This video clip shows an amazing example of Octopus Camouflage.

Frank Calliendo impersonates John Madden, President Bush, and other celebrities during an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman in this video clip.

This ThingsAsian article discusses "The Curious Case of Jim Thompson, Thai Silk King.

"On Easter Day, 1967, American businessman and founder of the modern Thai silk industry James H.W. Thompson disappeared while supposedly on a stroll in the jungle-clad Cameron Highlands, central Malaysia."

Project Censored presents the Top 10 Censored News Stories of 2005.

Stephen Colbert discusses "Bill O'Reilly, fantasy role-playing games, and the plague of truthiness sweeping the nation" in this Onion A.V Club interview.

The new blog Republicans...or the Mafia helps you understand today's political events "by comparing corrupt Republicans and their shady goings-on to well-known characters and scenes from your favorite gangster movies."

Witold Rybczynski explains why Frank Lloyd Wright's Beth Sholom Synagogue is an overlooked materpiece in this Slate slide show.

The Phrase Finder provides the meanings and origins of many colloquial phrases and sayings, including Scot free and the whole nine yards. The site also has information on euphemisms, misheard song lyrics and more.

William Gibson explains how he discovered science fiction and history in this Infinite Matrix essay.

Christopher Stern explains "The Coming Tug of War Over the Internet" in this Washington Post article:

"Do you prefer to search for information online with Google or Yahoo? What about bargain shopping -- do you go to Amazon or eBay? Many of us make these kinds of decisions several times a day, based on who knows what -- maybe you don't like bidding, or maybe Google's clean white search page suits you better than Yahoo's colorful clutter.

But the nation's largest telephone companies have a new business plan, and if it comes to pass you may one day discover that Yahoo suddenly responds much faster to your inquiries, overriding your affinity for Google. Or that Amazon's Web site seems sluggish compared with eBay's.

The changes may sound subtle, but make no mistake: The telecommunications companies' proposals have the potential, within just a few years, to alter the flow of commerce and information -- and your personal experience -- on the Internet. For the first time, the companies that own the equipment that delivers the Internet to your office, cubicle, den and dorm room could, for a price, give one company priority on their networks over another."

Michael Hiltzik explains what's wrong with the Medicare prescription drug benefit in this Los Angeles Times column:

"Forget Iraq, the economy, the abortive Social Security scheme: The defining fiasco of the Bush Administration may prove to be the utterly disastrous Medicare prescription drug benefit, formally known as Medicare Part D. Already the newspapers are filled with stories about Medicare-Medicaid patients, the poorest of the poor, being denied prescriptions by the thousands because the government, with only two full years to prepare, didn't have its computer systems tested, up, and running when the program launched January 1. The pain is just beginning."

According to this Cincinnati Enquirer article, the new elevator system in the Metropolitan Park West Tower in downtown Seattle "alleviates passenger bottlenecks" and "minimizes stops by grouping together passengers with common destinations."

"Here's how it works:

Self-standing and wall-mounted kiosks with touch screens are installed in common areas where elevator passengers wait. Passengers enter their destination floor on the touch screen.

The requests are processed, and a message is displayed informing users to ride a specific car.

"In a conventional system, waiting passengers crowd into the first available elevator, which often results in the car stopping at numerous floors, increasing travel time," said Joe Rennekamp, vice president of engineering at Fujitec's corporate offices in Lebanon.

In time, the new Fujitec system becomes even more efficient at grouping passengers by learning elevator-use patterns, said Rennekamp, whose team of engineers pioneered the software for the system. It does this by considering historical information to learn traffic variances in the building."

The Bancroft Library presents this 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire website. The site includes an interactive map and a 360-degree panorama of San Francisco after the disaster.

Robert Gordon explains "The Basic Case Against Alito" in this post from the blog Balkinization.

This New Scientist article explains that, "Dogs do as well as state-of-the-art screening tests at sniffing out people with lung or breast cancer. The research raises the possibility that trained dogs could detect cancers even earlier and might some day supplement or even replace mammograms and CT scans in the laboratory."

