Neave Games has recreated several classic arcade games including Asteroids, Tetris, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man. You can play all these games online. To view the list of available games click here.

"Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean."

Follow this link to Ben Fry's zip decoder. Each dot on the map represents a U.S. zip code. Type in a zip code and watch the map zoom to the location.

Josh Marshall discusses the question, "Did the Bush Administration create a new American empire—or weaken the old one?" in this New Yorker article.

So you are orbiting the earth and you want to find Mount Everest. Even something as big as earth's tallest mountain is tough to spot when you are moving at 5 miles a second. Luckily, NASA has put together the tutorial Finding Mt. Everest from Space. (The secret is to watch for the V-shaped valleys.)

According to this Boston Globe article, "Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media." These Republican dirty tricks "could result in ethics complaints to the Senate and the Washington Bar -- or even criminal charges under computer intrusion laws."

According to the MIT Technology Review, these are the 10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change Your World.

Political commentators are trying to figure out what the results of the Iowa Caucuses mean for the Democratic presidential race. William Saletan looks at how the candidates are spinning the results in this Slate column, while today's post on Eric Alterman's weblog Altercation discusses "What We Learned" from the Iowa Caucuses.

In this Atlantic Monthly article, Joshua Green explains why independent voters in about 15 states will decide the 2004 election.

Steve Curry's Expedition Company is offering a "once-in-a-life-time chance to discover Our Hollow Earth first hand." They have chartered a Russian icebreaker to search for the hole in the Arctic Ocean that leads to "paradise within our earth" where King David reigns over the City of Jehu. Cost is only $18,950 for the first 100 people to sign up.

Dr. Jukka Ammondt is a Finnish literature professor who loves Elvis. Dr. Ammondt translated several Elvis songs into Latin and released the albums "The Legend Lives Forever in Latin" and "Rocking in Latin." For his latest project, Dr. Ammodt translated "Blue Suede Shoes" into Sumerian, a dead language that has not been spoken since 1800 BC. To see Dr. Ammodt's discography, click here and then click on the "Records" link on the left.

The Beastie Boys' bankrupt record label, Grand Royal, is for sale at the auction site Bid4Assets. Bidding is open for the next 7 days. Click here to bid.

According to this Billboard story, "For a minimum bid of $10,000, potential purchasers can acquire the label's entire product inventory as of May 2002 (including thousands of copies of releases by acts such as Josephine Wiggs, Luscious Jackson, Buffalo Daughter and Money Mark), master tapes and a wealth of merchandise."

Some Democratic voters believe that Howard Dean is their party's best hope to win the Presidential election, while others are afraid he won't be able to beat President Bush. Here are two columns that examine this wide range of opinions about Dean. First, E.J. Dionne looks at the pros and cons of the Dean campaign in this Washington Post column. Second, William Saletan asks "Is Howard Dean electable? Should you vote for him?" in this Slate column.

The BBC has posted clips from many of their best-known sitcoms on this page. They have included everything from Black Adder the Third, to Fawlty Towers, to The Office, to The Young Ones.

Jonathan Yardley looks back at the work of William Faulkner, focusing on his novel "The Reivers," in this Washington Post article.

Futurist/author Bruce Sterling discusses "media, design, fiction, and the future" in this Reason interview, and discusses the state of the world in 2004 in this Inkwell interview.

Louis Menand discusses top 10 lists in this New Yorker article.

The Property Room is an auction site that sells stolen goods after they are "no longer needed as evidence" for police investigations. Be sure to check out their "Hot Pursuit Specials."

NASA is posting pictures taken on Mars by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on this Planetary Photojournal moblog.

Each year Google reviews the queries used in its Internet search engine and compiles them into the Google Zeitgeist. This year's Google Zeitgeist includes the year's 10 most popular search terms (Britney Spears was the most popular) and the 10 most popular searches in categories such as news, men, women, and fictional characters. The Google Zeitgeist also includes the most popular searches by country and other search trends and surprises.

As the year comes to an end, many magazines, newspapers and websites compile their "Best of the Year" lists. Fimoculous has gathered an extensive list of links to the year's best books, movies, music and more. He includes everything from Mojo's Albums of 2003 to Space.com's Top 10 Space Mysteries of 2003.

