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Nano-based, spray-on, bomb-proof

My name is Will.  This is what I clicked.

This has been one of those weeks when I do more note taking than blogging.  Hopefully I can catch up before the weekend.

— I seem to recall reading about a substance harder than diamonds and I wonder if this is the same stuff.  Looking at the source article I think the emphasis on armor comes from this:  "One of the most interesting new IF properties discovered by ApNano is its extremely high degree of shock absorbing ability."  The first thing that came to my mind was motorcycle helmet, but OK, armor is important too.

Speaking of super-armor, — This probably would not make a very good motorcycle helmet.

Speaking of new super materials, "Spray over a frame ... and in 20 minutes you have a waterproof, fire-resistant structure that has more than twice the strength of traditional concrete and can withstand extreme temperatures without cracking."

I had clicked the new New York Times blog earlier this week but decided not to link to it since it sounds like a short-lived project.  (The "carpet" is the red carpet for the Academy Awards.)  But now that I've read on the Times' new blogging strategy and see that this is not a random stand-alone project, it feels a little more newsworthy.

I missed mentioning the riots in Australia at the beginning of the week.  Like many blog readers I started with Australian blogger .  If you're curious how things are doing now that the headlines (in the U.S.) are fading, he recommends of coverage.

The new is out.  You'll recall that Post Secret is the site that publishes personal secrets submitted anonymously (and usually creatively) on a post card.

Among the big online news stories this week is the headline that Alexa, the Web traffic service, "" because they are releasing their data to the Amazon.com Web services platform.  In the same way we've seen so many Web toys based on Google properties, we can probably expect to see some based on Web traffic as relayed by Alexa.

Anonymously send, "Heads up... I caught an STD since we messed around and you might have too."  Yes, the potential for abuse is huge.  You may have seen this in the , but seems to be seeing pretty good circulation on its own.

When I mentioned the art blog the other day I meant to include a "speaking of" link to the blog of a reader named Jim who sent an invite to check out .  It's not exactly an art blog, but pretty close, with lots of interesting things to see.

Speaking of art, folks are admiring the smoke photography of .  Click the "photography" tab on the opening page, or just wait for it to load.  NOTE:  The photos in the other galleries are fantasy/surrealism and I did click past a tiny bit of nakedness.

One more on art, - Everyone gets to add a little line to the drawing.  And also lighten other people's lines.

My crime is to have “.”  The prosecutor will ask that I be imprisoned for three years.

"Three new from around the world every week day."  It's a little embarrassing to watch commercials on purpose, but a lot of these are pretty funny.

— I saw this on Leno the other day.  The good thing is that the site has the sounds to sample for free, so you can try it out.

You are cool.  Your generation pushed things to the limit.  There's nothing you haven't seen and there's no way your kids can blow your mind the way you blew your parents' minds.  It's all been done.  Or has it...?    Note:  You will find NSFW content if you poke around this site.

I love this Japanese .  (I think this clip gained popularity through the AskMen site, but you'll have to go there on your own steam.)

I know everyone has already moved on to the , but for folks who wrote in looking for a link to the story about Lisa Myers' story on the Pentagon and their protest group threat list, the story, with a link to the list, .

A simple homemade (made with soda cans) —Simple is a relative term, but if your kid is home from school and gnawing on the furniture due to inclement weather, this could be a fun project.

Remember the I linked to ?  Not surprisingly, the lawyers went after them.  The site relied on an interesting strategy though.  Rather than simply give up, they turned to the relative anonymity of long tail distribution.

"A computer has been used to decipher the enigmatic smile of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, concluding that ."  This just begs for parody.

Speaking of the Mona Lisa, the new trailer for is out.

Speaking of new movie trailers, I thought was a TV movie, but I guess that was a different cruise ship disaster movie.

I didn't know there was such a thing as The Penguin Podcast, but spreading word of their offering of a podcast of has brought it some new attention.  It makes sense that a publisher who wants to sell audio books online would put something like this together.

I don't have anything against , but if you're going to build a , it better be seriously cool.  Otherwise, just call it an airfield.

" in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds."  (That's a nice way for wikipedia to end and otherwise rough week.)

.  It is generally felt that when the new version of Internet Explorer comes out (IE7) it will include RSS features that will mean a whole lot of people will be introduced to using RSS for the first time.  Now we learn that IE7 will use the same icon that Firefox is already using, and Outlook 12 is also on board.

