It was twenty years ago today...

It was an era. It wasn't the greatest era or the worst, but for a good number of us, it was an era that formed us. We weren't children of the hippy 60's or the disco 70's but rather of the yuppie, excessive, greed is good 80's.

And we remember it fondly. We remember the parachute pants and big hair and lingere worn on the outside and leg warmers. We remember the Rubik's Cube and Ms. Pac Man and Donkey Kong. We remember Michael and Devon and Joanie and Chachie. We wanted the new He-Man and Transformer toys.

And we remember them all because that's where we came from, and I'm guessing that some of you just might qualify, too...

A little sound, folks...

It's been a while since I've used the SingingFish search engine, but my wife sent me the link today, so I thought I'd share it with you folks.

If you haven't used singing fish before, it's a search engine that looks just for sound and video files in pretty much any major (and lots of minor) format. You can find stuff from the SNL cowbell skit or one of INXS's first videos or Craig Ferguson's riff on Donny or even the Wabash College fight song - the longest in the nation, by the way...

Amazing!!!!! Not quite...

The Amazing Message Plant! Water the seed and seven to ten days later, a surprise message appears written on the leaves!

Clearly, it's a miracle of modern genetic engineering!

Or, it could be that the company uses a laser (I'm guessing here) to write the message on the outside of the seed coat and that the message doesn't really show up on the leaves but rather on what's left of the seed coat...but that could just be my skeptical thoughts...

How to blog nice...

Just to avoid any flame wars, I provide three links to blog etiquette...

• Blog Etiquette (couple of dirty words, be careful)
• Business blog etiquette
• Blog etiquette with a cute picture

Be excellent to each other, folks...

While sitting on my couch...

The Saturday morning cartoon lineup on broadcast television isn't exactly spectacular anymore. It's certainly not the exciting, special lineup that I remember from my childhood - though I'm guessing that cable tv might have something to do with that.

There are a few highlights, however. Xiaolin Showdown is a quality show at nine o'clock on the WB. The Batman isn't exactly the finest adaptation of the mythos, but it's interesting because the artists are willing to take some chances with constume redesigns for the characters. Some of them work, but a lot of them don't.

The best thing on Saturday mornings, however, is Lazy Town, a very weird show mixing complex puppetry, semi-creepy makeup, and good eating and exercise habits information. It's a show designed for pretty small kids, and it's one that's helping the stations meeting their FCC requirement for showing educational television. The thing I love about the show is the great visual style of the show, with bright, bold colors and wonderful set and character designs.

It's on at ten every Saturday morning on WKRC. Give it a try, folks...

New movies go old school...

In a recently-posted IGN.com article, they explored ten modern black and white DVD's that - to quote them - you must own.

The first of them is one that's close to my heart - Clerks - that wasn't made in black and white for any artistic reasons but rather because Kevin Smith was funding the project out of his own pocket - hocking his whole comic book collection, maxing out his credit cards, borrowing money from his parents - and making a full-length movie for a tiny $25,000 budget by begging, borrowing, and stealing equipment and film stock. It has to be the best investment any filmmaker has made in a long time, and it's one of my favorite films.

The next film is Pi was another self-financed first film by a director, and it's another one that I think's a great film and woefully underrecognized by most people. I remember seeing this in the theater (down at the wonderful Esquire Theater) and being absolutely blown away with the constantly tense story. It's a weird one, and one that I'm guessing not everybody will get, but I'd recommend it.

numbers eight through six - Broadway Danny Rose, Down by Law, and The Elephant Man - I haven't seen, but I'll admit that the description of Down by Law really intrigues me.

Sin City comes in at number five, and is a great movie. Wonderful use of splashes of color amidst the prevelent black and white. The movie is made of a series of vignettes with slightly overlapping storylines. It's a very violent film, admittedly, but the use of black and white makes the blood look like white paint thrown all over things. It's a lot less bothersome than most bloody films.

Again, a couple of films that I haven't seen show up - Man Bites Dog and Ed Wood - at numbers four and three, respectively.

Number two is Schindler's List, another film that uses just a splash of color - much less than does Sin City. This is one of the best films of the nineties and one that most everybody should see. I know that the first time I saw it, I balled like a baby at the very end, so be warned.

