Giving and the Gulf Coast

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Previous Katrina link-sets are and .

The most-linked lists everywhere are full of relief agencies as bloggers are rallying for a massive blogathon tomorrow to raise money to help victims of Katrina.  N.Z. Bear provides and a for those wishing to participate.  Here at MSNBC.com we have links from , , and a .

I've seen a few e-mails in our letters-to-the-editor mailbox from people offering to go down there to help. 

Add to yesterday's list of missing persons resources the board.

Also, (understandably slow to load)

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Chuck Simmins tracking

With Super Dome refugees headed to the Astro Dome, has become an important resource.  ()

has a bulletin board for locals to find each other.

has some really neat items.  (I'm using the general link here because there are a few entries and a lot of links.)

Bill Hennessy helping put displaced people in touch with folks who have .

And a few from the mailbag:

to SATERN the Salvation Army amateur ham radio network.  You fill out the form and they attempt to locate the people and get back to you!

Hope this helps many who are sick with worry.  I live in NC and may not be able to physically do anything but I needed to do SOMETHING!
Prayers for all,
Carol Watt, Woodland, NC

Hey Will,
About blacks being the looters, sometimes it's all in the wording.

.

—Chris M
Chicago

Here is an interesting perspective.

A two part series on what could happen in a Cat.5 hurricane hit New Orleans.

This was recorded in 2002.

from this week from the same reporter.
-Christopher

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And the (which has Mississippi regional damage reports) is starting an "" line.

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looks like a good idea.  (UPDATE:  At , the host had to pull the plug.  I guess it was a good idea.)

Michele is .  ()

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Bill the PunditGuy the blog of a .

Speaking of Slidell,

La Shawn Barber asks, "Is it my imagination, or are most of the looters black? Maybe only black looters are being photographed. Hmmm..."  Some of the Metafilter folks have .  La Shawn has a nice Katrina round-up .

While at Metafilter I also clicked this interesting item about a .

What criteria would you use to determine whether New Orleans is "?"

Another local media outlet:

  (The "two million" is derrived from the million watts used to power it and the fact that they're channel 2.)

Video(s) of the Day can be found in this collection of .

Official: Prisoners Riot, Take Hostages in New Orleans  UPDATE:  , could not be confirmed.

If fund-raising was the number one theme of links overnight, global warming I-told-you-sos were number two:

• Related:

Speaking of fingerpointing, the "" questions are going to be hard to avoid.

What else I clicked...

"Physicists in Germany have created a material that is harder than diamond."  Known as .  But does it bling?

— Nice story about a guy who runs the Boston marathon every year after it's over.

develop online addiction as they try to escape from reality — Of course, you have to consider the source, but this is a weird article.  "The problem of the pathological use of the Internet and the Internet-dependence appeared in Europe and in America at the end of the 1980s."

— and the game moves to eDonkey.

Speaking of online media, y'know what's going to go a long way toward pushing Americans away from the TV to new media?  The FCC's crackdown on cable.

Speaking of cable, — Did you catch this on HBO last weekend?  My biggest criticism:  too British.  Shouldn't Romans act a little more Italian?  I kept waiting for Hugh Grant to stroll through.

" is no longer with us. He passed away yesterday. Pleased send your prayers to his parents and brother. We love you and you are dearly missed."  He died serving in Iraq.  It's jarring how abruptly the blog simply stops.

Speaking of deaths in Iraq, commemorative quilters are having a .

Speaking of Iraq, they're going through all kinds of constitutional machinations while America's eyes are on the Gulf.  has some issues, but the Iraqi people .

— Provided Pat Robertson doesn't start a war with them first.

Speaking of Christian jokes, — "The contest was started to highlight potential problems with the Government’s new religious hatred legislation."  They're talking about .

  — The tax breaks are mounting.  Think they'd let me hang a solar panel out my apartment window?

(with video)

Here's some quality speculation about the answer to a major question in Harry Potter Book 6.  This is a potential Book 7 spoiler.  You read that right?  Potentially ruinous spoiler for Book 7, the last book, the one that's not out yet.  Ok, .

— Using timing to beat the computer.

— A perfect album is one on which every song is good, no filler.

Mailbag!