.  UFC made the top ten sports searches.  (It's the sport of the future.)

Speaking of what people were looking for in 2005, here are in 2005.  (According to Foreign Policy.)

I am fortunate to have the opportunity to talk to Jack Klugman on the phone tomorrow.  He's got a new book out about his friendship with Tony Randall.  If you'd like to contribute to the question list, UPDATE:  This is finished now.  He was a great guy to interview.  I'll have the transcript up soon.

On Monday I'll be speaking with , the woman who gave birth to twins when she was 56 years old.  If you have questions for her, you can also .  (Dateline is reporting on her story on Sunday, so you may want to wait to watch that before you submit questions.)

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I'm fitting in bits of work between company holiday events today so you'll have to accept this abbreviated Clicked and hopefully I'll post more later today.

One of the characteristics of the transparent reporting typical of blogs is that you learn new facts and correct false conclusions along with the reporter.  Indeed that is the very reason many traditional reporters don't like the idea.  They'd rather keep their mouths shut until they have the whole story in a neat little package.  But to the extent that transparent blog reporting is a form of journalism, Radley Balko is doing an excellent job with his coverage of the Cory Maye story and yesterday, to his credit, published a "" entry to clean up loose ends and wrong conclusions in how the story is being relayed so far.

Speaking of protecting yourself from home invasion at night, Mr. Maye wouldn't be in this situation if he'd used the to protect himself instead of a gun.  (I'm kidding.  Gun rights advocates, hold your fire.)

— Note: plays annoying music.

Very cool .

Speaking of that whole deal, the founder of Blink talks about that kept him from being in the same position as Delicious.

— I'm still not sure what it is about this that tells my brain it's not a real person, but the CGI folks are getting better all the time.  Maybe computer generated actors will be the answer to the flaw-revealing HDTVs.

- Japanese parables written in the late 13th century (with ninja implications).

" is composed of all European countries, whose dietary habits and health profiles stand in direct opposition to the idea that heart disease is primarily caused by the high consumption of saturated fat."  This is like "the French paradox" in its theme (how come people who eat so much fat don't have more heart disease) but part of the point is that being French has nothing to do with it.  I didn't follow the Atkins diet craze very closely, but I imagine it shares some of these conclusions.

— Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, makes an interesting argument about the intelligence we refer to when we talk about Intelligent Design.  God's intelligence wouldn't be like human intelligence.  Adams tries to look for a description of God's intelligence by stripping away the human flaws that make up our definition.  (It's funny that a guy who works with a medium that requires so few words has so much to say.  Blogging must be very liberating for a comic strip writer.)

summarizes a Salon.com piece about airline security.  His summary is handy because you don't have to watch the Salon ad or read the whole piece - unless you want to, in which case he provides the link.  My summary of what he summarizes:  "In a lot of ways, Alpizar [the guy shot by air marshals last week] is the latest casualty of Sept. 11. He is not the victim of a trigger-happy federal marshal but of our own, now fully metastasized security mania."

— Regardless of what you think of how the war on terror is being run, the terrorists don't necessarily have an easier time of trying to run their side of the war.

(and yet another on which I can't manage to get a score that ranks higher than 12,870).

- Which is to say, emoticons Japanese people use.  They're just faces, afterall, so pretty universal.

about 'The Chronicles of Narnia'

When the video first started playing (and I have to say, this is the Video of the Day) the demonstration of how to use a , I was a little concerned it was going to take an obscene turn.  In fact it's completely clean, in more ways than one.  Perhaps most surprising is the number of people in the comment thread who are totally familiar with this device and use it with regularity.  Am I old fashioned for still using tissues and Sudafed?

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You may have seen about the story of Cory Maye.  Enough other people are talking about it that I also ran into a number of posts from , as well as and well... this blogger is .  In short, police raided Mr. Maye's home in the middle of the night by mistake and Mr. Maye, thinking he was being robbed, shot one officer dead, for which he was convicted and sentenced to death.  As the blogger of that last link, BattlePanda points out, the story has very broad appeal because of the number of issues addressed in the case.  The police raid was part of what many see as a futile war on drugs, and some are opposed to the idea of raids in the first place.  Gun rights advocates argue that Mr. Maye did exactly what anyone would be expected to do in his situation.  No doubt gun control advocates have something to say about the matter as well.  Of course, death penalty opponents are already raw from the Tookie Williams execution last night.  And did I mention that Mr. Maye is black and the officer killed was white, the son of the sheriff, and the whole thing takes place in Mississippi?  While this many interests may turn the case into a political football, it may also be Mr. Maye's saving grace.  I happen to know that interest is spreading beyond the blogosphere.

