This column is two things; it is both:

1) A good introduction to Chuck Klosterman, who is awesome.

and

2) One of the few times I've seen the internet live up to its full potential.

Kottke: Unbelievably enormous coconut crab.

Slate: Why hockey needs a relegation system.
An elegant and effective solution. What do I need to do to put you in a system of relegation today, NHL?

BB: Birds "see" magnetic fields.

Strippers make more when ovulating.
We are controlled 100% by the part of our brain we don't know about.

BB: How a non-neutral ISP might work
A compelling argument for net neutrality.

H&FJ: Bring Back InterCaps

YDA: The World's Most Amazing Temples

ICHC?: KHAAAAAAN! 

BB: Burning Man '07 as seen from space.

BBG: Hammocks with a roof.
"Oh, the hammock district."

BBG: Women's spatial acuity improved long-term by first-person shooter playing.

YouTube: Motion-logos.

Dethroner: Increadible video of failed IED attack.
Swearing, but the video itself is amazing.

Coming soon: Gamma-ray annihilation lasers.

The Economics of the Surge

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BF: Divide Belgium!

Belgium has no reason to exist and should be divided into two pieces -- one French and the other Dutch. The Economist publishes an article explaining why the country of Belgium should call it quits. Even the Belgian prime minister designate thinks that the French and Dutch Belgians have nothing in common except "the king, the football team, some beers". BuzzFeed is proud to join the movement to break up Belgium.

Family Tree of the Indo-European Language's Descendants

Techdirt: Prize Insurance: Insurance policies backed by industries back prizes for innovation.

Confessions of a College Callgirl

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Sorry for the dearth of posting; school, work, you know.

Picking up again when Kathleen leaves and the Fall TV season starts (Sept 24).

Going to be reviewing at least the following new shows:

Chuck

Big Bang Theory

Samantha Who?

Aliens in America

Cavemen

Carpoolers

Kid Nation

Back to You

Private Practice

Kitchen Nightmares

Big Shots

What else do you guys want me to review? Bionic Woman?

The only restriction: I refuse to watch any show about a supernatural detective. Sorry. 

via DF: Quitting Microsoft Word
Something I've been considering. Seems like a Pages / Writeroom coctail would get the job done and do it better, too.

Salon interviews Terry Gross (and others about her)
Very interesting look behind the curtain.

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Updated iTunes v. NBC-Universal post w/ new link

Still looking for your I'm-so-depressed albums. 

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A note to the ladies, the following are unacceptable:

A) Pairing: "Lyrics are the most important part of music. Always." with "I love Fergie."
Either is fine. Together they are retarded.

B) "Education is really important to me, but I've not finished my degree nor do I have any plan to, nor do I even know what it would be in. But education's super important to me. And I'm 24."

Steve Martin's wife looks super cute.
And she used to work for the New Yorker.
Damn, Steve, can't you leave anything for the rest of us?

via Buzzfeed: Anorexia "Not Just for Teens"

RIP Junkiness [Video]

YDA: No Caption Needed

Trailer for The Darjeeling Limited, the new Wes Anderson
Gorgeous in hi-def.

via Anil Dash: Crates and Barrels in videogames.

Related in Slate: Medikits, Power-up and Other Videogame Cliches 

Six trippiest Simpsons moments. 

YDA: BF Skinner's Baby Box: Won't somebody think of the now grown children?!

1115: This Is Why
John Edwards = best.

BB: So there's this secret list of buildings you can't photograph...
Here's the real question: shouldn't there be a list, and shouldn't the list be secret, though?
How do you square that with, making sense, though?

The Dogfishead 120 Minute IPA costs 7.99 for 12oz.
I will not be drinking it.

BB: A history of the domestication of housecats.

Slate: Why are cyclists at the TdF still doping?
A cynical view.

via Anil Dash: Startling infographic showing the spread of American Obesity
OVER THE LAST TWENTY FIVE YEARS

via DF: Faceball

Dave Foley Can't Sleep with Maura Tierney
Dave Foley's funny night-time comedy show gets a guest shot of hilarious from Maura Tierney.
Who is apparently back on the market again. And ready for my love.
 