According to this Washington Post story, NASA's Stardust spacecraft collected dust from the comet Wild 2. This weekend the spacecraft will release a capsule carrying the comet dust, which will land in the Utah desert, providing a "treasure trove" of material for scientific study.

This Los Angeles Times article tells the story of Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz, who was lucky to have good friends like Rep. Tom DeLay help him when his savings and loan collapsed.

"Reps. John T. Doolittle and Richard W. Pombo joined forces with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to oppose an investigation by federal banking regulators into the affairs of Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz, documents recently obtained by The Times show. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was seeking $300 million from Hurwitz for his role in the collapse of a Texas savings and loan that cost taxpayers $1.6 billion.

The investigation was ultimately dropped.

The effort to help Hurwitz began in 1999 when DeLay wrote a letter to the chairman of the FDIC denouncing the investigation of Hurwitz as a "form of harassment and deceit on the part of government employees." When the FDIC persisted, Doolittle and Pombo — both considered proteges of DeLay — used their power as members of the House Resources Committee to subpoena the agency's confidential records on the case, including details of the evidence FDIC investigators had compiled on Hurwitz.

Then, in 2001, the two congressmen inserted many of the sensitive documents into the Congressional Record, making them public and accessible to Hurwitz's lawyers, a move that FDIC officials said damaged the government's ability to pursue the banker."

The Most Popular Toys of the Last 100 Years

From time to time, magazines and radio stations compile lists of the 100 Greatest Albums of all time. The website Timepieces has gathered links to these 70 'All Time' Best Albums Lists from the US, UK, Netherlands and Belgium.

According to this Washington Post article, Lobbyist Jack Abramoff "pleaded guilty yesterday to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials in a deal that requires him to provide evidence about members of Congress." This Slate article examines which lawmakers Abramoff may testify against. The Post also tries to explain the complicated Abramoff scandal with this helpful chart.

Tris McCall reviews all the Christmas Carols in his Christmas Abstract. Here's his review of "Linus And Lucy,"

"Speaking of Peanuts, I consider A Charlie Brown Christmas the high point of Western civilization. Okay, I'm kidding. A little. No, really, since Christian theology has been the font for monumental artistic expression from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Of The Heart, Of The Soul, and Of The Cross, it's possible to see the Peanuts special as a sort of crown -- a succinct and poetic articulation of ancient principles. If you can understand why Charlie Brown chooses the tiniest and most unhealthy-looking tree in the lot, you're at least halfway to the proper spirit in which to approach the Gospels. Incidentally, the famous Linus speech I alluded to in the last entry is Luke 2.8-14, straight from the King James Version. I don't think that is made clear during the program. CBS certainly knew, and they were shitting bricks that audiences would find the special too preachy. This was 1965; in 2003, a project like this one doesn't even get out of the gate. Thank God it's been grandfathered in as an annual event -- by now it's too much of an institution for the seculars to gripe about St. Schulz, and really, how much Heatmiser can a person take?"

Click here to read all the reviews.

Bound for Glory: America in Color is an exhibition of little known color images taken by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information between 1936 and 1942, a time period we usually see only in black and white. You can view the exhibition here.

Once again Fimoculous presents his compilation of "Best of the Year Lists" in several categories including film, books, and music.

Photographer Arnaud Friche took this amazing panorama of Paris at Night. This version of the panorama helpfully identifies the landmarks. More of Friche's panoramas can be found here.

Foreign Policy magazine presents the Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2005.

For centuries, scientists have wondered, "why does the narwhal, or "unicorn," whale have an 8-foot-long tooth emerging from its head, and what is its function?" Harvard School of Dental Medicine researcher Martin Nweeia has discovered the answer:

"Nweeia has discovered that the narwhal's tooth has hydrodynamic sensor capabilities. Ten million tiny nerve connections tunnel their way from the central nerve of the narwhal tusk to its outer surface. Though seemingly rigid and hard, the tusk is like a membrane with an extremely sensitive surface, capable of detecting changes in water temperature, pressure, and particle gradients. Because these whales can detect particle gradients in water, they are capable of discerning the salinity of the water, which could help them survive in their Arctic ice environment. It also allows the whales to detect water particles characteristic of the fish that constitute their diet. There is no comparison in nature and certainly none more unique in tooth form, expression, and functional adaptation."