Here are three political items I found on the Internet this weekend. First, in this article from CommonWealth magazine, Robert David Sullivan analyzes presidential politics by dividing the United States into 10 regions. He explains that a candidate must carry at least 5, and preferably 6, of these regions to win the presidency.

Second, whatever you do, don't criticize Wesley Clark's patriotism.

Third, guess what happens when you type "unelectable" into Google, and hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button?

Have you ever wondered how big a music nerd you are? Luckily, scientists have developed a tool to help you answer that question. To find out, take the Music Nerd Test. I scored 36.95652%, which makes me a Major Music Nerd.

Clive Thompson explains why old video games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and even Joust are better than many current video games in this Slate article.

Everett Ehrlich examines the future of American presidential politics in this Washington Post article. He thinks that "in the next six or eight presidential elections, a third-party candidate will win the presidency," because new technology will allow candidates to win elections without the traditional parties. In the current campaign, he sees Howard Dean as "essentially a third-party candidate using modern technology to achieve a takeover of the Democratic Party. Other candidates -- John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark -- are competing to take control of the party's fundraising, organizational and media operations. But Dean is not interested in taking control of those depreciating assets. He is creating his own party, his own lists, his own money, his own organization. What he wants are the Democratic brand name and legacy, the party's last remaining assets of value, as part of his marketing strategy."

In this Slate article, William Saletan explains why the capture of Saddam Hussein does not necessarily mean that George W. Bush will win re-election.

There are more than 36,000 films available on DVD. But many classics, including all the Marx Brothers movies, have not been released on DVD. This New York Times article explains why.

What is George W. Bush's ideology? According to this New Republic article by Jonathan Chait, it is to reward and enrich rich people, business interests, and religious conservatives.

This introduction to weblogs was written for the Spanish tech conference Artfutura by Boing Boing contributor Xeni Jardin.

Al Franken discusses his book, Fox's lawsuit, and whether he will have his own radio show, or run for office in this Minneapolis Star Tribune interview.

As I posted last Wednesday, a Google search for "miserable failure" leads to George W. Bush's official White House biography. This Newsday article explains how a technique called Google bombing makes this prank work.

Jonathan Yardley looks back at the life and work of author John D. MacDonald in this Washington Post article.

Here's some more Internet fun. Go to Google. Type in "Miserable Failure", and click the "I'm feeling lucky" button. Or, if you're in a hurry, just click here.

Howard Dean has begun attacking George W. Bush for having "no understanding of defense," and for having "made us weaker." In this Slate article, William Saletan explains why it makes sense that "A guy who has no foreign policy experience, opposed the war in Iraq, and went skiing after he escaped the Vietnam draft because of a bad back is calling a wartime president soft on defense."

Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog is a funny, foul-mouthed dog puppet created by Robert Smigel. Triumph is best known for his appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Click here to see video clips of Triumph on Late Night, including "Triumph Visits the 'Star Wars' Nerds." Click here to visit Triumph's official website. Finally, click here to listen to an interview with Triumph on NPR's Fresh Air.

E. J. Dionne considers whether Howard Dean's presidential campaign resembles Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign in this Washington Post column.

Here are two Boston Globe articles about presidential political history. First, Christopher Shea discusses Professor Stephen Skowronek's theory that U.S. political history is "a sequence of political creation, decline, and reconstruction." Second, Mark Stricherz explains the importance of the McGovern-Fraser commission in the creation of America's current presidential nominating process.

In this Slate article, David Greenberg discusses theories that link the Kennedy assassination and the Watergate scandal.

This Wired article discusses how Phillip K. Dick's stories have become source material for movies in the 20 years since his death. Paycheck, the 6th film based on Dick's work, will be released this Christmas.

This Fast Company article explains the costs of doing business with Wal-Mart.

Let Them Sing It For You is the most Internet fun I've had in a while. This Swedish website lets you hear any words you want sung, "by some of the world's greatest pop stars." Type in a word or phrase and then listen to them sung from their database of sampled lyrics. After you follow the link, give the site time to process and then listen to the sample phrase "to the beat of the rhythm of the night." Then close the box in the center of the screen, type in any words you want, click "Let Them Sing It", let it process, and click "start". So far my favorite phrase is "Hello, I Love You." Can you recognize the four singers?

According to this BBC article, scientists have discovered that frogs croak in regional accents.

