja Theater's production of Hamlet is not your average Shakespeare play. Performed by only one man, mastermind Dov Weinstein, the play is put on with miniscule materials, all the while remaining authentic and true to the author's work. Every character is represented by a different action figure, usually but not always an inch-and-a-half-tall ninja. Fortinbras' character is a Transformer."

BaitCar.com | Bait Cars Are Everywhere. Steal One. Go To Jail.

"Welcome to the Integrated Muncipal Provincial Auto Crime Team's (IMPACT) baitcar.com website. This site is designed to showcase the bait car program in British Columbia with the intent of reducing auto theft."

PhotoDude.Com: QuoteLog: James Lileks

"QuoteLog
…random voices heard
over the white noise of life…
James Lileks"

WSJ.com - Rocker Jeff Baxter Moves and Shakes In National Security

"Jeff Baxter played psychedelic music with Ultimate Spinach, jazz-rock with Steely Dan and funky pop with the Doobie Brothers. But in the last few years he has made an even bigger transition: Mr. Baxter, who goes by the nickname 'Skunk,' has become one of the national-security world's well-known counterterrorism experts."

How to Become an Early Riser » Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog

"Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon."

Brain-Terminal.com » A Cultural Turning Point?

"For the first time in history, a cell-phone ring tone tops a major music singles chart. I have no idea what to make of this, but that won't stop me from declaring it some sort of significant cultural shift."

BBC NEWS | England | Gloucestershire | Three hurt in cheese rolling race

"Three people have been hurt hurling themselves down a steep slope in Gloucestershire in an annual cheese rolling contest.

Competitors throw themselves 200m down a steep hill in a bid to win a Double Gloucester cheese. Lizzie Way reports. "

'Disposition' Emerges as Issue at Brooklyn College - May 31, 2005 - The New York Sun - NY Newspaper

"Brooklyn College's School of Education has begun to base evaluations of aspiring teachers in part on their commitment to social justice, raising fears that the college is screening students for their political views."

Soda Finder ® -- The United States Soda Locator -- Soda For Sale

"This site was created out of the love of travel, and the hunt for unique and strange sodas. It is a hobby I thoroughly enjoy. My primary goal on this site is to allow others to reap the benefits of my endeavors while raising the necessary funds for travel and capital to keep the hobby going."

Wilhelm scream - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect first recorded in 1951 for the movie Distant Drums. It has been featured in dozens of movies since."

Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop - New York Times

"Comparing them with an equal number of liberal foundations, including Ford and MacArthur, Mr. Piereson found that the right spent $100 million a year to the left's $1.2 billion. 'You don't have to have a lot of money to drive the intellectual debate,' Mr. Piereson said."

Rural Exodus for Work Fractures Chinese Family

"For the Yang family and millions of others in the Chinese countryside, the only way to survive as a family is to not live as one. Migrant workers like Shan's parents are the mules driving the country's stunning economic growth. And the money they send home has become essential for jobless rural China.

Yet even that money is no longer enough. Migrant wages have stagnated, education and health costs are rising, and the rural social safety net has collapsed -- a crushing combination that is a major reason the income divide is widening so rapidly in China at the expense of the rural poor."

Ghost Or Mist?

'Supposedly this is a car commercial that never aired. I'm thinking that it is more probably a very good student project using Computer Graphics.

About 2 seconds into the "commercial" notice something moving along the side of the car, like a ghostly white mist that looks humanish.

It is so believable. Movie animators could learn a bit from this.

If computer graphics couldn't do this kind of thing, I might be a bit spooked.'

Marginal Revolution: The Secret to a Good Marriage? Delusion

"The secret to a good marriage, therefore is selective forgetfulness. Coincidentally some psychologists have recently come to the same conclusion. The couples who stay together are the delusional ones - the ones who look at their past with rose-colored glasses."

New Scientist - 11 steps to a better brain

"It doesn't matter how brainy you are or how much education you've had - you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them."

Lyrical - Kermit the Frog - Rainbow connection

"Why are there so many
Songs about rainbows
And what's on the other side"

Technical Video Rental - how it works

"Technical Video Rental is a service that rents video tapes and DVDs - just like your corner video store...but we rent the kind of videos that you can't find on every street corner. Videos on running lathes, building target rifles, welding steel... cool videos!"

Marginal Revolution: Why has crack caused so much crime?

"Relative to other drugs, that is. In a CrookedTimber symposium on Steve Levitt, I offer a few speculative and possibly false hypotheses:"

Marginal Revolution: The Secret to a Good Marriage? Delusion

"We tend to remember slights and frustrations more than favors and kindnesses. So inevitably in a marriage the weight of negative remembrances of thing past comes to exceeds that of the positive. Divorce is the result.

The secret to a good marriage, therefore is selective forgetfulness."

VDARE.com: Blog Articles » Affordable Family Formation–The Neglected Key To GOP’s Future

Affordable Family Formation–The Neglected Key To GOP’s Future: "Four interlocking reasons form a chain of causality explaining why Affordable Family Formation paints the electoral map red.

I call them the Four Gaps: the Dirt Gap, the Mortgage Gap, the Marriage Gap, and the Baby Gap."

Child Population Dwindles in San Francisco - Yahoo! News

"San Francisco has the smallest share of small-fry of any major U.S. city. Just 14.5 percent of the city's population is 18 and under."

Leaving the left / I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity

"Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos."