When I read about the suitcase bomb as "art", I remembered the above incident which happened in Seattle in 1996.  Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose, eh?  And poor Mr. Hackett, I'm sure he thought he was being oh-so-original.
—J.

• August 30, 2005 | Updating

Many of the links mentioned yesterday continue to update with good information.  Rather than making that entry too long to read, I'll start the entries of the next few days with new Katrina links I've clicked.  I appreciate any you feel are worth pointing out that I may have missed.

_______________________

From :

Also .

WWLTV has Mississippi county message boards and .

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This "" picture has an "after" pairing in the video of the helicopter tour from . (12:00 mark)

continues to be a good source of updates.

stuck it out through the storm but may have to leave anyway since there may be no electricity for two months.

posts photos from the River Ridge area of New Orleans and again highlights the number of people seeking information about specific districts beyond the few being covered in the media.

The effort to stay in place described by sounds positively survivalist.  He's got a live video stream going and some photos.

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in Biloxi decided to ride out the storm.  Find the updates in the comments of the most recent post.  Perhaps most significant is the one that mentions an effort under way to create a wiki or some collective site to help aggregate information.  Like the mail I posted from Wally yesterday, a lot of people are writing in about specific neighborhoods, and to my knowledge there is not yet a central damage database.  The cable folks just ran a feed of a helicopter neighborhood tour by .  Hopefully reports like that can be collected into a bigger picture.

Meanwhile, just a few hours ago the folks at The Times-Picayune because of rising waters.  So even if there was a database, the situation appears to be changing so much that it's not clear how long the information would stay relevant.

is trying to find info on his mother-in-law who rode out the storm at a nursing home.  (Via one of Katrina updates)  (I won't say out loud what photos of missing persons reminds me of.)

Related: Now Public starting a .

Speaking of helping to spread information,

I think I missed the blog in yesterday's round-up.

- There are a remarkable number of Web cams in that part of the Gulf Coast, but clicking through yesterday, pretty much everything was down, without power.  Having the links in one spot is a good way of checking up occasionally to see what's restored.

Speaking of images, here's the amazing "" shot you knew was coming.

Criticism of the media's treatment of the storm has prompted several coverage-of-the-coverage blog posts.  It seems like everyone has at least one "those bastards in the media" headline.  I pointed to a couple yesterday, but the coinage of "" will probably be around for a while.

Speaking of the media embarrassing itself, today's Video of the Day has to be this CNN weatherman while covering Hurricane Katrina...  ()  I can't say I've never shouted "let him talk" at the screen while watching cable news, so I don't judge him too harshly.

Not to be outdone, and probably related to the public distaste for hurricane porn, Fox News had it's own "."  (Note F-bomb dropped.)

What else I clicked:

Glenn rounds up links on "."  What strikes me as interesting about this trend is that the peak oil folks like to talk about the death of the exurbs because expensive gas will spell the demise of long commutes.  The general assumption is that people will move to the cities.  Clearly telecommuting would also be part of the equation.

" comprises a list of 736 "essentialist explanations" of the form "Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z"."

"The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005."  Video of what it's like to look out the window as you drive past Earth.

Commuter Click: 

— As wonderful as Google's free blogware is, it's abuse is becoming a burden to Google and the Web itself.

"Efforts to for spots in symphony orchestras significantly boost the chances of women to succeed."  I wonder what this means in terms of how the audience hears an orchestra.

"When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be."  With an intro like that, you know you're being set up for a fall.

The trend appears to be catching on.  You'll recall we linked to .

Domestic robot to debut in Japan ()

HOWTO extract video from Yahooligans

This girl does the we all pretend we know how to do.

New season of starts today.

Some Flickr users are planning to send Flickr the message that they don't like how Yahoo is rubbing off on them.

• August 29, 2005 |   (Regular Clicked continuing below.)

The amount of coverage of Hurricane Katrina is completely overwhelming.  On alone there's enough constantly updating material to take you all day to get through.  But in the sprit of What I Clicked, this is what else is out there.  I'll continue to update this list but also scroll down to the round-up list where folks are bloggers are engaged in gathering and organizing links.