The best modern black and white film is one of the best films of the eighties, the best sports films, and simply one of the best films: Raging Bull. The story of Jake LaMotta as played expertly by Robert DeNiro is a pwerful film. Wonderfully filmed boxing scenes, almost frightening changes from DeNiro as he gained sixty pounds of flab to portray the later-in-life boxer.

All in all, a pretty impressive list, and one I can't really argue with. If anybody can think of other black and white films that are reasonably modern and should've made the list, throw out some ideas. I'd be curious...

Two more culinary treats...

Forgot to mention - in my earlier discourse on Thanksgiving food - two of my favorite items. There's the butter turkey - just normal butter, but molded so you can lop off a turkey's head. And there's the pumpkin pie ice cream from Velvet. It's really tasty and easily the best of the pumpkin varieties out there.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody...

Like a freakin' yo-yo...

Last Tuesday, I wore a short-sleeved shirt to school because it was supposed to get up into the low 70's by the end of the day. On Wednesday of that same week, we had snow flurries when I stepped outside for bus duty after school.

Yesterday morning, while we ate breakfast at The Original Pancake House and waited to head over to the Rave to see HPatGoF (review forthcoming on the other blog), the snow fell long and heavy, leaving us blanketed in about half an inch on th grassy areas. Today and tomorrow, we're not supposed to see anything warmer than freezing.

For Monday, of course, the Weather Channel is predicting seventy-degree weather again, with thunderstorms.

Dear lord, make up your freakin' mind!

Is it the dead of winter or the start of spring? C'mon!

The king is dead...

Phenomenal, shocking, stunning...

Roger Federer lost a tennis match this past weekend.

For most tennis professionals, this wouldn't be news in the least. The best tennis players in the world lose anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen times a year. They certainly win their share of titles, but they are far from invincible. In his best year, Pete Sampras went 85-16, winning two grand slam titles.

In the 2004 season, Roger Federer wnt 74-6, the best record by any men's player since Ivan Lendel in 1986. He won three grand slam titles that year - losing in the third round at Roland Garros.

This year, however, he nearly bettered that amazing year. Federer went into his final match of the year a thirty-five match winning streak as well as a twenty-four match winning streak in finals (never in tennis's history has there been a better closer than Federer - the previous record had been twelve by McEnroe and Borg). Federer also went into his final match with a chance to tie John McEnroe's record for best season winning percentage with an 82-3 mark. Federer is nigh on unbeatable.

And then up popped David Nalbandian. In about as shocking a result as I could imagine, Federer "lost to David Nalbandian, 7-6(4), 7-6(11), 2-6, 1-6, 6-7(3). Federer won the first two sets in two tie-breaks (7-4 and 13-11) but became fatigued and lost the following two. In the fifth and decisive set he trailed 4-0 but won 4 games in a row, before having to serve to stay in the match at 4-5. He leveled 5-5 and then broke Nalbandian's serve to lead 6-5, 30-0. He couldn't hold serve and eventually lost in the tie-break 7-3. It ended Federer's 24 consecutive final wins (Open Era record)." (from Wikipedia's Federer article.)

When I saw the headline on ESPN.com, I had to do a double take. Federer simply does not lose. And he doesn't come close to losing in five sets, and he doesn't lose two straight tiebreakers. Stunning...

More blogs of fun...

Two more quick hit blogs that I've found in the past couple of days and that have been entertaining me since.

First up is VignetteBricks, a blog where people try to use a limited Lego design to explain the meaning of a word (or of an event in some cases). For example, to show kung fu scenes or to show the meaning of camouflage. It's a neat idea - limiting the builders to a specific 8x8 footprint but using the vertical dimension to illustrate an idea. There are a bunch of other pages about vignettes.

The second blog of the moment is Cooking for Engineers, a site designed to show very clear, step by step instructions for making what look to be some pretty good recipes. I came across it when searching for a good pumpkin pie recipe. The site does a great job of showing what each stage should look like - via digital camera.

If you know of any other fun blogs that I should be check into daily, send 'em my way.

Happy Thanksgiving week, everybody!

It's time for one of the best weeks of the year for teachers and students - a two-day week. Followed immediately by a five-day weekend.

Oh, and there seems to be some sort of holiday or something. Which is, I guess, what I want to chat about this evening.

It's not the history of Thanksgiving that I really want to link to, however. It's the food that most comes to mind I think of Thanksgiving.