Gedblog: Coke-can redesign: it's a beautiful thing

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Slate: Who's not reading Harry Potter? His peers.
I'd never heard the counter-culture explanation (

And as the media blitz went on and on, summer after summer, I started to have the feeling that I was reading over America's shoulder, and she had already underlined all the best passages. That countercultural response is more familiar to me now, but at the time, I just felt fatigue. I wanted to read, not be a part of a phenomenon.

) and it rings true, to me. Interesting. Not the reason I didn't read Harry Potter at first, but definitely something I picked up along the way.

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Slate: Does the ethanol backlash make sense?
I disagree, but food for thought.

via Dethroner: Man vs. Wild staged? Say it ain't so!

Giz: Airplane graveyard
Anyone who's been to Arizona has seen planes like these, but the photographs here are pretty awesome.

The Futon Critic lists every Emmy nomination.
Including all three noms for How I Met Your Mother.

via Airbag: Lake 3x the size of Lebannon found under Darfur.

YDA: Scenes from The Wicker Man

Slate: Why Kelly Clarkson's new album licks. [Audio]

Giz: What happens when you smash a can of WD-40 [Video]
[Amazing, startling, amazing video]

1115: Healthcare vs. Campaign Finance

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Blockquote lifted entirely from 1115:

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

Read up on it. 

Dethroner: "Professor Lady Nerd Astronaut, Love Me"

Giz: Megacollection of original, in box Transformers toys sold...
...for one million dollars......

Giz: TV Packaging Turns Into TV Stand

via DF: A solution to email overload: fivesentenc.es
When I have email, I have this problem. I, however, rarely have email.

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via BB:  "What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening"

A brilliant, brilliant (if long) profile of a writer who goes on a cruise put together by The National Review. He finds so many, many disturbing things. A couple of highlights to whet your appetite:

I adjust and stiffly greet the first man I see. He is a judge, with the craggy self-important charm that slowly consumes any judge. He is from Canada, he declares (a little more apologetically), and is the founding president of "Canadians Against Suicide Bombing". Would there be many members of "Canadians for Suicide Bombing?" I ask. Dismayed, he suggests that yes, there would.

They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently. How did that happen? How do you go from sweet to suicide-bomb in six seconds?

There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few moments to realise exactly what it is. All the tropes that conservatives usually deny in public - that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is fighting a class war on behalf of the rich - are embraced on this shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed liberals lose it.

Like I said, brilliant. 

via Airbag: Five Business Lessons Learned from Costco

via Airbag: Cracked.com shows us the top 10 moments of 30 Rock

Ken Levine gives us the season six M*A*S*H blooper reel. Not actually funny, it turns out.

Strange Maps: Oh, Inverted World

via Airbag: Rocket Science trailer
Watch Wes Anderson movies much, writer and director of Rocket Science?
But the HD trailer is so, so pretty.

Hey, Airbag's Longboard is pretty good. 

1115 tips us off to Michael Moore reading the riot act to Wolff Blitzer.

The video on Crooks and Liars is amazing. AMAZING.

He tendaciously demands an apology from Wolff for, well, fucking him and the American people over, over and over. 

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via BB: "Spinal Tap + Every Bassist in the Known Universe" play "Big Bottoms"

Links both fresh and not so fresh:

BB: Stasi Smell Museum
"The thing about the Stasi is that they illustrate just how daffy any totalitarian authority structure necessarily becomes."

via Dethroner: Military shreds F-14s w/ giant robot arm.

The Dilbert Blog: My Best Story

As much as I wanted to fly to Florida in peace, I know a good story when I see one. And this guy was on the edge of a doozy. I couldn’t let it pass without violating some cosmic law of storytelling. I asked the man a question that puzzled him, “Would you mind giving your boss a note from me?”

Techdirt: Wikipedia's real problem: nerd bias.
Counterpoint: The insanely fleshed-out article on Around the Horn.
Or is that further confirmation?

Polynesians beat Columbus to America
But did they beat the Vikings?

An outdoor cat gets a camera around its neck.
Awesomeness ensues.