Local media

• The NOLA Web cams are getting slammed with traffic, but I was able to get the to load.  (Looks like the power went out early this morning. 
• (Jackson, Mississippi)
• (Mobile, Alabama)
• has a good list.
• has a blog that's current.  (Baton Rouge)
• (Jackson, Mississippi)

In the path

• long as she has power holds out
• gave up on traffic and went home to sit out the storm in New Orleans.  Good luck Ernie.
• is in the flood zone
• first hand impressions
• New Orleans metroblogging
• has a nice list of gulf bloggers (among other links).
• is doing a good job looking for blog posts and other info in the storm's path.
• ""  (Coastal Mississippi)
• Relaying reports from
• is looking for specifics on New Orleans flooding.

Meteorology

• seeing a lot of traffic, particularly .
• via

Tag sites

• is a user generated news site.  Navigation is a little awkward, but there are some interesting reports to be found using the tags.

Round ups

• has the most comprehensive round-up of links I've seen out there.
• Katrina category

Saw it coming

• .

Reference

• This storm has people looking back on the last one that was this bad: .

Miscellaneous

• , back to the drawing board
• Worst in hindsight name of a band:

• |

Before delving into the new day's Katrina links, here's what else I clicked.

To keep my headline writing limber, this one would have been:

().  The question of a blogger's responsibility for the statements made by others in the comments section has come up before in an ethical context, but as far as I know, this is a first as a legal matter.  But hey, isn't anything anyone writes covered under "free speech?"  Scoble points out, .

Speaking of The Blog Herald, — This is a really interesting look at the changing nature of the blogosphere since the late '90s.  It's a long post, but good stuff.

Speaking of geek bloggers, contrary to the thesis above, points to an essay that makes the point that Web geeks have created a new layer of society unto themselves.  There are the geeks who write the Web, the rest of us who just click stuff, and then a whole other bunch of people who somehow manage to make it through every day without staring for hours on end at a little glowing screen (weirdoes).  That's over simplifying, of course, but I think this topic is both interesting and important.

Speaking of geek bloggers, since they're all linking to , if you get it, you may be one (a geek blogger, not a comic).

— They put little faces on things, but it's well done.

— I couldn't get onto this site all day.  I'm guessing their discussion of the Katrina-driven oil price jump drew some heavy traffic.

for the variety of online offerings in connection with their music awards.

— Keeps the light of day shining on major label efforts to intimidate regular people about music downloading.

— This is pretty clearly a parody, but I don't see why it has to be.

— An essay on co-evolution.  I surprised myself by reading to the end of it without realizing it.

Speaking of reasons to have a blog, how about in the New York Times and want to rebut the reporter?

  (This loads funky for me.  I have to scroll way down to find the text.)

Last week, the New York City blog community chuckled at the cell phone camera justice one woman waged against a subway flasher.  Her photo of the guy made it all the way to the .  Today I clicked cam-snapped flasher.  The photo makes him look like the Crypt Keeper, but the lesson is clear:  flashers, find a new hobby.

Mailbag!  Mailbag!

hello
have you any information on the loungevue condos @ 212 w. beach blvd in long beach? it is right next to the taco bell
I pray everyone is safe.
Thanks Wally

Dear Wally,
I don't have any idea, but I'll put your letter up here and if someone reads it and knows the answer I'll pass it on to you.
Good luck,
Will

Hi Will,
I love your blog.  I find out a lot of good stuff through you.
Please pass the word about which is this Wednesday, August 31.
Feel free to put in a plug for my blog, too!
Thanks,
Pat Doyle

Dear Pat,
I mentioned Blog Day a little while ago but the site was crashed so I had to link to something else.  Thanks for the reminder.
Cheers,
Will

Hey Will,
Love your site!  I found amusing even though I'm not a cat owner.
-Michelle

Dear Michelle,
I think we've seen that one before here, but I'll see your stuff-on-cat and raise you !
Yours,
Will

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Purely postal

I let the mail get away from me a little last week.  Sorry I don't have time to write responses to these, but I didn't want to let them slip away.

Speaking of Televisions to buy, check out that has two different images on the same screen. A person sitting on the left side can view a completely different show from the person sitting on the right.
—e

OK, the space elevator is actually quite simple.

We have 'geosynchronous' satellites in orbit all over the place. The GPS system is built with geosynchronous units, or satellites that are fixed in place above the earth.

So, the space elevator theory is just like taking a platform and putting it in a geosynchronous orbit and lowering a rope. Now, the rope must be pretty amazing to put up with the exposure up there... but, basically, you are just placing a rope in between two stationary objects. Much like the rope hanging from the treehouse, but much longer.