It's the smell of pumpkin pie, the jiggle of cranberry relish, the complex smell of the turducken, the wonderful comfort of Beaumont Inn Corn Pudding, and the vanilla crunch of the inevitable dessert. Just thinking of all the wonderful food makes me start drooling. So wonderful...so fun...so tasty...

Plus, there's always the cool way to cook a turkey the Alton Brown way.

Copping out...

Another random playlist from my iTunes at home...the first ten songs to come up when I hit play...

"Cult of Personality" by Living Colour

Sadly one of the forgotten bands of the late 80's...great hard rock with a social conscience froma primarily black band...an interesting combo that we haven't really seen much otherwise...great song...

"Idaho" by Yonder Mountain String Band

One of their better studio songs...closer to a tight song than their more typical extended jams...fun group with some local ties...

"Girl of the North County" by John Gorka

Nice cover from the Nod to Bob album...I love Dylan's original version, but Gorka's voice does a nice job here

"We are in Love" by Harry Connick, Jr.

Big swing band from a guy who's headed away from making music and more into being an actor...I liked his earlier stuff better than his latter...

"Prayer" by Miles Davis

From the Porgy & Bess album...not my favorite tune...one that sort of fades in with a lot of his others to me...I presfer the Sketches of Spain album...

"See Water" by Beck

Early, folky stuff from Beck...before the Mellow Gold album even...so weird that he flits back and forth between slow, downer folk and upbeat techno/remix pop...I love both versions of his stuff...

"Dreaming My Dreams with You" by Alison Krauss

Little too slow...like the album but not this song so much...

"Blackhawk" by Emmylou Harris

Wonderful voice...great production on the Wrecking Ball album by Daniel Lanois...worth hunting the album down, especially if you know her as a country singer...this isn't a country album

"Knowing Me, Knowing You" by ABBA

Remnants of Karlen's life on my iTunes before we got her a separate laptop...I've gotta go about and delete the ABBA stuff sometime soon...

"Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits" by Magnetic Fields

From the three-cd 69 Love Songs which was a great wedding gift from my college roommate...entertaining and melodic takes of so many versions of love...

Naptime...

My big performance as Uncle Max in The Sound of Music takes place tonight (and then closes tomorrow night). All I have to do to be ready between now and then is to take a solid nap. Leaving immediately once I finish up this entry and hoping to catch a couple hours of sleep.

Wish me luck, folks...

Carbonated brussel sprouts! Yum!

Ah, the refreshing taste of turkey and gravy in a bottle.

That's what Jones Soda is offering up in local stores - like Target. Head over to their website to check out the various flavors. I don't know what the flavors taste like, but depending on cost, it might be worth picking up. Plus, some of the proceeds go to charitable causes, which is always a good thing.

And while you're there, check the gallery of photos used on the Jones Soda labels. Fun stuff...

Waffle & Steak

So, the concept of the fine breakfast restaurants was being discussed today during my plan bell (becuase it's at the end of the day and I'm rarely in the mood to accomplish things). And eventually we reached the age-old question of what's the distinction between the Waffle & Steak and Waffle House.

As a person who grew up in Southern Indiana, this was truly a connundrum for me. I would drive around and see the Waffle & Steak restaurants along the roadside as well as the mecca that is and was Waffle House and not be able to tell the difference by anything other than signage. What, then, was the difference?

In truth, I never knew until just today when I saw the wikipedia article explaining that "In Indiana the chain is known as Waffle & Steak due to another chain owning the rights to the name Waffle House in that state." Apparently, for no one other than Indiana folks was this a pressing quandry. No wonder then that when I mentioned the Waffle & Steak, my student helpers didn't understand the distinction or the mystery. To me, however, this was one of the long-unanswered questions. Chicken or egg? Ginger or Mary Ann? Over easy or sunny side up? Waffle & Steak or Waffle House?

To me there truly is no other late-night alternative - particularly after about ten o'clock. The IHOP stinks now. Perkins and Denny's are pretty much the same thing. The Huddle House greeting just scares me. Bob Evans is too kountry (with a K, of course).

Clearly, the Waffle House is king of them all. Admittedly, however, not every Waffle House is up to snuff. Some are older, dingier, a little dirtier perhaps, while others are nice and new.

Either way, though, I'm a scattered, covered, peppered man myself.

Can ya help a brother out?