Good Experience Games is a long list of games that are "free, online, and available right now."

"The Christmas Story" in 30 Seconds (Re-enacted by Bunnies)

Hmm, are these photos of an unusual rock, a hiker in a fur coat, or Bigfoot!

Geomythologists combine legends and science to discover the geologic history of the Earth. As this Observer article explains, they believe that a massive earthquake struck what is now Seattle in January 1700.

Rick Goldschmidt tells the story of the creation and restoration of the TV special Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer in this TV Party article:

"Then came, what I consider the most significant deleted scene, which we called "The Peppermint scene." After Santa's sleigh takes off for the Island of Misfit toys being guided by Rudolph, we see several characters for the very last time in the special. Donner, Mrs. Donner and Clarice are all proud of RUDOLPH. As Rudolph flies away, Donner says "That's my Buck!" This confirms that he is no longer ashamed of his Red-nosed son.

Yukon comes running out of the castle and yells at his sled dogs (who wouldn't pull his sled throughout the special) "See! That's how it's done!" as he looks up at Rudolph. Then Yukon throws his pick up in the air and picks it up and licks it (As he did throughout the entire special).

His pick licking never made any sense. He thought he was looking for silver and gold, but he was really looking for Peppermint. After licking his pick, he says, "Peppermint! What I've been searching for! I've found me a peppermint mine....yahoooo!"

Military historian Martin Van Creveld examines the Iraq War and explains in this Forward article why he believes a "Costly Withdrawal is the Price to Be Paid for a Foolish War." Van Creveld writes:

"A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not."

Van Creveld concludes his article with:

"For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men."

Seymour Hersh answers the question, "Where is the Iraq war headed next?" in this New Yorker article:

"There are several proposals currently under review by the White House and the Pentagon; the most ambitious calls for American combat forces to be reduced from a hundred and fifty-five thousand troops to fewer than eighty thousand by next fall, with all American forces officially designated “combat” to be pulled out of the area by the summer of 2008. . ."

"A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.

“We’re not planning to diminish the war,” Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. Clawson’s views often mirror the thinking of the men and women around Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting—Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of airpower."

Hersh discusses his article in this interview.

Men's Health presents 18 Tricks to Teach Your Body:

"5. Clear your stuffed nose!

Forget Sudafed. An easier, quicker, and cheaper way to relieve sinus pressure is by alternately thrusting your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then pressing between your eyebrows with one finger. This causes the vomer bone, which runs through the nasal passages to the mouth, to rock back and forth, says Lisa DeStefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University college of osteopathic medicine. The motion loosens congestion; after 20 seconds, you'll feel your sinuses start to drain.

10. Unstitch your side!

If you're like most people, when you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground."

With less than a year to go until the 2006 elections, the Democrats are looking for new strategies to win Congressional elections. As explained in this Newsweek article, one strategy the Democrats are trying is to run candidates who are Iraq War veterans. So far eight Iraq War veterans have announced that they are running for Congress as Democrats.

Pitchfork Media presents "The Worst Record Covers of All Time."

Play Risk on Google Maps of the Earth here.

The 100 Oldest Currently-Registered .Com Domains

One Red Paperclip.com tells the story of Kyle MacDonald, who started with a red paperclip and began making a chain of trades for bigger or better objects. He wants to keep trading until he gets a house. Currently he has a 1000 Watt generator.

In this New York Times article, Carl Zimmer discusses recent sleep research:

"Scientists have offered a number of ideas about the primordial function of sleep. Dr. Tononi believes that it originally evolved as a way to allow neurons to recover from a hard day of learning. "When you're awake you learn all the time, whether you know it or not," he said.

Learning strengthens some connections between neurons, known as synapses, and even forms new synapses. These synapses demand a lot of extra energy, though. "That means that at the end of the day, you have a brain that costs you more energy," Dr. Tononi said. "That's where sleep would kick in."

He argues that slow waves weaken synapses through the night. "If everything gets weaker, you still keep your memories, but overall the strength goes down," he said. "The next morning you gain in terms of energy and performance."