So, the concept of building a really tall tower to space is really way off.
It's much more simple than that.
—Evan

I always thought that Bat-gizmo that shot a grapple up onto a building and then pulled Batman up was one of the more unrealistic things about Batman. Well, according to , I may be wrong.

As I mentioned on , I'm not sure how much I'd trust the grapple or harpoon, but still, it does sound fun. A 3-story building would take about 9 seconds to ascend! (3 meters per story, 1 sec. per meter). You could make an amusement park ride out of it!
—Rob of UnSpace

Hi Will,
Love you site, thought you might like .
—Tamar

Hi Will.  I love Clicked.  I like to use it as a filter so I can skip all the crap and just go right to all the good stuff out there.  So thanks for that! That being said, I would like to share a link with you and my fellow readers.  I heard about on NPR and I am totally digging the idea of living in a 70 square foot house. (Plus it's the only kind I can afford.)
Peace,
—Rebecca

What’s even scarier about the bomb as art is this link where they say while making “something.”

Is this really someone we want holding the cell phone that can discharge this “art”?
—Amanda Burzynski

Okay. I was goofing off over lunch. Whatever.

However, .
—Craig

Will,
caught my attention and why some people need to get a shock treatment to make them realize the truth.

Speaking of truth, you might want to see for sound bites that people remember.

This should be played over and over for lawyers, politicians and some media people in order to make them face reality.
—Lee

Will,
on the record of high altitude jumps.  Whether the one on your post on the 25th was manned or not, this might be interesting.
Thanks for all the hard work.
—Darren Mullenix

Your link to was amazing. I was born 20 years ago in '85 and had no idea what also came out the same year. I remember back in kindergarten we had a lab of about a dozen Apple 2's that were used to play math games. Thanks for showing me the things from 5 years earlier that I've never seen.
—Paul

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Why are people linking to a bunch of ?  Tracing the links through Technorati and a brief stop at Boing Boing brought me to of the Dove "real women" ad.  Though I suppose I realized it on some level, I had pretty much bought into the idea that these were real women in the campaign.  The essay points out that clear skin, thick lustrous hair, bright smiles and good muscle tone is still not "real women."  The essay points out that the whole curves craze seems like it's supposed to be code for something.  Is it about fat acceptance?  Is it a racial cue?  (Note, the link in the essay about the defaced posters contains some vulgarity (text) that made me not link to it when it was going around last month.)

Speaking of bodies, did you know was a beefcake?  Safe for work, but not really safe for lunch.  Kinda gross.

— I am always struck by the power of these personal accounts of the war.  The more detailed description from this soldier's mother is .

Speaking of Iraq in the first person, a quick e-mail:

Dear Michael,
I link to Michael Yon regularly here and I'll gladly do it again.  Note to readers, there are some graphic (bloody) photos associated with this piece.
-Will

I know we looked at a few links on the Iraqi constitution this week, but has also been influential in the online argument over just how much power Islam has been given in the new government.

The flying spaghetti monster phenomenon grows with a new and a parody (that has been stuck in my head all day).

Speaking of the evolution debate, a promising aspect of this story is the increased criticism of the media's use of .  Evolution and Intelligent Design are not "opposites."  When I worked as a TV guest booker (for a different cable network), the first question from producers in response to any story pitch was, "What's the other side?"  But just because the TV folks like the split screen and we have two political parties who like to keep the country divided in an effort to consolidate their power doesn't mean the "two sides" paradigm is actually appropriate in all (or even most) cases.

— I few of the big tag sites featured this simple tutorial.  If you've never heard of a Turing Machine, read the first so you know what you're learning.  What you get for your trouble is a better understanding of the underpinnings of computer programming.  (And by the way, doesn't it remind you of that game?)

  (Flash video starts automatically when the page loads.  Volume check.)

— Everyone's been in a tizzy trying to guess what Google is wanting to buy with the $4 billion in stock they're unloading.  The answer may be that they just want to sell the stock while it's high.

For those of you who are just getting around to watching the Tivo-ed Six Feet Under from last Sunday, for the main characters are on the HBO site.

— For folks who are still considering a nice back tattoo in the wake of the shark-eating-octopus video a couple weeks ago.