Ok, not really a brother (in either the geneological or fraternal sense of the word). This is more like the I've got a friend who's doing a fundraiser kind of plea. But there could be something in it for you, too...

So, Brian (friend from high school, former doubles partner, married guy) is the women's basketball coach at Brescia University in Owensboro, KY - right across from Evansville, IN. His budget's not too awfully huge, and he could use a couple more dollars to drop toward team meals and the like, so he's got a fundraiser going.

Turns out that he's gotten his hands on a couple of Super Bowl tickets for the game this January in Detroit, and he's raffling them off at $20 a chance.

I know, $20 for the tickets sounds like a great deal, but what're the chances you'll win? Well, he's limiting the number of tickets sold to (if I remember correctly) 500, so you've got a pretty decent chance to win.

But, it'd stink to get the tickets and have to drive up to Detroit and back, right? Nope, they're throwing in airfare from anywhere in the US (I'm guessing that means continental US, but check with him for certain).

Well, yeah, but still, flying in and flying out for that day? C'mon. Ah, but you get a hotel room for two nights as well in the package.

Ok, but I'm too cheap to buy meals while I'm there. I'll starve! No you won't; they're including cash for meals, even.

It's an awesome prize, and it's going to help out a friend of mine. What could be better? And, let's be honest, the team could use a little help.

The battle is rejoined...

Now, here's a touchy subject. Clearly, however, it's one to which every science teacher - and, in my opinion, every citizen - should be paying attention.

NPR reported this past week that the Dover, Pennsylvania school board had a near-wholesale turnover and that the turnover lined up almost perfectly with candidates who supported the overturning of a school board policy mandating the includion of a statement supporting the possibility of intelligent design being voted onto the board and supporters of the requirement of Dover science teacher to read the following statement at the beginning of the ninth-grade biology course:

The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin’s theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, “Of Pandas and People,” is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves.

With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments

As a science teacher with an admittedly anti-religious bent, I find myself incredibly pleased with the election results and saddened by the testimony of some of the outgoing board members in the trial filed by parents of school students who are opposed to having intellegent design presented as a scientific threory to their children. I am also shocked at the behavior of outgoing school board members in "purchasing textbooks" for use in the science classrooms of the school district.

And I will readily admit that I hope my students and fellow staff members shared my position on these issues, but even more importantly I see it as important that my students, their parents, my staff members, and other community members understand both sides of this issue. We have here two sides who - in their most extremist views - believe either that any classroom without God is not a classroom worth housing their children or children of their neighbors or that any classroom that mentions God in even the most infinitesimal way is one where their children cannot be raised as the parents choose.

I would ask that if you have any questions about either of these viewpoints (pro-intellegent design/anti-science or anti-intellegent design/pro-science), that you read more than what I have provided here. Do your own research. Here are a few starting points for further reading:

• The National Constitution Center's page on the Dover school board elections
• Access Research Network
• The Panda's Thumb
• A NYTimes article on President Bush's public opinion
Intelligent Design Network
• Skeptic.com
• Discovery Institute
• An Open Letter to the Kansas School Board
• Intelligent Design the Future
• Another NPR report
• A critique of PBS's Evolution
• National Center for Science Education

Be careful, however, as some people tend to go a little overboard on this topic.

Good news, Lego fans...

In adding to its licenses, Lego has recently reached an agreement with DC Comics to produce Batman-themed Lego sets. This will be in addition to the great
Bob the Builder, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, and even Steven Spielberg licensed products.

The new Batman sets won't be coming out until Spring of 2006, but the picture to the right shows what can already be done with Legos (thanks to Bizarro for making this one.)

And in another neat piece of Lego fluff, the company has posted up a program to digitally design Lego creations. The program has (supposedly) all of the Lego parts in it and will allow you to print out instructions and inventory for your creation as well as making some suggestions for other models that could be built with the same pieces. Looks awesome, though I'll admit that I haven't tried it just yet.

At my fingertips?

No, it doesn't appear to be right at my fingertips, which has become frustrating in today's DSL, get-it-now world of high-speed internet connection.

I went searching for a copy of the Details Magazine article about Wabash College - my alma mater, but to no avail.

Instead of finding the article easily enough and being able to forward it along to my Wabash buds, I've found myself surfing the web in vain. I have found two different Wabash blogs (Jim Amadon's and Tom (I think) Runge's) which I would've guessed would be linked from this page but stupidly aren't. And I found an issue of the Wabash student paper that has an article on the writer visiting Wabash in the early fall.