How I Spent the War, by Guenter Grass
Truly amazing, in depth account of how one of Germany's great authors spent his teenage years during the war.

YDA: Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham.

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Anil Dash links to I CAN HAS CORGAN?, a collection of lolcorgans.

My favorites: 1, 2, 3, 4.

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Sad, yes, but wasn't there a b-plot in House about this?
That just furthers my theory that the world would be a better place if everybody watched House.

Post-Grad Lifestyle: Your Bar Dream Team
Perhaps bullshit like this is why I don't go to bars.
Or hit on ladies...

The Cult of Ramsay (via Airbag)

By Ken Levine: My first directing assignment (and pt. 2)

YouTube: How to give the perfect man-hug. (via Airbag)

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Fametracker: Least Essential Movies of Summer 2003

On "American Wedding":

The Pitch: It's all the fun of Pie Fucker and Pie Fucker 2: The Fuckening, but with the added star-wattage of Nikki Schieler Ziering.

via the continually delicous Amy's Robot, who memorialzed Fametracker recently.

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BoingBoing: Mary Jane Watson, House-Ho

Old Ass Star Found

Techdirt: User Generated Content Is About Efficiency And Growth, Not Exploitation 

via Dethroner: Funny Story: The King of Speed
I want to excerpt part, but like any good joke/funny story, it all hangs upon itself. Good example of how to tell a story. In the hands of a crappy storyteller, this would devolve into a "I guess you had to be there" story.

// 

Twins Names, 2006

1: The combination of Hope and Faith has dipped since last we looked.

2: The names are way, way too similar. Similar I'm down with. Ashley & Amber, sure. Kevin and Kenneth, or whatever. But Emma and Ella? Tyler and Taylor? Landon and Logan? What's next, Cate and Kait?

MOM: Cate, get down here!
KAIT: Me, mom?
MOM: No; Cate! Can't you hear me saying the C?

or

KAIT: Me, mom?
MOM: No, Kait, can't you hear me saying the C?

via Kottke 

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Gizmodo: Pessimists Coffee Mug
I want two. For surely I will drop one and break it.

icanhascheezburger?: Plz no insert batreez. 

BoingBoing: Technological Synaesthesia
AWESOME.

Slate: Is Avril Lavigne a Heather?

Big Andy gets into Clarion. Starts blogging about it.
Very interesting stuff. Leave comments, ask questions. I can't do it all by myself.

Giz: Pimp new solar tech.

Dethroner: "Clips: Photochopping a big girl into a skinny one"
Even at the end, though, she's still got fat-girl elbow.
(Not that I'm for or against any aspect of this, but the above statement is true.)

Video Visualization of Flightpatterns over America

via Kottke: Ever notice that first-worlders do menial labor to unwind?

A detailed look at where Americans are moving from/to.
Very, very interesting, regardless of the politics painted on top of it.

Slate: Human Guinea Pig: The Secret... does it work?

BB describes the thing I want the very most of anything I've ever wanted.
(And no, it's not the ladies...)

Slate: Humans and Computers make e/o better at chess. (And life, too, I guess.) 

BB: Disney World as a Google map.

Slate: Partisan reactions in real time to Oliver Stone's new anti-war ad.
Truly awesome. And the statistics linked to at the bottom are choice, too.

Cool business card designs.

Dethroner: US Spouses' Rate of Cheating
Yep, 3.9 percent of spouses cheat, yet it occupies 60% of our short fiction.

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Hilarious Movie Review of ROTK

I tried to avoid it, I really did. But it kept getting links as 'the funniest thing I've ever read.'

And it's true, it's fucking funny. Some choice excerpts:

About the orcs, marching on Gondor:

"...while every puke-ugly bad-ass on the planet starts surrounding it, ready to open a Wal-Mart that only sells ball-stomp."

On the volume of the film:

"It’s also, thank fucking God, LOUD. Even if you bring an iPod so you can listen to VH during the Elf parts you’ll take it off because I swear to fucking Roth you do NOT know where the next big bang is going to come from, or when something big is going to crunch someone’s skull while you picture that person getting their skull crushed is really your neighbor upstairs that plays Dido all day or that dude at the Starbucks who’s always reading and looking all smart."