  This writer clearly enjoyed the irony of there being some harm in doing something healthy, but the real lead of the story is farther down:  "[T]he situation for car drivers is even worse."

"If you want to know what London was like in 1905, come to ."

Your social life will never be the same, thanks to — A good description of the service.  I'm not sure I know enough people to make good use of it, but I can see how it would be a good idea to coordinate a large group of friends without a lot of "I don't know, where do you want to go?"

What I find especially ironic about Fox News reading the address of a terrorist only to be is that recently there was a fuss about Sean Hannity having to change his home phone number because an indie band .  So you'd think they'd be sensitive to that kind of thing.

— A promising headline, but no easy answers here.

Speaking of people working together online, Commuter Click:

— I once shared a car ride with (his box is on the bottom left) our tech reviewer and he explained to me the finer points of how TVs are all different from each other and which ones are better.  By the end of the ride my brain was mush and I decided to only watch campfire shadows flicker on cave walls from that point on.  It's amazing how much leg work is required to purchase something to sit in front of.

I watched a video last night that someone had made of their own video game playing.  That seems to be a popular thing to do, but I'm still not sure how to appreciate it.  The video credited a DJ with the soundtrack and when I Googled him I ended up at .

Video of the Day:

• |

Christopher Allbritton is a freelance blogging journalist in Iraq.  He writes today about .  It's amazing how these practicalities contrast with the big ideals usually associated with what's going on there.

Speaking of the big ideals, wonders why the global freedom movement seems to have lost some of the wind in its sails.

Speaking of freedom, remember the Pakistani woman who was gang raped?  relays the news that two women won in recent elections in that village.

Speaking of the rights of women, assembles some contrasting news highlights regarding Safia al-Souhail, the Iraqi woman who sat next to Laura Bush during the State of the Union address.  Apparently she's not pleased with the role of Islam in the new Iraqi constitution.

Speaking of helping women stand up, the will do just that.  (Remarkably Safe For Work except the "when to use" page.)

One more on Iraq... — "Americans have become negative about the war in Iraq more quickly than they did for the Vietnam War."

The Utah rave raid story continues with the formation of the site by the rave's organizers.  The includes some night vision helicopter footage that's pretty cool.

(slingshot).  Note:  Automatically plays the Peanuts theme music for some reason.

I'm guessing has been elevated by fans of Cindy Sheehan, though I don't expect that particular song to be very impactful.  Still, I'd never seen before.  It's a free radio station of signed and unsigned bands.  I'm listening to the rock channel right now.  It's a mixed bag quality-wise, but I really like the idea.

Video of the Day:    Here's the on it, which says it's a man jumping, but looking at the host site, I don't think those are manned flights.

— I like that it's a "body upgrade," as though you'd cut off a perfectly good arm so that you could upgrade to a better one.

China of gamers .  I suppose this is their response to in the news recently.

has further thoughts on the shortcomings of the jury system in dealing with technically complicated cases.

A short story writer assesses whether the new Amazon Shorts program .  This is a little long, but a worthy read if writing is how you make (or want to make) money.

""

It's hard to imagine that something with as devoted an online following as Joss Whedon's Serenity would need an online viral marketing campaign, but is apparently just that and has sparked the launch of the site which has gathered other pieces of the viral puzzle .  I mention this because I hate running into bits and pieces of a viral campaign and not knowing what's going on (which is actually probably the point of viral marketing), so in case you're doing the same, there it is.

I'm still trying to figure out how to make the PubSub link ranks work for this blog.  Sometimes I look at a fast riser and can't figure out why.  Other times I can guess.  Is the increase in popularity of the Iowa Chicks Knitting blog because of the call for help on a new ?

.  ("By Malcolm Gladwell" oh, in that case, I'd better click it.)

— Basically, use a cheat sheet.

— Cultural differences translate to differences in eye movement.

Google talk has been out a day and folks are already finding alternative uses.  In this case, you can .

Speaking of audio over Google Talk, a lot of people seem to think that the voice feature is the real news of this new product launch.  The expectations seem to be that Google will turn this into an Internet phone service.  I clicked to learn that they have a little ways to go yet.

.  As this blogger through his links, and the commenters point out, the utility of trackbacks given their vulnerability to spam has been debated for a while and yet it persists.