Reason magazine -- January 1999 -- Dense Thinkers

"'New Urbanism,' the latest fad in urban planning, promises less traffic, better air, and lower taxes. Here's what it really delivers."

Bill Gates' 11 Rules

"For high school and college graduates, here is a list of 11 rules you did not learn in school. In his book, Bill Gates talks about how feel-good, politically-correct teaching that created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept sets them up for failure in the real world."

SELF-REFERENTIAL APTITUDE TEST

"SELF-REFERENTIAL APTITUDE TEST, by Jim Propp (propp@math.wisc.edu) The solution to the following puzzle is unique; in some cases the knowledge that the solution is unique may actually give you a short-cut to finding the answer to a particular question, but it's possible to find the unique solution even without making use of the fact that the solution is unique."

Telegraph | Travel | France: Cowboys, Indians - et les Fran�ais

"It's hard to imagine the French embracing anything American, so why, wonders Abigail S Carroll, have they gone wild for le country?"

One Hand Clapping » Blog Archive » Bias aside it was just a lousy speech

"There are two examples I recommend to Ms. Nooyi before she gives another public-arena speech. "

To understand education budget, start with math

"Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's scorched-earth budget is approved -- a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public-school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year.

That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering."

LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat

"Indulge me, if you want – it’s not like this is some insignificant pop culture artifact. Tote all the seasons up, and Trek ran for 28 seasons. It started with LBJ and ended half a decade into the 21st century."

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion

Kevin Kelly -- Cool Tools

"Shown here is bullet proofing for jeeps; the liquid rubber inside a tire will instantly heal a bullet hole. It hardly notices nail and screw pokes."

BBC - Radio 4 - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Adventure Game

"THE HITCHHIKER ADVENTURE GAME by Douglas Adams - 20th Anniversary Edition"

Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs

"Downloadable and very printable, I find these PDFs extremely useful....
Obviously I cannot anticipate all needs, but the grids below should cover most common ones."

The noble age of bravery

"But there is more to these tales than derring-do. There is usually a line, maybe two, that offers the modern-day reader an almost shocking glimpse of a mode of behavior based on virtues unconstrained by the strictures of modern-day hipness, smarts and irony."

Woot!

"We are sorry, but an error has occurred.
We will be sure to give our web developers
a swift kick in the butt and a pay cut."

Department of Psychiatry of Mount Sinai School of Medicine

"Seamus O'Flaithbheartaigh, M.D.
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry"

THE ECONOMISTS

What economists do.

Whittaker Chambers on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

"EDITOR'S NOTE: 2005 marks the fiftieth anniversary of National Reviewpos. In celebration, NRO will be digging into the NR archives throughout the year. This piece by Whittaker Chambers appeared in the December 28, 1957, issue of NR."

Michelle Malkin: READING FOR POLITICAL JUNKIES

"The Pew Research Center alerted me yesterday to its new report on political 'typology'--the fourth attempt of its kind to categorize Americans 'on the basis of a broad range of value orientations rather than simply on the basis of party identification or self-reported ideology.'"

The Conservative Philosopher Antony Flew on Religion

"Philosophical theism is in this respect like philosophical conservatism: most of its critics simply don't have a clue about what its defenders actually believe."

Thinking Straighter - Christianity Today Magazine

"Antony Flew, one of the world's leading philosophers, has changed his mind about God. And he has agnostics worried."

Cathy's World

Cathy's World: "O'Donnell at that point began figuratively patting himself on the back as a man-of-the-people dedicated to public education and said that Arnold's troubles with the teachers are 'because of public school parents like me. Every single teacher my daughter has had has been a GREAT teacher.'

Me: 'You're delusional.' "

WILLisms.com: Reform Thursday: Week Fourteen.

"This week, we examine the five Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) funds all federal employees can choose from for their retirement. Social Security personal accounts would be modeled along similar lines.

One thing to note is how each fund, over the past decade, has delivered positive and significant returns, even through slumps in the market."

Mark Golblatt on on National Review Online

"Back to Basics
Welcome to the real world. Here’s a spot check."

Addicting Games - Free Flash and Java Games

Addicting Games - Free Flash and Java Games

Game Gardens

"A place to play online multiplayer games and a place for game developers to create their own multiplayer games and host them for others to come and play."

logicon goes foward!

"This is a new gaming studio."

Richard Dawkins and the Hermeneutic of Atheism

"When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them. When you find an answer…when those passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages, ones you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning."

Classic Games

Classic Games: DK, Frogger, Pacman, more...

SLIS IUB > News > Dean's Notes: BLOG: see also Bathetically Ludicrous Online Gibberish

"One wonders for whom these hapless souls blog. Why do they choose to expose their unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives to the potential gaze of total strangers? What prompts this particular kind of digital exhibitionism? The present generation of bloggers seems to imagine that such crassly egotistical behavior is socially acceptable and that time-honored editorial and filtering functions have no place in cyberspace. Undoubtedly, these are the same individuals who believe that the free-for-all, communitarian approach of Wikipedia is the way forward. Librarians, of course, know better."

Wired 13.05: George Lucas on Star Wars, Fahrenheit 9/11, and his own legacy

"Yes, but I don't want to get into situations where people say, 'That's not historically correct.' History is fiction, but people seem to think otherwise.
...
Art is about communicating with people emotionally without the intellectual artifacts of the current situation, and dealing with very emotional issues.
...
Once people get out of college, they're set in their worldview."