WebLinks

Remember when Val Kilmer was sitting in the lecture when the guys first got to Miramar in Top Gun? He kept walking his pen through his fingers and right away you just knew he was a jerk. If you ever wanted to learn how to look so brooding / arrogant / dextrous, there’s a web site devoted to teaching you The Art of Pen Spinning.

I have to admit that I haven’t visited one of the best blogs - Bloggus Caesari - in quite some time. He hasn’t posted since the 11th, and I wonder what - if anything - is going to happen to his blog today. (Beware! Beware!)

Take the The Dead Russian Composer Personality Test. If I was a dead Russian composer, I’d be Aleksandr Borodin.

Son of a 19th Century Russian prince and a…non-royal…mother, you went to medical school and became a biochemist. Most people, however, (and probably your twenty cats as well) agree that they’d trade all of your scientific discoveries for another set of “Polovetsian Dances.”

link via Sick Side

Scan Your Can

Right off the bat we’ll tell you. If you shove your posterior against the glass of a scanner, no matter how shapely your derrier may be, it will look like yesterdays pancakes if unclothed. The “Can Scan” is probably the most difficult to obtain. Especially in a solo effort.

What does gravity smell like? Visit The Smell of Gravity to learn. I first discovered this link back in the 1900s. I can’t believe it’s still on line.

I discovered Mighty Girl this morning while poking through Kottke’s sidebar. She has a fabulous blog, although the lack of permalinks is frustrating. (Read her two February 2nd posts.)

Note: There’s been a redesign at (the) Lost Pages and the site really looks great. Check it out.

Rad! Check out this collection of GI Joe t-shirts (and other 80s t-shirts)! How killer is that?
link via Lost Pages

Cyber-Gish - not to be confused with Normal-Jish - has created a Forum for discussing blogging shtuff. You might want to pop over there and say hi.

I think I have reached nerdvana. From UnBlinking:

“Greeble’s Heisenwhack Principle
What to call a self-immolating Googlewhack (one that ceases to be unique after Google spiders a site where the whack is reported)? Kudos to Ray Greeble for coining the excellent term “Heisenwhack.” He based the term loosely on the jargon entry for HeisenBUG.
Paralleling Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, clearly the observer (of a Googlewhack) alters the reality being observed (of a Googlewhack). Heisenberg himself might observe (…get it?), or perhaps Bohr would note, one benefit to web surfers: when measuring Heisenwhack Phenomena, timelines may be expressed in hours or days, rather than femtoseconds or attoseconds.
As a verb, one may ‘Heisenwhack’ a unique result by displaying it for Google to find (thereby spawning a second result). The noun ‘Heisenwhack’ refers to the page or citation that causes such dilution.
The Heisenwhack Compensator … is easy to use. To find pages that contain your word pair, while excluding other pages that mention this topic, add ‘-googlewhack’ to your query. Google will exclude pages containing that ’subtracted’ term from your results.”

If it’s possible to fall head-over-heels in love with a meme, I’ve done it.

Googlewhacking: The Search for The One

It took me a few tries. I’ll admit I sat staring at the screen for a bit. Google found thousands and thousands of what I considered to be incredibly strange juxtapositions.

• esoteric amplitude? 2,250 hits
• escalator mustard? 766 hits
• amphibian euthanasia? 680 hits
• angina astrophysics? 147 hits
• tumescence draconian? 15 hits

Until … finally …
I present you with my personal Googlewhack:
kleptomaniac ovulating! 1 hit!
[click to continue...]

Charlie Brown - Intelligence: Extremely High
Despite our suspicion that Linus is actually the intellectual center of the Peanuts universe, we acknowledge Brown’s ability to distill great emotion into few words (e.g. “augh”) and his apparent interest in only the metaphorical implications of football (futility).

[click to continue...]

I think that the best linking weblog on line right now is Follow Me Here. Every time I visit I find a half-dozen or so excellent articles. Eliot must be a voracious reader, and his comments are insightful and thought-provoking. If you have never been to his site, go right now. Here are a few of his more recent links that I found particularly interesting:

· A few months ago - just after Sept. 11 - I wrote a little rant about parallel universes and how I deal with the concept of infinity. I never claimed that it was an original idea, or my own. But I like it. It seems like this theory, which dates back to at least 1957, has sparked some renewed interest. The Economist has a very enlightening and much more scientific explanation of a theory of infinite universes than the one I provided. If you’re as fascinated by the concept of infinity and its implications as I am, you’ll appreciate the Economist’s essay.

· The London-based eZine Spiked published an article on “the Singleton Society” last week. I’ll give you an excerpt here, but I recommend reading the whole thing.

… the age-old tension between the aspiration for self-realisation and commitment is difficult to resolve. In the past this tension could be contained through the widespread influence of the ideology of romantic love - which celebrated the value of self-realisation through an intimate encounter with another person. The synthesis of autonomy and commitment helped diffuse conflicts of interests, at least for a brief period of time.
But the ideology of romantic love could only effectively contain conflicts of interests because women were expected to renounce their desire for autonomy in favour of maintaining the relationship. Since the 1970s, this one-sided arrangement has come unstuck. At a time when women seek to develop themselves no less than men, love ceases to provide the focus for an ideology that can sustain durable commitment.

· The Crackpot Index claims to be, “A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics.” It’s very funny, more so if you often find yourself trying to debunk those with seriously high levels of bunk.

I found a great feature at the New Scientist on alcohol:

Everything you ever wanted to know about the stuff but were too drunk to ask.

My drive home is always exciting.