But no copy of the article itself. Not even a decent posting about the article.

Maybe I'll just scan in the copy of the article and post it online, because the magazine itself is so horrible that nobody else should lose their $4 by buying it.

Blech...

But the article's not bad...

Searching the world wide blogsphere...

Ah, the coming influence of the blogsphere.

I know that I've posted a couple of blog-related links before: Stephen Colbert's issues with them and a possible negative consequence of them. Now, technorati.com allows you to search the blogsphere and find out what's on the minds of the bloggers.

It isn't, to quote them, "like other search engines. When you search for George Bush on other search engines, they send you to whitehouse.gov. When you search Technorati, [they] show you what millions of real people are saying, right now, about George Bush." There's even a cute little cartoony tour to show how the thing works. They don't search the whole of the web, just the whole of the blogsphere.

You're not going to find the most reliable, most un-changing information on the web through Technorati, instead you're going to find the most ephemeral information possible, as technorati's search engine only looks back for the past six days worth of information. When you check their popular section, you don't find the best books and movies of the past year; you find the most blogged-about books and movies of the past week. It's an instant pulse.

Is there value in that? Absolutely.
Are there some serious limitations to that? Absolutely, too.

Are you going to get the most important news? No.
Are you going to get the most blogged-about news? Yes.

And there-in lies the strength and problem. Technorati tracks brushfires. A group of people - possibly friends, possible intentionally - begin referencing each other and a news story. By interlinking their blog comments about this story, they begin to rise on the most-linked-to blogs. Others people check that list and begin reading what's been said. If it's interesting - note, I didn't say true - enough, more links are made, and the pages and news stories climb higher, beginning the cycle anew.

No veracity or fact-checking needed to rise to the top of this heap. Just simple popularity.

Of course, I could just be paranoid.

Men in tights...

Kevin Smith is currently filming Clerks 2: Passion of the Clerks, and he's taken to filming the stupid stuff that happens around a movie shoot during dead time and releasing it as his video journal for those of us geeky enough to follow along. I can't, of course, link to that since it's not school appropriate, so I give you, instead, this:

Bryan Singer is currently filming the new Superman Returns film in Australia, and he's also posting a video journal on Blue Tights Adventure Network!. In these entries, we see some of the similar freakishness that apparently goes on while and around filming a massive budget motion picture. I especially recommend Stoparazzi in which Singer sends out two crew grunts to block a local photogorapher from snapping any shots. We are, in the process, treated to a lovely little dance of the unbrellas.

What's the weather?

I know, you've been thinking to yourself, "How can I get a cartoon character to suggest to me the outside conditions while I sit here in this dank, dark office?"

I understand your pain and haven't seen any light from my classroom since I moved to Princeton. So, I've got a few solutions for you.

First, there's Weather Pixie which is a little cartoon graphic of a girl or boy (of your choosing, of course) giving you an update on the outside conditions complete with appropriate attire for the weather. You can choose a punk guy, a goth girl, a somewhat coquettish Bratz girl, a geisha, and a bunch more. And you can choose to get information from just about any location around the world. Of course, some of the folks seem a little inappropriately dressed for their Antarctic adventure.

Or, you could donate WeatherBug which will appear in your Windows taskbar with the current conditions in the world.

You can also get RSS feeds of the weather in your area from the National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration.

There's also the Weather Underground which can provide you with an icon for your webpage.

Or, you can just check the Weather Channel for the weather in your area. That might be more helpful in case there was some serious weather coming your way.

Movie Poop Shoot...

If you have any interest in comic books, you have to be reading Comics 101 by Scott Tipton. It's on the MoviePoopShoot website which has a lot of school non-appropriate content and is blocked from the school computers, but Comics 101 is phenomenal and incredible.

It's a series of explorations by Tipton on various subjects that pop up to him - often via his email box. He's spent a half dozen weeks recapping the history of the Justice League, taken a week to evaluate the Fantastic Four movie, discussed the Star Wars comic series, introduced us to V for Vendetta and Watchmen, retold the origins of Thor and Hulk and The Atom and many, many more.

There is no better primer on comic books than Comics 101.

Start reading, folks. I've been through every column in his archives.