  That sounds like a spam tag line but this includes explanations of why they're free — usually because they're early versions of now popular non-free games.

Speaking of free games, this made me go to bed late last night.

Commuter Click: — That was the idea behind Live 8, right?  But those were rock stars.

Another piece from the new Scientific American that's seeing a lot of link action is about humanity standing at a fork in the road.  I've had my fill of "we're on the brink of destroying ourselves" stories this week though.

.  I wonder how a face like that will age.  (On he has whiskers too.)

The new round-up of science bloggers is up.

Speaking of science bloggers, NYTimes writer Kenneth Chang about his coverage of Intelligent Design.  (Found via .)

Web nostalgia has been popular this week.  This copy of has been spreading around, and last night I clicked this coverage of the .

Quick mail item:

re: 8/19 post regarding trekkie/pedophile connection, see interesting follow-ups:

Regards,
A Fan

Dear Fan,
Thanks very much for these links.  Having received some angry mail for so much as linking to that Huffington Post entry, I'm pleased to be able to set the matter straight.  For good measure I'll point out these further links and .
Obliged,
Will

• |

Taking the blogosphere by storm is the new .  Find it .  Last night everyone was busy a on the official launch and posting screen grabs and .

Until I get some people to actually talk to on it for a while, my early impressions are that, like other things Google, it's clean and simple.  Even though the whole world is probably downloading it right now, it took me about two seconds to install.

To be honest, while I understand that this is big news, I'm more interested in their new (Yes, Babelfish looking).  And they're doing what should have been done so long ago, getting people the translation programs.

(I'm probably overstepping by saying "should have been done."  I'm aware that there are active and also an active .)

Speaking of translators, .

Speaking of different languages, is coming.  UPDATE:  That link is a little laggy, probably because of an increase in traffic as the day approaches.  Thankfully I was able to find .

The Utah rave story we looked at yesterday is than I would have thought.  does a good job of summarizing things so far.  Most folks seem to have abandoned the idea that the raid was somehow part of concerns about , which leaves the question of "why" still floating out there.  Regarding the police heavy-handedness issues, take note:  In case you haven't realized already by watching "Cops" or witnessing protest arrests, the police don't play.  They don't "half-way" and they don't negotiate.  While I totally agree that machine gun strapped soldiers seems excessive to chase a bunch of kids out of a field, from a cop's perspective (so I've been told by cop friends), the number of things that can go wrong and ruin your life forever are so many that no amount of risk is worth it.  We'll see how the legalities of this case play out, but as a matter of practicality, be careful with police.

Related mail:

Dear, Jim,
Thanks!  Every other video link I clicked was trickle-slow.  The apparent bewilderment and general lack of malice by the ravers is what makes this particularly outrageous I think.
Thanks,
Will

In the collection of anticipations about the John Roberts Supreme Court hearings, add "" to the list.

explains why the Islamic elements of the Iraqi constitution are being blown out of proportion.

Speaking of the Iraqi constitution, explains why their process is not well compared to ours.

is conducting a straw poll for Republican candidates in 2008.  Looks like Giulliani has strong support in these early goings.

Interview corner:

In case you didn't already think Pat Robertson was a jerk, did you see his ?  If you think Pat Robertson can leg press a ton... arg!

has a brief history of Casey Sheehan and the circumstances of his death.

— Doesn't sound in the least bit scary.

— This is a pretty detailed report with a lot of charts.

have launched a blog.

Video corner:

• Video of the Day: (That's the file name, but no, it is not a banjo.)
• This is a little old, but I was really impressed at how well stick figures could be made to convey the .
• (As you can see, I had some clicking fun at Planet Vids.  FYI, the site is SFW with only the occasional "meet sexy singles" ad.)

— Looks like it uses a shaft drive instead of a chain.

— Not just "dirt in a bowl."

— "[A]fter much analysis Microsoft had realized that some piracy is not only inevitable, but could actually be economically optimal. The reason is counterintuitive, but intriguing."  "Counterintuitive but intriguing" may be my favorite phrase.

— I absolutely love this idea.  I can't see how a corporate ISP would be too pleased with it though, but it's also not hard to imagine how to attach a money-making model to this.

Related:  Gary has a write-up on a new today.