All in all, it's an ingeneous combination of nerd-jackass mockery and actual nerd-jackassery.

Oh, and there's an entire treatment, in the middle, about a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-esque movie featuring.... wait for it... Bruce Lee, Dirty Harry, Bluto and The Bandit from Smokey and the Bandit. Yeah, that's right. 

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YDA: The Story Behind a Photograph

John August: iPhone Ad Residuals

Kottke: Best Headline of the Decade: Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo.

//

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BB: ET microbes so unusual that we might miss them. 

Dethroner: Dapper or Crapper: Bikini Jeans

icanhascheezburger.com

Boing Boing: The Truth About 4/29
And the followup.

Andy gives good jazz.

Today also celebrates the one-month anniversary of this "Quick Hits" feature! It replaced the comically-infrequent "Daily Roundup." What do you think of these posts? Useful? Useless? Usetastic?

Highways = Windfarms.
Best. Idea. Ever.
Particularly the highway I take to get to Arizona. Bitch is always windy. Always.

Ken Levine plays a trick on his listenership.

1115: Progress? Progress?!
At least it's not the progressive party so constantly redefining the term.

Also: after listening to Sarah Polley this morning on Fresh Air, I've decided I need to move to Canada and get a Candian girl to be my lover. Something about the accent drives me wild.

The most tremendously intuitive online photo-viewing interfeace I've seen.
[Warning: as these are pictures of models, sometimes some of them aren't wearing uppers, sometimes.]

72-Hour Timeline of a Denver Shabu (Pure, Japanese Crystal Meth) Party
Ass-kickingly good.

Boing Boing: Korean War Hero on No Fly List for Anti-Bush Speech 

X in the City: Some girls's freaky.
("X in the..." may not be the most moral or frequently updated bit of weblogerry, but it's always interesting.)

Ryan Irelan: A Google 411 Video demo
(via Airbag, who I agree with, I can't see how this can stay free forever. But, it's Google, after all.)

The New Gehry Building Inside and out (via Kottke)
(Don't get a lot of opportunity to see the inside of an architectural office-building.)

Kottke: The Overton Window
(The realm of possible policy choices that might actually get implemented.)

Microsoft is Dead, and the follow-up, Microsoft is Dead: the Cliffs Notes (via DF)

Cockeyed: Fire from a coke can and toothpaste.
(Didn't so much work, but it's interesting.)

Wonderful D-Day cover for a new translation of the Illiad. (via Boing Boing)

Airbag: How Airbag got to be an LLC.

Last week's quake lifted the Solomon Islands several feet out of the ocean.
(If you've not seen this, it's awesome.)

TV Squad: Video: Jimmy Kimmel woodsheds Gawker Editor
(Over, well, lying and stalking and such. Oh, and he's filling in for Larry King while doing it. And dressed like him, too.)

Techdirt: High-school principle sues students over fake My Space pages.
(Parody is still an exception, right? And how can this be not-parody?)

Gizmodo: Floating Windmills of Awseomeness

Dethroner: '70s Southwest Airlines Stewardesses

CNN: The Brain and God.
(Always interesting no matter your perspective, though I totally call bullshit on the term 'neurotheology.')

Dethroner: 'Details' hates your back-pocket wallet.

Slate: Our sixty year old bombers work better than ever. So why don't we build more?

The New Yorker: Sasha Frere-Jones gets to see Prince. (via Anil Dash)

Battle of the Bands That Would Have No Career If Radiohead Had Kept Making Accesible Music (via Junkiness)

YouTube: Alanis covers "My Humps" (via Data-What)
(As Matt pointed out, this version is still horrible, and proves what someone said about "My Humps": it is "proof that a song can be so bad as to verge on evil." But the video is pretty funny.)

YouTube: David Lynch, succinctly, on product placement. (via Airbag)
(He swears.)

StrangeMaps: Where, and how well, evolution is taught in the US.

Kottke: 101-throw variant of Rock, Paper, Scissors

BB: Steven Pinker on the history of violence.