"I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by "picking up" and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special "ink" they just picked up from their immediate environment. Watch the I/O Brush video."

Google has scanned the full text of over 10,000 books that you can search using Google Print. This New York Times article has more information on Google Print.

The 2005 World Beard and Moustache Championships were held last month in Berlin, Germany. Although there was no overall winner, crowd favorites included Germany's Elmar Weisser who won first place in the freestyle full beard category and America's Toots Joslin winner of the sideburns category. Links to photos of the winners in all 17 categories can be found here.

Nicholas Lemann explains how a leak became the Valerie Plame scandal in this New Yorker article.

Burritophile is a website for anyone who likes a good burrito. You can find reviews of burritos from around the United States, a list of the top places for burritos in the country, and a burrito blog.

Elizabeth Hickock built this jello model of San Francisco, including the Bay Bridge.

While doing a google search I discovered that my friend's blog, Girl Detective, is available in French as Detective de Fille. Now thanks to Jack Vinson, a commenter on Girl Detective, and Reverso Online, I've learned that the French word for Blogenheimer is Blogenheimer.

Time magazine recently published their list of the 100 Best novels since 1923. In this Morning News article, Matthew Baldwin presents dissenting opinions of several of these novels from one-star reviews he found on Amazon.com. Some examples:

"The Catcher in the Rye (1951) J.D. Salinger

“So many other good books…don’t waste your time on this one. J.D. Salinger went into hiding because he was embarrassed.”

1984 (1948) George Orwell

“Don’t listen to anyone who tries to distinguish between “serious” works of literature like this one and allegedly “lesser” novels. The distinction is entirely illusory, because no novels are “better” than any others, and the concept of a “great novel” is an intellectual hoax. This book isn’t as good as Harry Potter in MY opinion, and no one can refute me. Tastes are relative!”

From Homer to Gogol to Hemingway, Stuart Kelly tells the stories of the missing masterpieces of Western literature.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson was Colin Powell's chief of staff until last January. In this Financial Times article Wilkerson explains what he saw as a member of the Bush administration:

“What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

"Most Japanese consumers can get an Internet connection that's 16 times faster than the typical American DSL line for a mere $22 per month," while "in France, you can get super-fast DSL, unlimited phone service and 100 TV channels for a mere $38 a month." S. Derek Turner explains how internet access in the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in this Salon article.

The CommonCensus Map Project is redrawing the map of the United States based on your voting, to show how the country is organized culturally, as opposed to traditional political boundaries. It shows how the country is divided into 'spheres of influence' between different cities at the national, regional, and local levels. View the full-size map here.

The CommonCensus Sports Map Project shows the team affiliations of sports fans. View the map of NFL team affiliations here. (The map shows some surprising data from Mississippi and Alabama.)

From Bob Mould to William Shatner, BeatnikPad has compiled a list of Cool Musicians Who Blog.

In this TomDispatch article, Nick Turse lists the Casualties of the Bush Administration, "the seemingly endless and ever-growing list of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming. Often, this has been due to revulsion at the President's policies -- from the invasion of Iraq and negotiations with North Korea to the flattening of FEMA and the slashing of environmental standards -- which these women and men found to be beyond the pale."

This New York Times article explains that Stephen Colbert is leaving The Daily Show to start his own show called "The Colbert Report." The show will be a parody of cable news pundit shows like "The O'Reilly Factor."

"Though not intended to feature a dead-on impersonation of Mr. O'Reilly, "The Colbert Report" will have the feel of "The O'Reilly Factor," with an outspoken host delivering blunt opinions, some of them illustrated by graphics - Mr. O'Reilly calls them "talking points" - that are the equivalent of captions for the impaired, emphasizing what the host is trying to communicate.

"Like O'Reilly, we'll grab the most important word out of every sentence," Mr. Colbert said. " 'The,' for example. Also, I'll say, 'I'm angry,' and the graphic will read, 'Colbert angry.' "

According to this Washington Post article, the Republicans are having trouble finding good candidates for the 2006 elections:

"With an unpopular war in Iraq, ethical controversies shadowing top Republicans in the House and Senate, and President Bush suffering the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, the waters look less inviting to politicians deciding whether to plunge into an election bid. Additionally, some Capitol Hill operatives complain that preoccupied senior White House officials have been less engaged in candidate recruitment than they were for the 2002 and 2004 elections."

