Snoopy and Hobbes avoid starvation

- I am not a big fan of religious parables, but this one does a perfect job of explaining the core difference between good and evil:
http://www.tpub.com/religion/shortstories/newsubmit/newpage37.htm


- The top six websites you should visit if you love to drink:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-6-websites-visit-love-drink/


- The making of a Charlie Brown Christmas.  Linus's soliloquy on the true meaning of Christmas might be the most earnest moment in TV history, and certainly one of the top five moments in animated TV history.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/a-charlie-brown-christmas-the-gospel-truth-behind-how-a-humble-peanuts-holiday-classic-defied-the-odds/2011/12/02/gIQA0NNPWO_blog.html


- Let's stick with the Peanut's animation vibe.  Seven things you didn't know about It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/its-the-great-pumpkin-charlie-brown-7-things-you-dont-know-about-tonights-peanuts-special/2011/10/26/gIQAQPZhKM_blog.html


- How to categorize fantasy literature:
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0000/7796/files/Dark_Fantasy_2.jpg?101916


- Why Robert Scott was doomed to lose the race to the South Pole (and ultimately perish due to his decisions.)
http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/survival/stories/why-the-british-were-doomed-to-lose-the-race-to-the-south-pole-6617203


- An extensive illustration of Batman's costumes.  The illustrator calls this list all of the "significant" costumes.  Being a Batman junkie, I could certainly argue with this claim:
http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/batman-infographic.jpg


- A grown-up Calvin and Hobbes fighting with an adult, evil Christopher Robins and Winnie the Pooh.  Wonderful!  Wonderful!
http://io9.com/5871516/behold-calvin-and-hobbes-all-grown-up-++-and-fighting-an-evil-winnie-the-pooh


- IBM predicts five new technologies in the next five years:
http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2011/12/the-next-5-in-5-our-forecast-of-five-innovations-that-will-alter-the-landscape-within-five-years.html


- Five over-rated comedians.  I dont agree with the first few sentences of the article, but I definitely agree these five comedians aren't even vaguely entertaining:
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2011/12/31/george-carlin-wasnt-funny/?singlepage=true

Shoelaces suspects the Batman has lupus

- Why most people are right-handed:
http://io9.com/5840005/why-are-most-people-right+handed


- Very interactive chart of the top 50 most populous countries:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204528204577009922309104512.html?mod=e2tw


- Do you really need to go to college?  The amount of financial debt you accrue, and the huge number of worthless degrees companies are not interested in, makes college less tempting:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/college-has-been-oversold.html


- It use to be the case that most great scientists made their wonderful discoveries before the age of 25.  That's no longer true:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45198217/ns/technology_and_science-science#.TrnEo1YbfpU


- Further versus farther:
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/further-versus-farther.aspx


Bruce Wayne's medical history, as charted by his physician.  Fun read:
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/11/14/patient-bw-dob-2161971/


- The very first photograph:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/diy-it/the-story-of-the-first-photograph/288


- What is a QR code, and how does it work?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/those-barcode-looking-things-theyre-called-qr-codes-heres-what-they-do/4339


- Historical college football stats:
http://football.stassen.com/records/


- When you woke up Sunday morning, November 27th, did the air you breathe smell a little bit fresher?  Did your food taste better that day?  Perhaps the pain in your hip disappeared? Your dog stopped chewing on your sneakers?  You found a missing $20 bill in your jeans pocket?  You suddenly realized you have more work vacation than you had previously thought?  Your car stopped making a strange noise?  Construction ended on a stretch of freeway you use every day?  This is why:

 FINALLY!!! After eight long, unbearable years of gut-wrenching madness, Michigan defeated The Great Evil.  The universe has been set right.  Love, joy, happiness and purpose return to our lives.

After the Big Bang, Polk and Einstein rejuvenate Motown

- The five stages of the universe.  Stages three, four and five (which make up a vast majority of the timeline) won't be much fun:
http://www.fathom.com/course/10701055/session1.html


- Ten tech concepts you have always wanted to learn:
http://lifehacker.com/5845665/top-10-tech-concepts-you-always-wanted-to-learn-about-but-never-did


- Top five scientists.  Let's replace Turing with Isaac Newton (how the heck do you make a top scientist list without Newton!?!?) and let's replace Linus Pauling with Michael Farraday.  The rest I can live with:
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=17431792&nid=968


- How much do the top tech companies pay their employees?  Search by company and city:
http://techcompanypay.com/


- Name the 44 U.S. presidents in ten minutes.  I got 41 out of 44.  I struggle with the presidents from 1836 to 1860 and the presidents from 1876 to 1896.  There were some real lemons during those two time-frames:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/games/Trivia-US-Presidents.html