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.

I'm not really sure why, but baseball remains America's sport. Not necessarily the sport of modern America but certainly the sport of the historical, idealized, remembered America. And it is because of this that essays such as this one on the passage of Al Lopez - the oldest living Hall of Famer - have such emotional impact.

We lament the passing of such an evocative era because in some part of our hearts and minds, the modern world isn't quite what the older one was. The glow of the ballplayers has been diminished somewhat as we've come to see them as actual, fallible humans. The grass isn't quite as green as we remember it from our youth - or even from the stories of our fathers' youths. The giants of the age don't stand quite so tall now that we know their predilections and peccadillos.

James Earl Jones said it (warning: wav file) - in character - in Field of Dreams.

WP Kinsella has written it a half dozen times - most beautifully in my eyes in The Iowa Baseball Confederacy.

A few years back - probably ten years now - Keith Olbermann published another essay that dealt to some extent with this same theme. I can't find it still on the web anywhere, but I've got a pdf version, thankfully.

A fine and festive birthday...

They way I figure it, last night Bonefish Grill bought us nearly a hundred dollars worth of free food and drinks.

We showed up for our 7:30 reservation for twelve at West Chester Bonefish about 7:35 - admittedly a few minutes late, but that's life. We were given a buzzer and told that the table would be ready in just a few minutes. No problem...so we headed outside to wait in the incredibly nice November evening.

Half an hour later, I went inside to see if our table was going to be ready anytime soon. "The party at the large table hasn't left yet, sir," I was assured by the hostess. So back to the outside with our group of friends.

Half an hour later I was back inside asking to speak to the manager and asking for free drinks for the crew. He pleasently acquiesced and added that we would be getting appetizers on them as well while we were waiting.

Back to the outside where I was greeted with minor cheering by the assembled crowd.

By the time we'd gotten our drinks and ordered our appetizers, the table was ready - an hour and a half after the reservation's time.

Another hour and a half later, we were full to near bursting and having a great time. The manager's pleasant and generous manner had turned the night into a great time and left us with a great feeling for Bonefish - especially for the bang bang shrimp, a fine appetizer.

And I felt good because I got to be the at least somewhat strong husband taking care of things and getting complimentary things without being a jerk. Probably the first time I've ever taken the direct route of "give us free stuff because you've done us wrong" instead of letting the other person offer. Kinda felt good...

And made for a great birthday dinner for my wife and our friends...

The Monster Mash up

With God as my witness, I'm not sure I've seen a piece from a talk show walk a finer line between scaring the crap out of me an dropping me to the ground in hilarity.

Mike Tyson and Bobby Brown singing "The Monster Mash" on the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

New candidate...

Quite possibly the worst website ever.

Chipotle.com

My major issue with websites is that they are often not useful. If I'm coming to your website, I want to know something. I'm not coming to your website to be randomly entertained (for the most part). I'm looking for some piece of information.

From a fast food joint, I'm looking for where you are or your phone number orhow bad your food is for me or even some information about your donation policy. Provide me with easy, obvious ways to find this information.

Don't use mystery meat navigation. Don't force me to click through every frickin' question in your FAQ. Don't open up with a stupid chili pepper and expect me to know what the heck to do next.

The Chipotle website violate #2, #4, #6, #7, #8, #11, #12 in the top ten webdesign mistakes of 2004.

I may stop going to Chipotle just because of their crappy website.

A bit of modern archeology...

Oh, good stuff. It appears that the British National Archives has made its public service films available online. I've linked to the page listing the films from 1945-1951, a time ripe for modern thinking - well, modern for the time. These are the sorts of films that reminded people how their taxes were being spent, told folks not to put that handkerchief with a sneeze in it into the family laundry so as not to spread germs. Some of them are color cartoons, some are black and white PSAs with quaint Brits discussing the importance of supporting the government and paying taxes. Generally interesting stuff - some of it hilarious. Each film also comes with a short explanation of the climate of the film or reasons why the film was needed.

I especially recommend the Modern Guide to Health.

It's not porn...

There seems to be some sort of modern phenomenon of people filming themselves lipsyncing to popular songs. A year or so ago, we saw a fat Dutch kid making a fool out of himself on the web. Today it's two Asian students pretending to be the Backstreet Boys. When will the madness end? Apparently, it's with more Backstreet Boys.