— It's a publicly written choose-your-own-adventure story.  Don't like the options?  Add your own and then write that story line.

— #10:  "No one sucks."

— (Boots is a British pharmacy.)  The basic idea: "The people who do want to be junkies are junkies. Were hard drugs decriminalized, it's dubious that consumption would appreciably rise."  I'm not sure I agree that junkies want to be junkies, but it's interesting food for thought.

A lot of folks are scoffing at the idea of "."

Commuter Click: — A deliberate alternative to the U.S. News and World Report list.

— "This incident thus raises serious questions as to the competence of lay jurors to resolve technical issues." 

• |

Do what you will with my rights, .  Similar to polls we've seen in the U.S., the British are also willing to give up some civil liberties in the name of getting rid of terrorists.  This one is funny because it includes a line about how many more people are killed by cars than terrorism and yet no one wants to lose their vehicular liberties.

Speaking of vehicular liberties, I think if I got stuck behind someone following I'd go insane.  (I do subscribe to the "never rush" philosophy of driving, however, so I like the point about how going faster doesn't get you there much faster.)

Speaking of trying to save gas, — though it's not exactly the same crisis we've been hearing about with regard to global oil supply.

And speaking of the world running out of oil, Steven Levitt at the site is calling the peak oil storyline a bit of Henny Penny-ism.  I'll save what I have to say for the already rich comments section, but since he predicts "tons of copycat journalism" I'll point out that my chat with predates the NYTimes article by more than two weeks.  And my colleague was discussing the matter two months before that, and my colleagues at Newsweek were at it .

One more...

Speaking of panic causing stories, "The next U.S. recession will start in earnest on . (If it hasn't already.)"  This makes all about bankruptcy and credit card debt.  At least it's a closed-ended prediction.  See you on the 18th.

Michael Crowley guesting at is representative of many (like ) when he talks about disunity in the Democratic Party.  too, at greater length and with more links.

Speaking of fractures in the party, sparks discussion with his criticism of President Bush from a conservative perspective.  (Skip ahead to the follow-up if you don't care about his thoughts on the war.)

Both of the above make reference to .

- This is provided you actually know where your ancestors lived, but still the sample with the Bush family is pretty neat.

The is out.  That Triwizard Tournament actually looks cooler than it did in my head when I read the book.

P.S. For all the trailers I click, I'd never actually seen the main before.

If you've been running into a lot lately, it's probably because of this about its cumulative genius.  I'll offer one of my own from this past weekend:

Folks are a new legal music sharing service called .  The idea is that you use Playlouder as your ISP and you're allowed to buy and trade music with them legally and they pay the music companies.  The eyebrow raising part is that once you buy it you're legally allowed to trade it, which I imagine means there is some free song action going on somewhere in the system.

Yesterday was .  I'd like to point out the for those who keep writing to our corrections folder to complain about the lack of a letter "s" at the end of plural possessives.

(The Jewish/Israeli blog carnival)  This would have been handy on Thursday for the Gaza round-up.

Speaking of Gaza, "John Bolton has over the funds sent to Palestinians for anti-Israel propaganda."

— I don't know much about Mark Cuban or his issues, but I did find it interesting to see his e-mail exchange with this writer and then read the final article based on that exchange.

Though I try not to indulge mindless partisanship, there is a running joke going on that took me a while to figure out, so in case anyone else is wondering why there are a bunch of "liberals rule" posts seeing heavy link action in the blogosphere, it has to do with "."  It works a little like a chain letter, only with linking, hence a lot of link activity about nothing in particular.

— At that price, I'll fold my own.

—  The blog says, "This is likely the biggest technological breakthrough of the year, arguably even of the decade."

Speaking of the nanofuture, I simply cannot get my head around the physics of .  I understand the guy's vision, but the forces acting on a tower to space are beyond my comprehension.

, demands to know who's in charge and calls for their immediate dismissal.  (Just kidding.)

I've been getting a ridiculous quantity of spam calls from the number 706 286 6015.  On a frustrated whim I Googled it and found .

A rave in Utah was raided by police, scattering (prominent cursing) across the Web at the tactics used.  More from .  (The , in case you're curious, is totally different.)

Meanwhile, check out at that drum and bass site.  It's a good way to familiarize yourself with that style.