Techdirt: Early daylight saving time? No energy savings.

via Kottke: Earliest books printed in selected languages.
(Apparently histories of Troy and Trojans were au currant in the mid-15th-century. Who knew?)

Slate: 1$/day and the world's very poor.
(Intersting, but not nearly as interesting as it could have been.)

Tremendous New Yorker article on Gordon Ramsay. He's a crazy, crazy bastard, but he's great. Long, sure, but worth reading all the way through. Even if you haven't spent half as much time watching him on TV as I have, you'll find it  fascinating. In fact, I'm cooking Gordon-Ramsay-food tonight.

Darkest (and funniest?) Onion headline I've seen in a while: 7-Year-Old Transfers Friend's Obituary Onto Silly Putty For Posterity 

Because I've been busy "having" a "life" recently.

via Dethroner: Orwell on Politics, English and Thinking
(This helped me wail on some academic re-writes I was doing. Orwell, as always, is clear and concise and explains here both why and how to do the same.)

Via BoingBoing: Artists and Designers Photograph and Explain their Workspaces

Via Kottke: A wonderful post about Wes Anderson's "Rushmore."

From the same Kottke-linked blog, The Criteron Contraption:
Review of "M" (One of my 10 best-ever films)
Review of "Brazil" (Which I agree and disagree with)
Review of "Armageddon" (which also answers the question: "Why is Armageddon in the Criteron Collection?")

All of The Criteron Contraption's reviews that I've read so far have been tremendous. If only I was able to talk about film with this depth and clarity. 

So, I abandoned that post about "Blade Runner." You didn't care. It's ok. We can just move on.

Kottke: Rare, Semi-Identical Twins Born

Kottke: Map shows Portuguese First to Australia

Your Daily Awesome: Animaris Rhinosceris
(A giant, steel and polyester, ten-legged, wind-powered walking machine. Bad ass.)

Brazil by Terry Gilliam. Just as wierd as you thought, but not as good as you were told.

via Kottke: A tremendous "post on the extreme recency of recorded human history."

BB: Parental selection and why we aren't hairy like other apes.
(Hint: it may have helped distinguish us from animals.)

BB: "East German Stasi Chief was an Orwell Fan, Bent Reality to get Room 101"

Slate: Zombie Brands

Before my power gets knocked out by the rain-a-thon going on here, I thought I'd post this:

World's 10 Most Gorgeous Trees (with pictures!) 

So, I've been busting my balls to get a new review out the door, this time of "Blade Runner." However, it's 1200 words long already and only about half done, so...

To tide you over, the new links from "What to Watch" in the side bar:

Extended (Dirty) scene from How I Met Your Mother.

The Origin and Use of the "Amen!" Break. 

Why the numbers on infant mortality can be misleading.
(Hint: the US's number of 6 does not mean we're spending too little money on baby-care.)

Stacy London gets her own talk show.
You guys shut up, Stacy London is great.

Slate's legal scholar examines Bong Hits 4 Jesus.

The real reason the US Attorney firings were heinous.
(Hint: prosecutorial discretion.)

And finally: The website (with trailer) for this summer's greatest/most ridiculous movie: Ninja Cheerleaders.

The future of mass-aviation surfaces again at Gizmodo.

What if the KT-boundary asteroid had missed? BBC by way of Kottke.

Diet Coke + Vitamins and drinking the last Coke at Dethroner. 

Web Typography Sucks.
(I've tried to implement at least a little of this. Very helpful. From SXSWi last week.)

Techdirt: Who Will Protect Teens From This New Obsession With Book Reading?

If your car gets hit by lightening, you're safe because of the rubber tires, right? Right?!

A British TV show finds out.

My favorite part, though, is a bit of banter: 

There are only a few locations in the world where they have the technology to blast a car with lightening. Two of those places are in Holland and Germany. And only one of those nations is laidback, liberal and fun loving enough to let me sit in the car whilst they hit it with 800,000 volts. Yep, it's those zany Germans.

And the German's mustache.

Oh, and the fact that the guy gets hit by lightening.