The New York Times recently gave a bad review to Neal Pollack's new book Never Mind the Pollacks. Pollack responded with this rant, which may have been partly inspired by this story from the New Yorker.

William Saletan explains how Howard Dean's campaign is like the war in Iraq in this Slate article.

This New York Times article discusses "When Bad DVDs Happen to Great Films."

This CNN/Money article lists ways to escape automated customer service and talk to a live operator at several banks, airlines, credit card companies, and computer support centers.

In this New Yorker article, Seymour Hersch tells the story of alleged war crimes committed in Viet Nam by an American unit called Tiger Force. This story was recently uncovered by the Toledo Blade, but has been ignored by the mainstream media.

Bruce Sterling has started a new weblog called Beyond the Beyond. A permanent link to Sterling's blog has been added to the Blog Links on the right of this page.

This New York Times article profiles The Paul Green School of Rock Music, a real life School of Rock.

The results are in. Karl Heinz Hille has been crowned World Beard and Moustache Champion.

According to the Houston Chronicle,"A federal judge in Houston has thrown out the 20-year-old arms smuggling conviction of a former CIA agent, outlining in scathing terms how federal officials knowingly used a false affidavit at his trial and concealed the act through years of appeals. "

Michael Dirda discusses the humor of Gary Larson in this review of "The Complete Far Side."

Michael Kinsley explains "One Reason Not to Like Bush" in this Washington Post column.

The Internet offers access to incredible amounts of information, but a lot of information is missing because most books are not available on the Internet. Amazon.com is trying to solve this problem with a new feature called "Search Inside the Book," which allows you to search the text of more than 120,000 books. Gary Wolf explains how Search Inside the Book works and discusses other projects designed to bring books to the Internet in this article from Wired magazine. Steven Johnson also discusses Search Inside the Book in this Slate article.

"An Icelandic fishing captain, known as "the Iceman" for his tough character, grabbed a 660-pound shark with his bare hands as it swam in shallow water toward his crew. . . "

Yesterday's amusing bass guitar website reminded me of another funny music website. Follow this link to Rock and Roll Confidential's Hall of Douchebags. It's a gallery of over 500 photos of rock bands with snide commentary added. Click on the pictures in the index to begin your tour. You will see the three great cliches of rock band photos: brick walls, chain link fences, and railroad tracks.

BunnyBass maintains the Archive of Amusing Bass/Guitars. According to the site, "some may just be weird-looking, some are somewhat odd-but-pleasant, and still others may make you almost physically ill." You can browse through all 62 pages from this index. Some of the more unusual basses are the Watermelon Bass, the Big Wood U.S.A., the Stoneman Nude, and what can only be called the Wangcaster.

This Boston Globe article examines General Wesley Clark's record during the war in Kosovo.

This New Yorker article by Seymour Hersch explains how and why the Bush administration's prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was wrong.

Here's a review of Al Franken's new book from The Oregonian newspaper. The reviewer, a conservative columnist, writes that the book left her "utterly shocked" because it made her realize that,

" The leaders we conservatives have trusted have taken advantage of our trust to line the pockets of the wealthy and powerful, and it's time we rose up and drove out these greedy liars. They've hijacked and distorted our belief system for their own gain, and in doing so are destroying our credibility. "

Here are two Slate articles on rock music. First, Alex Abramovich wonders "What might School of Rock tell us about the state of rock 'n' roll?" Second, Chris Suellentrop takes a look at the career of R.E.M.

This article from Reform Judaism magazine explains "How the Jews Created the Comic Book Industry."

"Mitsi Kato's fifth-grade class at Roosevelt Elementary in San Leandro consented to a simple experiment: We will play a career-spanning selection of Radiohead songs; the kids, equipped with Sharpies and blank sheets of paper, will simply draw whatever the music suggests to them. We don't even give them the name of the band. They don't know anything about Radiohead, the mountain of criticism, the mythology. Their thoughts and interpretations are pure, unsullied, literally unique.

They are also extremely bizarre."

The experiment's results are reported in this article from the East Bay Express.

Frank Rich sees the California recall election as Disneyland with an Audio-Animatronic Candidate in this New York Times column.

The second season of the British TV show "The Office" premiered tonight on the BBC America cable network. The first episode show was as funny and excruciating as last season. Here are reviews of the show from the Boston Globe, New York Times and USA Today. The New York Times also has this interview with Ricky Gervais, the show's co-creator and star.