Al Gore gave a speech on democracy and the media Wednesday at the We Media conference in New York. His speech begins:

"I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack."

You can read the whole speech here. (Thanks, Mike!)

According to this New York Times article, Robert Ryang is a film editor’s assistant who "entered a contest for editors’ assistants sponsored by the New York chapter of the Association of Independent Creative Editors. The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals, he said.

Mr. Ryang chose “The Shining,” Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. In his hands, it became a saccharine comedy — about a writer struggling to find his muse and a boy lonely for a father. Gilding the lily, he even set it against “Solsbury Hill,” the way-too-overused Peter Gabriel song heard in comedies billed as life-changing experiences, like last year’s “In Good Company.”

Mr. Ryang won the contest. You can watch his very funny trailer here.

Interesting High-speed (super slow motion) Video Clips

As explained in this New York Times article, Dr. Barry J. Marshall and Dr. J. Robin Warren won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine today. They discovered H. pylori, a bacterium that causes stomach inflammation, ulcers, and cancer. To prove the theory, Dr. Marshall conducted an experiment on himself.

"He swallowed a gastroscope tube to allow another doctor to look at his stomach and take several biopsies. These procedures and examinations were needed to document that Dr. Marshall had no H. pylori in his stomach and did not suffer from gastritis or another abnormality.

Dr. Marshall waited 10 days for the areas that had been biopsied to heal and then swallowed a pure culture of H. pylori. A week later, he had an unusual sensation of fullness after eating supper and felt ill. Friends told him that his breath was "putrid."

Ten days after the onset of symptoms, Dr. Marshall underwent the first of an additional three gastroscopies. Biopsies obtained through them showed that he had developed gastritis or inflammation of the stomach, but he did not continue the experiment long enough to develop an ulcer. His symptoms quickly disappeared after treatment."

Family Business Magazine compiled a list of the World’s 100 Oldest Continuously Family-owned Companies.

"All of the listed companies are at least 225 years old; four have lasted in the same family for more than a millennium. The very oldest remains Japanese temple-builder Kongo Gumi, founded in 578."

E. J. Dionne explains the problems facing the Democratic Party in this Washington Post column:

"The core difficulty for Democrats is that they must solve two problems simultaneously -- and solving one problem can get in the way of solving the other. Over time Democrats need to reduce the conservative advantage over liberals in the electorate, which means the party needs to take clear stands that could detach voters from their allegiance to conservatism. For some in the party this means becoming more moderate on cultural issues such as abortion. For others it means full-throated populism to attract lower-income social conservatives. Some favor a combination of the two, while still others worry that too much populism would drive away moderate voters in the upper middle class. The debate often leads to intellectual gridlock."

According to this National Geographic article, scientists have taken the first photographs of a living giant squid. You can view some of the pictures of the squid here.

This Los Angeles Times article describes how a pitch for a new TV series led to an arrest for fraud:

"In May 2003, a dapper self-described financial strategist from Century City embarked on what he promised investors would be a riveting television series based on the newly created U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Saying his drama had the blessing of President Bush and others in Washington, D.C., Joseph M. Medawar quickly found plenty of backers for the show — one that he promised would be followed by a reality-based series titled "Fighting Terrorism Together."

But on Friday, in an ending that might have been foretold by anyone with a healthy skepticism of the Hollywood pitch, Medawar was arrested by FBI and IRS agents on charges that he bilked at least 70 investors — many of them from local churches — out of more than $5.5 million. Virtually all of the money, according to authorities, went to a lavish lifestyle that included luxury cars, shopping sprees, fancy dinners and $40,000-a-month in rent for a Beverly Hills mansion."

In this Harper's Magazine article, Bill McKibben discusses the paradox that, "America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior."

"Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture."