- Is the city of Detroit finally starting to turn it around?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204294504576617280722057142.html?mod=e2tw
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-10-09/detroit-comeback-lions/50713354/1

Color-blind Super Grover forgets his ATM pin

- Bill Belichick wants the extra-point to die in the NFL.  So do I.  Complete waste of time.  Give the fans what they want.  More action:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Bill-Belichick-wants-the-extra-point-to-die?urn=nfl-wp5693


- Super Grover!
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Grover


- Ten myths about TV:
http://io9.com/5834269/10-myths-about-television-that-fans-and-viewers-buy-into


- Geeky PIN numbers:
http://spikedmath.com/285.html


- How to quickly chill a canned or bottled beverage:
http://lifehacker.com/221974/chill-a-coke-in-2-minutes?tag=softwarehousehold


- Guide to living in ten fictional worlds:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/pl_fictionalworlds/


- How televisions have changed over the past ten years:
http://mashable.com/2011/09/07/television-birth-infographic/


- Online color challenge.  Test how accurately you see colors.  0 is a perfect score, 100 means you lack the ability to see any shades of color (which makes you functionally blind.)  I scored a 5.
http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77&Lang=en


- Which college football teams are the most popular?  This season if the #2 team on this list beats the #1 team on this list, I suspect the #2 team will leap-frog the #1 team in popularity:
http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/?src=twrhp


- Six movie plot holes you never noticed due to editing.  I am a firm believer in the stupidity of the Dark Knight plot hole and the Indiana Jones plot hole.  I will argue to my dying days that both those plot holes are perfectly awful and should have never made it into either movie:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19435_6-movie-plot-holes-you-never-noticed-thanks-to-editing.html

IBM's favorite science-fiction font

- Life gets better at 50.  Why?  It sounds incredibly cynical, but makes perfect sense when you think about it, "In some ways, we become relieved of the burden of a future."
http://news.yahoo.com/life-gets-better-50-012600469.html



- Ten words you need to stop misspelling:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling


- The IBM PC turned 30 last week.  It's form-factor defined how people think of a desktop PC:
http://technologizer.com/2011/08/11/ibm-pc-oddities/


- Star Wars pilgrims:
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2011/08/08/star-wars-tourists-follow-films-around-globe/


- Apple passed Exxon in market-cap last week.  According to the Dow Jones industrials, Apple is the most valuable company in the world.  However, there are many ways to judge the size and value of a company.  Given other metrics, Apple isn't even near the top:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2011/08/does-this-metric-make-my-company-look-big.ars/


- 42 of the best fonts for writing computer code.  I prefer Consolas and Monaco:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/work/FontSurvey.aspx


- Ten science-fiction books that changed the course of history:
http://io9.com/5832078/10-science-fiction-books-that-changed-the-course-of-history


- 90% of people who buy video-games never finish the game they buy.  Lord knows I can be a lazy SoB, but do not lump me into this category.  I bend over backwards to finish the games I buy.  I have played over 100 single-player computer/console roleplaying games, and I can think of only two I have not finished: Wizard's Crown (super-old computer game) and Dragon Age (currently sitting on my living room shelf.)  The reason why people don't finish video games applies to everyone, even if you don't play video games:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/08/17/finishing.videogames.snow/


- When you read as many websites, blogs, RSS feeds, message boards and FAQs as I do on a daily basis, you start to notice over-arching patterns in online writing.  Online writing is different from academic and journalistic writing, but wants to have the same amount of intellectual credit.  Online writers want to have a conversation with you, as long as you subconsciously notice that the writer is striving to be sophisticated, witty, grammatically correct, and a little quirky.  Online writers tend to belong to generation-X.  Nothing scares a typical gen-x'er more than not being liked.  Bloggers often frame each sentence they write to not only entertain you, not only inform you, but to also make sure they don't say anything to you that might cause you to "no longer like them."  Passive-aggressive words and phrases are the norm.  Starting sentences with words like "sort of", "really", and "pretty much" give a feeling of easy conversation, and also allows the writer to casually distance themselves from future sentences that may offend someone.  Am I guilty of this writing style?  Sure.   If you want to find the person who may be responsible for creating the modern online writing-style, start with David Foster Wallace:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin-on-david-foster-wallace.html

Dodo bird increases IQ by reading twitter

- Top box-office film franchises:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/film-franchises


- Ten extinct animals that have been rediscovered:
http://io9.com/5822783/10-extinct-animals-that-have-been-rediscovered


- The electromagnetic spectrum, and how it effects you:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=graphic-science-electromagnetic-bombardment


- How many servers does Google use?
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/01/report-google-uses-about-900000-servers/


- Social media propaganda posters:
http://design-milk.com/social-media-propaganda-posters-by-aaron-wood/