Thomas Pynchon will be a guest voice on The Simpsons next season according to this interview with Al Jean, the show's executive producer.

Angle-Grinder Man calls himself "the world's first wheel-clamp and speed camera vigilante cum subversive superhero philanthropist entertainer type personage." He wears a homemade blue and gold superhero costume and offers free wheel-clamp removal to stranded motorists in London. Read more about him in this Reuters article, this New York Times article, or at the Angle-Grinder Man website.

General Wesley Clark explains what went wrong in Iraq in this article from the New York Review of Books.

Here's a game called The Office Space: Surviving ‘til Vacation. Click launch to load the game.

The rules are simple:

1. Finish your work by collecting folders.
2. Avoid the supervisors.

Jonathan Chait discusses his hatred of President George W. Bush in this article from the New Republic. Chait writes that he hates Bush because he thinks "his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history." Chait also admits that he hates Bush for more personal reasons: "He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school--the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it." Chait doesn't think that he's the only American who hates Bush. He quotes Pollster Geoff Garin who says hatred of Bush is "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling."

Several conservatives, such as David Brooks in this New York Times column, have responded that the hatred Chait discusses is a "threat to democracy." Brooks ignores Chait's policy differences with Bush, and conveniently downplays conservative hatred of President Clinton.

Chait responds to Brooks in this article.

The Original Illustrated Catalog Of ACME Products includes "information and pictures of all ACME products, specialty divisions, and services featured in Warner Bros. cartoons from 1935 to 1964." The catalog includes everything from ACME Anvils, to the ACME straight-jacket ejecting bazooka, to the ACME do-it-yourself tornado kit.

Bruce Sterling discusses Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die in this article from Technology Review.

In this article from The Atlantic Monthly, Paul Davies considers whether religions could survive the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe.

This New York Times article takes you along on a night out with Tommy Stinson.

The World Beard and Moustache Championships will be held on November 1st in Carson City, Nevada. It's the first time this event has been held in the United States. Over 100 contestants from several countries will compete including Willi Chevalier the current world champion from Singmaringen, Germany and the Swabian Beard Club.

The Wayback Machine lets you access archived versions of over 30 billion stored web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. For example, here's what Yahoo looked like in 1997 and here's Amazon.com from 1996.

Timothy Noah noticed that conservative Republicans seem to want Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2004. He examines this phenomena in two Slate articles. In the first article Noah demonstrates that the "Draft Hillary" movement consists almost entirely of conservative Republicans. In his second article Noah explains why all these conservatives want Hillary Clinton to run for president.

In this article from The Atlantic Monthly, Jack Beatty explains that the only way George W. Bush can be re-elected is if voters ignore his long list of failures.

Bacteriophages are naturally occurring organisms that kill bacteria. With more and more bacteria becoming immune to antibiotics, scientists are looking at bacteriophages as an alternative way of treating infections. According to this Wired article, "this approach to fighting infection lets nature do the lab work usually carried out at tremendous expense, and with high failure rates, by the pharmaceutical industry. In contrast to engineered drugs, phages are as numerous and varied as the bacteria they attack. What's more, they evolve along with their prey, matching bacterial adaptation step by step."

This webpage documents the "freaky one-to-one correspondence between pirate slang and gangstah rap slang."

Retired General Wesley Clark is expected to announce that he's running for president today. I don't know how interested voters are in Clark, but he seems to be doing pretty well with journalists and pundits. Salon's Eric Boehlert examines Clark's candidacy in this article, while Joe Conason discusses how Clark will change the race in this column. The Washington Post provides this profile of General Clark. Joshua Marshall looks at Clark's chances in this post from his weblog Talking Points Memo. Finally Slate's David Greenberg looks at the history of how generals are elected president in this article.

Since 1998 Rob Cockerham has used this website to record the results from his experiments to determine "How Much is Inside?" Some of his experiments have included finding out how much is inside a keg, a Chevy Trailblazer, a tube of toothpaste, and a Sharpie.

Is America in decline? The authors of several recent books think that it is. Laura Secor examines whether America is in decline in this Boston Globe article.

Here are two Slate articles on the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks. First, this article by David Plotz discusses six misconceptions about September 11. Second, Fred Kaplan discusses President Bush's foreign policy miscalculations since September 11.