In this Popular Science article Dan Koeppel explains the history of the banana and why Panama disease may destroy the fruit.

"After 15,000 years of human cultivation, the banana is too perfect, lacking the genetic diversity that is key to species health. What can ail one banana can ail all. A fungus or bacterial disease that infects one plantation could march around the globe and destroy millions of bunches, leaving supermarket shelves empty.

A wild scenario? Not when you consider that there’s already been one banana apocalypse. Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or “Big Mike,” accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest."

The Find-a-Human database lists shortcuts to bypass the automated phone systems of several large companies and take you directly to a human operator.

Students for an Orwellian Society promotes the vision of a society based upon the principles of Ingsoc, first articulated by George Orwell in his prophetic novel, 1984. Those principles are "War Is Peace," "Freedom Is Slavery," and "Ignorance Is Strength." Since 9/11, they have been very successful.

In this Los Angeles Times column David Mamet uses a poker analogy to give some advice to the Democratic Party:

"Control of the initiative is control of the battle. In the alley, at the poker table or in politics. One must raise. The American public chose Bush over Kerry in 2004. How, the undecided electorate rightly wondered, could one believe that Kerry would stand up for America when he could not stand up to Bush? A possible response to the Swift boat veterans would have been: "I served. He didn't. I didn't bring up the subject, but, if all George Bush has to show for his time in the Guard is a scrap of paper with some doodling on it, I say the man was a deserter."

This would have been a raise. Here the initiative has been seized, and the opponent must now fume and bluster and scream unfair. In combat, in politics, in poker, there is no certainty; there is only likelihood, and the likelihood is that aggression will prevail."

As this essay explains, in 1984 Michael Larsen figured out a way to beat the system, and won over $100,000 on the television game show Press Your Luck.

"Having watched Press Your Luck since it premiered, Michael Larsen, then an unemployed ice cream truck driver from Ohio, came to the conclusion that the swift, seemingly random flashing lights that bounced around the Press Your Luck board were hardly random at all. By taping the show religiously and pausing the tapes, Larsen discovered that there were just six light patterns on the board. With this bit of knowledge, he practiced at home while watching the show and realized that he could stop the board wherever and whenever he wanted, if he just had patience."

In this Reuters photo, President Bush writes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a note about taking a bathroom break during a U.N. Security Council meeting. (Seriously)

In this American Prospect article Matthew Yglesias explains that former FEMA Director Michael Brown is far from the only unqualified member of the Bush Administration.

Evan Thomas explains why the Bush administration was slow to respond to Hurricane Katrina in this Newsweek article.

"The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace."

New Orleans Flood in Your City lets you compare the area of New Orleans that was flooded by Hurricane Katrina with similar areas in 49 cities in the U.S. and Canada.

In this post from the blog Political Animal, Kevin Drum explains how Hurricane Katrina exposes "the storyline — buried until now — that truly defines the nature of the Bush administration."

"The lesson of Katrina, after all, is not that the White House is bad at handling hurricanes. The lesson is that the Bush White House doesn't care much about whether things actually work. This is why they screwed up Iraq: they had an idea of what they wanted to accomplish, but figured that with energy and proper principles good results would take care of themselves. It's why the Medicare prescription bill turned out to be such a Frankenstein's monster: they knew they wanted to give seniors their pills, but they didn't really care much about actually implementing a sound policy."

Sidney Blumenthal explains how the Bush administration's "limited government" agenda is responsible for the disastrous federal response to Hurricane Katrina in this Salon article.

"Bush met with congressional leaders of both parties, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged Bush to fire [FEMA director Michael] Brown. "Why would I do that?" the president replied. "Because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week," she explained. To which he answered, "What didn't go right?"

Emergent-disease expert Laurie Garrett warns of the health and political consequences of Hurricane Katrina in this analysis.