- Prescription medicines for Winnie the Pooh characters:
http://blog.jayparkinsonmd.com/post/8389458745/nevver-no-more-problems-in-poohville


- Are smart people getting smarter?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/are-smart-people-getting-smarter/

Mount Everest wears British cleats

- Why do Americans think that people with a British accent are intelligent? Once an American is abroad for a while, this attitude changes:
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2011/06/accent-attitudes.html




- Tallest mountain versus the deepest ocean trench:
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/infographic-tallest-mountain-to-deepest-ocean-trench-0249/




- Why do baseball managers wear uniforms? Coaches/managers do not wear uniforms in the other major sports.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1025725/index.htm




- Bletchley Park, one of the most important sites of World War II, and the birth-place of computer science:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20076578-52/at-bletchley-park-breaking-enigma-codes-and-winning-ww-ii/




- How most computer programmers get hired (myself included.)
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-07-04/




- Joey Chestnut again dominated the Nathan's July 4th hotdog eating contest.  A story about competitive eating injuries:
http://www.slate.com/id/2169739/

Southpaws prefer C# and Deep Blue

- Is being left-handed a sign of mental impairment? For years, I have heard people claim that the average left-handed person is slightly smarter than the average right-handed person.  I never bought that notion.  I don't buy this one either:
http://io9.com/5809813/is-being-left+handed-actually-a-form-of-cognitive-impairment




- Tipping etiquette, per country:
http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/110302-MINT-TIPSa.png



- How free is the state you live in?
http://mercatus.org/freedom-50-states-2011




- Most popular programming languages.  My favorite is at #4:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html




- IBM turns 100 years old:
http://www.canada.com/business/computer+pioneer+turns/4956032/story.html




- 15 things you didn't know about outer-space:
http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/outer-space/




- An excellent biography of George Lucas:
http://flickeringmyth.blogspot.com/2011/06/hot-rods-droids-george-lucas-profile.html




- Keeping the synergy of the previous two posts, 10 things you didn't know about Star Wars:
http://io9.com/5813935/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-star-wars




- Yeah, yeah, I can't stand Slate either, but I stumbled upon this article and wanted to share it. Who is currently America's greatest humorist?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2011/06/17/america-s-greatest-living-humorists-parker-and-stone-or-larry-david.aspx

Professor Chaos rides out the twister

- Make an avatar of yourself, South Park style.  Here's what I might look like in the South Park universe:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/avatar/




- Walking to work, if you pass by a homeless person playing music for hand-outs, do you listen to the music?  Do you pay attention at all?  What if the person was a WORLD-CLASS musician playing some of the most difficult music ever composed?  Do you think you would notice?  The Washington Post put this idea to the test.  Amazing article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html




- A teenager with a useless limb volunteers to have the limb hacked-off, and replaced with a bionic limb:
http://io9.com/5803399/voluntary-amputees-opt-for-bionic-hands-over-real-ones




- When traveling, why does the trip home always feel shorter?  Personally, I think it's because on the way home, we are full of new memories and experiences to think about:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201105/how-long-will-it-take-get-home




- Why TV ads are louder than TV shows.  Quick spoiler...they aren't:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/st_loudtvads/




- Tornado myths debunked.  The two most reoccurring themes in my nightmares are tornadoes and spiders.  I am sure a Freudian psychiatrist would have a field-day with that knowledge:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110528/LIFE/105280302/0/CAROUSEL/?odyssey=nav




- A list of conservative film critics:
http://whatwouldtotowatch.com/2011/06/01/your-guide-to-conservative-film-critics/




- Internet usage in the U.S:
http://www.steverubel.me/post/6142641472/internet-adoption-chart

Schroeder plays the 7th symphony on a tablet PC

- The King's Speech.  Damn good movie.  Best movie I have seen in years.  Definitely in my all-time top 30 list.  During the future king's first speech, and during his last speech, haunting music plays in the background.  I finally got around to finding the source of this music.  Beethoven's 7th symphony.  I should have known.  Ludwig Van...the gift that keeps on giving:

- Peanuts cartoons with the last panel removed.  Charles Schulz always put the punch-line in the 4th (last) panel.  Without the last panel, his pleasant cartoons become bleak and existential:

http://3eanuts.com/

- The end of the printed book?  I scored an android tablet at the Google IO this week. I plan on using it for eBook reading.  I have family members who are voracious readers, but haven't bought printed books in months:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383938,00.asp



- Top ten diminished sporting events.  Happy to see the world series on this list:
http://www.realclearsports.com/lists/diminished_sporting_events/




- The last World War I veteran has died.  Thirty years from now, the last WW2 veteran will likely have passed away:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/europe/06choules.html?_r=1