Monday, January 27, 2003

Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots, was the winning coach of last year's Super Bowl. He has some advice for the winning coach of this year's Super Bowl in O.K., Champ, Now Comes the Hard Part.

Thursday, January 23, 2003

The Kabul-ki Dance is an article from the Atlantic Monthly, by Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down." It describes the air war over Afghanistan, focusing on the men and women of the 391st Fighter Squadron.

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Manhattan Timeformations is a 3-D computer map of the development of Manhattan through time. It was created by Brian McGrath, a professor of urban design at Columbia University. You can watch the city develop in Transparent New York, or fly up 5th Avenue in the Perspectival Fly-Through.

Monday, January 20, 2003

ESPN surveyed more than 34,000 sports fans to find out how their favorite team ranks in eight categories. Then they compared these findings to rank the professional sports franchises from the NFL, NBA, NHL, and Major League Baseball. They found that the Green Bay Packers are the Best Franchise in Sports. For the full rankings of all the teams and the categories used to rank the teams, click here.
Here are two articles on politics and science fiction television shows from the internet magazine Bad Subjects. In an article called The Sci-Fi Anti-Dupe, Walter R. Jacobs III discusses how he used episodes of the X-Files to teach college students about "the operation of hegemony in America". In the second article, Megan Shaw Prelinger explains How I was Politically Educated by 'The Prisoner' .

Thursday, January 16, 2003

Here's a fun, interactive flash animation program called flyguy.

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Jason Gross of the online music magazine Perfect Sound Forever lists his 25 Favorite Music Articles from 2002. His favorite article of the year is Life and Death on the Late Show, a review of Warren Zevon's farewell performance on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Sunday, January 12, 2003

Why are there no nationally syndicated liberal talk radio hosts? The New York Times ponders that question here. Randi Rhodes is a liberal talk radio host whose show is only heard in Palm Beach County, Florida. In this interview, she explains why she can't get syndicated nationally.

Thursday, January 09, 2003

At the end of each year, Google releases its "Year-End Google Zeitgeist," a ranking of the previous year's top search queries based on gaining or declining popularity. 2002's top gaining query was Spiderman, while the top falling query was Nostradamus. Google also includes lists of the most queried men, women, athletes, movies, and several other categories. View all the lists here.

Here's a Boston Globe article comparing the 2002 google lists with 2001.

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

A few weeks ago I mentioned the Turkish version of Star Trek . It turns out the Italians have also "borrowed" ideas from American science fiction movies. Here's a review of Star Crash, the Italian Star Wars.

Tuesday, January 07, 2003

Several fiction writers have their own weblogs. William Gibson discusses themes in his books and his new novel Pattern Recognition on his blog. Neil Gaiman writes about his life and work on his Journal. Bruce Sterling posts links to interesting web sites and articles on his blog called Schism Matrix.

Sunday, January 05, 2003

The Straight Dope is a column written by Cecil Adams that appears in the Chicago Reader and other newspapers across the country. Adams answers questions on any subject, from "Who was the first person to say 'Elvis has left the building'?", to "What are the nine eskimo words for snow?" For a list of all the questions Adams has answered, click here.

Thursday, January 02, 2003

Has Bigfoot left the building?

As I noted a few weeks ago, the first Bigfoot footprints were a prank created by Ray Wallace in 1958. However, this announcement by Wallace's family has not deterred "Bigfoot experts" who still believe in the Sasquatch, as explained in this New York Times article.