"1.) The Mississippi Delta region is the natural ecological home of a long list of infectious microbial diseases. It is America’s tropical region, more akin ecologically to Haiti or parts of Africa than to Boston or Los Angeles. The most massive Yellow Fever epidemics in the Americas all swept, in the 19th Century, up the Mississippi from the delta region. Malaria was not eradicated from the area until after World War II. Isolated cases of dengue fever,another mosquito-borne disease, have been spotted in the region over the last ten years. Not only are all the mosquitoes that traditionally carry these microbes still thriving in the area, but the Aedes albopictus mosquito – a large, aggressive monster, was introduced to the Americas from Asia about 15 years ago, and now thrives in the Gulf area. Most of these troublesome mosquito species reproduce rapidly in precisely the conditions now present, post-hurricane."

This Stratfor article explains the geopolitical importance of New Orleans and why it must be rebuilt:

"The United States historically has depended on the Mississippi and its tributaries for transport. Barges navigate the river. Ships go on the ocean. The barges must offload to the ships and vice versa. There must be a facility to empower this exchange. It is also the facility where goods are stored in transit. Without this port, the river can't be used. Protecting that port has been, from the time of the Louisiana Purchase, a fundamental national security issue for the United States.

Katrina has taken out the port -- not by destroying the facilities, but by rendering the area uninhabited and potentially uninhabitable. That means that even if the Mississippi remains navigable, the absence of a port near the mouth of the river makes the Mississippi enormously less useful than it was. For these reasons, the United States has lost not only its biggest port complex, but also the utility of its river transport system -- the foundation of the entire American transport system. There are some substitutes, but none with sufficient capacity to solve the problem.

It follows from this that the port will have to be revived and, one would assume, the city as well. The ports around New Orleans are located as far north as they can be and still be accessed by ocean-going vessels. The need for ships to be able to pass each other in the waterways, which narrow to the north, adds to the problem. Besides, the Highway 190 bridge in Baton Rouge blocks the river going north. New Orleans is where it is for a reason: The United States needs a city right there.

New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon."

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that, "House Speaker Dennis Hastert dropped a bombshell on flood-ravaged New Orleans on Thursday by suggesting that it isn’t sensible to rebuild the city."

In this Washington Post column, Eric Holdeman explains how the Bush Administration weakened the country's ability to respond to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina by destroying the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA):

"In the days to come, as the nation and the people along the Gulf Coast work to cope with the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded anew, how important it is to have a federal agency capable of dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort. This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.

Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security."

NASA's Messenger spacecreaft recently flew by the Earth on its way to Mercury and took hundreds of photos of the Earth as it passed. You can view some of Messenger's photos and a movie of the Earth rotating here.

57 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena

David Segal looks back at his career as a music critic and his search for the great Live Concert Moment in this Washington Post article.

"You know about the great Live Concert Moment, right? I'm not talking about the kind of show where you leave thinking, "Those guys rule!" and then buy a T-shirt. I'm talking about total-body bliss, a rush so strong it turns brain cells into Jell-O and, for a moment or two, you sort of leave your skin. Art lovers would probably argue that they get the same feeling by looking at a great painting, but they're fools, and you should ignore them. A good part of what I'm talking about here is sheer volume. A painting can be many things, but it will never make your ears ring.

The Pixies, my friend, can make your ears ring."

Michael Crowley explains why the iPod may mean the end of the "Rock Snob" in this New Republic article.

Jon Stewart discusses the future of television (and tells jokes) in this Wired Interview.

Malcolm Gladwell explains "the bad idea behind our failed health-care system" in this New Yorker article:

"One of the great mysteries of political life in the United States is why Americans are so devoted to their health-care system. Six times in the past century—during the First World War, during the Depression, during the Truman and Johnson Administrations, in the Senate in the nineteen-seventies, and during the Clinton years—efforts have been made to introduce some kind of universal health insurance, and each time the efforts have been rejected. Instead, the United States has opted for a makeshift system of increasing complexity and dysfunction. Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193; the extra spending comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year."

Henry Alford explains why editors of encyclopedias and dictionaries often put fake entries in their books and finds the fake entry in the latest New Oxford American Dictionary in this New Yorker article.

The Bay Area Center for Voting Research examined the voting patterns of 237 American cities that have populations over 100,000 and ranked them each on liberal and conservative scales. They found that Detroit, Michigan is the most liberal and Provo, Utah the most conservative. Follow these links to view the complete list of liberal and conservative cities.

