Assorted Links

What's more fun than telling long-distance friends how much nicer your weather is? Doing it graphically! My most recent bookmark: WeatherSpark.

E.O. Wilson's TED wish, a collaborative biology wiki, the Encyclopedia of Life. I hope to contribute some images of Bungarus multicinctus before leaving Taiwan.

A new data and statistics search engine, Zanran. Check out this search of "accidental deaths in the United States". The preview feature is nice, huh?

WTF Bizarre Niche Blogs

Actually, I think these blogs smash niche to smithereens. 

HT to my buddy Jack for showing me the Where's Randy Savage? My favs:

And, of course, Selleck Waterfall Sandwich:

I Have a Problem...

I'm really struggling to write new posts because of wonderhowto, lifehacker, theawesomer, and howstuffworks.

Cyclically, I binge on websites like these. I've been in the grip of a serious bender.

North American Dialect Map

Neato!



Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

Christmas Mashup

Christmas classics all mashed up:

http://www.bootiemashup.com/xmas/

I like track 8 on the green side.

Wiki Wiki What?

Lately, a lot of my internet time is devoted to reading WikiLeaks cables; It's hard not to. Here are some interesting ones:

Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys To Stoned Afghan Cops.  No summation necessary.

Someone in the Middle East, not an eighth grader in history class, wants the US to bomb Iran.

The US is writing copyright laws for Spain. English story here. Spanish story here. New Zealand, not so much.

Amazon sells out at the gov's behest. Not a leak itself, but worth reading. Worthwhile commentary about that, here.

[Update]  The Guardian does a much better job than me - here. 

Sorry, Bros and Libertarians

I've heard Four Loko is now banned in the States. Animated Taiwanese news reports:


Highlights: 0:13, 0:38,

Also related, I perked up when I saw Robin Hanson took notice. I usually perk up when I read his blog. Anyhow, he remarks :

The FDA likes to present itself as a paragon of scientific rigor, but there is no rigor here. No randomized experiments or even careful regressions. Just public pressure to “do something” about vivid examples of “those people” hurting themselves. 

Little remains of the rule of law precept to treat people equally. ... Clearly the goal is to target particular vaguely-imagined classes of people, and regulators would be fine with having the law specify ... whatever it took to get to “them” without overly bothering “us.”

Read his entire post here. 

On the bright side, I haven't seen any Thanksgiving recipes that required Four Loko as an ingredient.

It's Still Dre Day

First track release from Dr. Dre's forthcoming album: http://www.drdre.com/kush/Revealed.aspx. Yeah, I'm stoked. 

Canada is Gay...

...At least according to OkTrends, the enthralling blog that crunches OkCupid's wealth of data. The content is fresh, empirical, and plenty jocular. So yeah, basically the opposite of this post's low-brow title. Anyhow, read the entire article here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/gay-sex-vs-straight-sex/. You're welcome.

Surfin' the Web

Don't click on this link if you are studying/trying to be productive.