Speaking of DJ downloads, the are offering their vocal tracks for mixing. I think these make great a capella listens.  They should do a whole CD like this.  Also probably good beat box practice.

Speaking of mix downloads, the link text I clicked to the suggested using the clips to jazz up a podcast.  Interesting idea.

French countryside hit by a massive .  This was the only I could find.  C'mon guys, if there's a frog invasion I want to be seeing some -type action.

Cool commercial of the day:

is looking for food bloggers.

As if lawyers didn't have enough of an image problem, ""  Includes such quotes as, "The U.S. intelligence community is palsied by lawyers." and "The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community..."

Speaking of hunting bin Laden, "."  It's uncommon for a wikinews version of a story to spread, but this is certainly a good way to follow developing stories like .

The Iraqi blogger at is liveblogging the drafting of the Iraqi constitution.

has the song from this weekend's (best TV series finale I can recall) Six Feet Under.  So I'm not the only one who goes hunting down HBO show music.

— a podcast search engine.

— Interesting to see them announce their intentions to get noticed on .  That's where I found them.

— We've seen similar, though smaller, versions of this idea.  I think every kid should be made to look at these photos and understand that many of the body images they see in the media are not actual human forms.

Speaking of making bets, I wish I'd seen spaghetti monster coverage on Friday, which now includes a .

Speaking of Boing Boing, they're helping encourage a — which sounds scarier than it is.  The idea is to protest all those annoying "free registration required" sites with the hope being that if the information that comes from the registration is useless, they'll get rid of that idea.

A la 'Matrix,' vocations recruitment poster shows

Use Flickr to make your own .

It seems like just a couple weeks ago we were reading about Technorati being an invaluable public service.  Now Jason Kottke is with their product.  (By the way, I also like Ice Rocket and used them the other day to see if more people complain about .)

— You mean TV people have a choice?

Video of the Day:  - Can this heavensent DJ save the day?

Mailbag!  Mailbag!

Will,
I love Clicked and have linked to it many times in my own blog.  It's definitely the blog I most look forward to reading each day.

I saw and couldn't help but be reminded of a similar uproar locally.  The Joplin Globe tells the story .  There was a big flap about what exact words were said, but to me it's more about the general disrespect and lack of compassion shown by this particular state senator.
Thanks,
Andy

Dear Andy,
Thanks for the kind words.  It's funny you bring that article up because I thought about it all weekend.  I saw the new Bill Murray on Saturday and the people who sat behind be brought their own food in crinkly wrappers and someone two rows ahead actually had their phone ring and they answered it (!) and I suddenly found myself thinking again about expectations of quiet-as-my-living-room.

Meanwhile, it's hysterical how worked up that state senator is over someone using the F-word in his general direction.
Thanks,
Will

Will, you are making this English professor despair on the first day of classes (about four months early). That's not a Beowulfish Harry Potter poem, it's a Waste Landish Harry Potter poem. Didn't anybody in my profession ever force you to read T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land?
Rob Milde

Dear Mr. Milde,
I will familiarize myself with "The Waste Land" at my earliest opportunity.
I will familiarize myself with "The Waste Land" at my earliest opportunity.
I will familiarize myself with "The Waste Land" at my earliest opportunity.
I will familiarize myself with "The Waste Land" at my earliest opportunity.
I will familiarize myself with "The Waste Land" at my earliest opportunity.
I will familiarize myself...
Repentant,
Will

Hey Will:
The immersive viewing system is not a hoax.  The Adler planetarium in Chicago has a couple and I suspect other museums do as well.
Keep up the good work.
Bob K.

Dear Bob,
Thanks!  Yes, I imagine a planetarium would be a good place for something like that.  I think a cluttered office cube full of half-read Commuter Click articles would be a good place for one too.
Cheers,
Will

"Did you know 747's could land like this."

I *believe* it's quite old and was taken at Taiwan's Kai Tak airport.  (The landing, I have been told by a pilot, was not untypical.)  Kai Tak is no longer used.  There's a quite good 1-hour or 2-hour program that pops up on our viewing schedule (might be PBS, might be TVOntario) periodically about the construction of the new airport and about the move from the old airport to the new one.
-John

Dear John,
I'm not sure I want to hear that landing half sideways is not untypical.  I wonder if those cross winds were part of the reason why they moved the airport.
Cheers,
Will