Jonathan Lethem examines the life of Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, in this article from Professor Barnhardt's Journal.

"For centuries, vanilla was considered exotic, luxurious, and rare," but today "it is a pejorative, employed to describe anything common, generic, or bland." Amanda Fortini explains why vanilla has a PR problem in this Slate article.

Walken 2008

In this Boston Globe article, Robert Kuttner argues that the U.S. is not really divided between red states and blue states:

"[O]nly a small minority of Americans are cultural warriors. Mercifully, most Americans hold appropriately complex views on contentious political or moral topics that demand complex thinking. These include the Iraq war, abortion, gay rights, religion, health care, the environment, and other issues that supposedly divide America into warring camps."

Carl Zimmer tries to answer "The Riddle of the Appendix" in this New York Times article.

White House reporters often attribute information in their stories to "sources close to the White House." For this New Republic article, Ryan Lizza "asked 15 of the finest Bush White House reporters to help assemble a guide to the secret society of sources close to the White House. Despite the swelling ranks of scttwh, interviews revealed that there is indeed a core membership that might be called the Usual Suspects: a cadre of lobbyists, congressmen, ex-officials, and other hangers-on who seem to be programmed into every cell phone on the White House beat."

As this Smoking Gun article explains, a medieval sword, mallet, and armor are no match for a Taser:

"McClain allegedly tried to strike a cop with a four-foot sword. After missing, McClain retreated to his basement, where he donned a chainmail armored vest and leather gauntlets to protect his arms. He also added a giant wooden mallet to his arsenal and beckoned officers to come downstairs and get him. "I'm gonna crush your fucking skulls," McClain warned. Then, in a nice rhetorical flourish (for a lunatic, at least), he added, "I have a thousand years of power." That omnipotence, however, was no match for a police Taser, which felled McClain. He was then carted off and charged with felony assault and a misdemeanor count for failing to remain at an accident scene."

In this Washington Post article, Adrian Higgins explains "Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is."

"Who's to blame for the decline of Red Delicious? Everyone, it seems. Consumers were drawn to the eye candy of brilliantly red apples, so supermarket chains paid more for them. Thus, breeders and nurseries patented and propagated the most rubied mutations, or "sports," that they could find, and growers bought them by the millions, knowing that these thick-skinned wonders also would store for ages."

Steven Hart explains why the Bush administration is "a criminal organization rather than a political party" in this post from his blog The Opinion Mill.

"Take the money and run. As long as Republicans are in power, that phrase should replace "E Pluribus Unum" on the national seal. It's the natural outcome of a quarter-century of rhetoric about how government is the problem, not the solution; how government doesn't work; how deregulation is the only way to build the economy. If government is nothing but a taxpayer-funded scam, then why not use it to enrich yourself and your buddies? If the very idea of public service as an idealistic calling has been turned into a mealymouthed joke, then where's the shame in abusing power and running the country into the ground? As long as you can convince just over 50 percent of the suckers to vote your way, you can throw yourself a party and leave the world holding the bill."

The physics behind Kung Fu is explained at a site called Kung Fu Science.

This New Yorker Book Review of “A History of the World in 6 Glasses” discusses the historical and social significance of what we drink:

"You don’t just drink, you drink to: to life (l’chaim) and health (santé, salud, prosit, na zdorovie, gezondheid, slainte, zum Wohl), to the monarch (“Gentlemen, the Queen”), to absent friends (the Sunday toast in the Royal Navy), to general good humor, well-being, and luck (cheers, noroc), to the company here assembled (“Here’s to us. And those like us. Damn few and they’re all dead”). Bogart’s “Here’s looking at you, kid” to Ingrid Bergman is a vestige of the Scandinavian obligation to honor your drinking partner by catching his or her eyes over the rim of your glass—much nicer than skøl, a reference to the use of enemies’ skulls as drinking vessels: “Heads up,” so to speak, rather than “Bottoms up.”

In these two Slate articles (Part 1 and Part 2) Edward Jay Epstein explains why shortening the "window" between a movie's theatrical release and its DVD release is causing Hollywood's Death Spiral.