In what feels somehow related, is guest blogging about the new PATRIOT Act at the Talking Points Memo Cafe.

Speaking of restricting our freedom to protect our freedom, the issue of secret laws is back in the news again (the one that says you have to show ID at the airport but they don't have to tell you where such a rule exists).  has a condensed version of the general "but this is America!" shock that often accompanies this story, but also points out the counter argument that flying on airplanes isn't an American right.

The took a while to load for me, but the animation is well done.  Of course, you'll recognize it as being from , which is best known (to me) as the source of the outstanding video.

— "For people who are living on a tight budget."  Even if you're not looking for financial advice, there's something to be appreciated in the advocacy of frugality and consumer restraint.

— Guaranteed to have your cube-mates ooo-ing and cooing for hours (well, minutes, but lots of them).

Speaking of cute animals,

Speaking of big photo round-ups, here's .

Online games are everywhere, some better than others, with a lot that are just boring or annoying.  So when you find a good one, you might want to let others know that you've had a .

What do they call that kind of when climb walls and jump from rooftop to rooftop?

"[A] to connect Jewish and Christian leaders who are experimenting with innovative congregations and trying to push beyond the traditional categories of 'left' and 'right.'"  I'm not sure what to make of this because I'm not very familiar with the community, but it does appear to be drawing a lot of attention.

"This site was launched as a resource for those who enjoy listening to ."  It works.  I listened to Seattle and Boston yesterday.

— I can only assume these are either things that don't look like they'd fit, but do, or they smoosh in such a way that they can be made to fit.  Anyway, it's cooler than the old ship in a bottle trick.

— "[H]ow our culture of sex relates to the clash between West and East, or more specifically between Western values and Muslim ones."  You may want to make this a Commuter Click because it's a little long, but it's a perspective we don't often hear discussed.

Remember the according to population instead of geography?  This one is similar but it shows the according to population.  It makes the U.S. smaller than I realized.

— It's a recording of someone scrolling through the radio dial like they're looking for news on John Lennon's murder.

Speaking of food bloggers, is a list of food related donations made by food bloggers to a raffle being held to benefit Gulf Coast hurricane victims.

Speaking of food blogging, when I first read about the , I misunderstood what it was and thought people would submit photos of food they'd cooked.  It's actually a collection of favorite .

— I mentioned that the extensions were what really differentiates Firefox as a browser.  This article explains what some of those do.  I don't know if it's been pointed out, but it's the open nature of Firefox that allows anyone to contribute these little add-on programs.

I had once considered whether Clicked should have an mp3 of the day like it has a Video of the Day and ruled it out.  Lately though, almost every day I end up clicking a new mp3 blog or DJ site or band site.  This time I clicked a site called (Dïgï†al €ä®gäsm) which regularly posts dance remixes.  It's interesting to see that they use free upload services to host the files rather than try to serve the music themselves.  I don't know how those upload services afford to serve that much content, but they are likely to form the foundation for a completely new (broadband) Web experience.

Speaking of making predictions about broadband media online,

— Even though this is sort of a look back, in a lot of ways it's also a look ahead.  Some of these sites you may not have heard of and may disappear before you try them, but they represent the workshopping of the Web's big ideas for where online applications are going.

Speaking of workshopping the Web's big ideas:

is a relatively new Carnival, and it is picking up steam. I hope you'll check it out.Theme: Inspired by the latest del.icio.us acquisition, the theme is "choosing from the technology menu."Best regards,E

A lot of folks are excited about this free video game.  I haven't downloaded it, but the screen shots look pretty nice.

— I like these movies, but it looks pretty much like what you'd expect from a third Mission Impossible movie.  (I know some people are turned off to Tom Cruise now, but I don't care enough about him to carry that bias.)

Speaking of new movies, I didn't even know there was going to be a , never mind that it has Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell in it.  It opens in 2006, so I'll look forward to seeing it on HBO in 2007.

" is currently gathering complaints from the entire Internet community, including individuals, corporations, partnerships, etc., who believe that they have been defamed and or who have been or are the subject of anonymous and malicious postings to the popular online encyclopedia WikiPedia."

— Kind of like the Millennium Falcon, but not really.  The chief point the videos make is that light bends when you're going that fast.