According to this MTV.com article, the Pixies are reuniting for a world tour.

Mysterious ceramic tiles have been found embedded in the streets of several American cities. The tiles all say:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KubricK's `2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPiTER.

This Kansas City Star article discusses the strange tiles and wonders what they mean. The website What Is It? is devoted to the Toynbee tiles and includes a list of tile locations.

On September 21st, the Galileo Orbiter will crash into the planet Jupiter. Galileo made several scientific discoveries on its mission, some of which suggest there may be life on Jupiter's moon Europa. NASA is ending the mission to avoid the possibility of contaminating Jupiter's moons. This New Yorker article by Michael Benson discusses Galileo's discoveries and explains the engineering problems NASA overcame to make the Galileo mission successful.

Blogenheimer now includes a list of links to my favorite weblogs. The Blog Links are on the right side of the page, just above the archives. Talking Points Memo is the blog of political writer Joshua Marshall. Altercation, written by Eric Alterman, covers politics and popular culture. Boing Boing is a collective weblog on popular culture and technology. Comic book writer Warren Ellis writes the weblog Die Puny Humans.

The City Pages compiled this oral history of the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue.

Although he died in 1982, Lester Bangs is still considered America's best rock music critic. The release of the collection "Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste," provides an opportunity to take another look at Bangs' work. Andrew Leonard argues in this Salon article that Bangs was a great critic because he cared about music. According to Leonard, "Lester on Black Sabbath is a revelation, Lester on punk is magisterial, Lester on Jamaica is a tour de force of brutal honesty. " In this Slate article, Sasha Frere-Jones says Bangs was a great critic because he was both passionate and skeptical about music.

Was he really that good? Decide for yourself. You can read Lester Bangs' article about Black Sabbath here.

Joshua Marshall discusses Presidential lying in this Washington Monthly article. According to Marshall, "Every president deceives. But each has his own style of deceit." George W. Bush and his administration "specialize in a particular form of deception: The confidently expressed, but currently undisprovable assertion."

I saw and enjoyed the movie American Splendor this weekend. The film is based on the autobiographical comic book writen by Harvey Pekar. Here are reviews of American Splendor from The Onion, the Village Voice, and the New York Times.

National Lampoon's Animal House was released in 1978. In honor of the film’s 25th anniversary, the new “Double Secret Probation Edition" of the Animal House DVD was released this week, causing stories by many news organizations. The New York Times examines the movie's influence in this article. MSNBC interviews several of the Animal House actors here. This National Public Radio story includes video clips, music and recorded interviews. Finally, the ACME Animal House site has just about all the information you could ever want on the film.

On the eve of what would have been Jack Kirby's 86th birthday, Elvis Mitchell and Michael Chabon discuss the influence of the "King of Comics" in this New York Times article.

Neal Stephenson's new novel Quicksilver will be released in September. The book is set during the 1600s and includes both fictional characters and historical figures such as Isaac Newton. It is the first of three books in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. The other two novels are scheduled to follow Quicksilver at 6-month intervals. Stephenson discusses his new book and other things in this Wired interview.

This article by Timothy Ferris discusses the life of Isaac Newton.

As reported in this Salon article, the request by Fox News for an injunction against Al Franken's new book, “Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them-A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,” was refused by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin on Friday. "There are hard cases and there are easy cases," said Chin. "This is an easy case. The case is wholly without merit both factually and legally…It is ironic that a media company that should seek to protect the First Amendment is instead seeking to undermine it."

Ben McGrath discusses the question "So what was Fox thinking?" in this New Yorker article.

This MSNBC article includes an excerpt from Franken's book and a video interview with Franken.

Peter Berkowitz argues that George W. Bush is really a moderate in this Boston Globe article. The American Prospect's weblog TAPPED responds here.

Jim Holt discusses whether parallel universes exist in this Slate article.

Thanks to his appearance on The Simpsons, Dr. Stephen Hawking now has his own action figure.

Paul Krugman explains how deregulation helped cause last week's blackout in his New York Times column, and Tom Oliphant explains the political obstacles to fixing the problem in his Boston Globe column. If you are worried about power grids around the country, check the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Current Energy site for the status of five regional power grids. The site plans to have power grid information for the whole country soon. This National Post article discusses the cultural history of urban darkness.