Big but never number one
From Box Office Mojo, a list of the top grossing movies in the US that were never #1 at the box office. Topping the list is the sleeper hit of sleeper hits, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Paste Magazine's best of the decade
They've got lists for books, movies, documentaries, video games, memes, comedians, and more.
Top movies of the 2000s
From The Times in the UK, the top 100 films of the decade. Before you look, see if you can figure out which one of the following is not in the top 5:
Grizzly Man
Cache
No Country for Old Men
Team America: World Police
There Will Be Blood
I've seen 58 out of the 100.
Criterion Collection missteps
Vice has a list of the ten most dubious films included in the Criterion Collection...they call them little fuck-ups.
3. The Rock - Director Michael Bay, 1996
Ugh. That's right. I failed to mention up top that there are not one, but two Michael Bay films in the Criterion Collection. It's the kind of shock-inducing information you need delivered in increments. If they wanted to include an Alcatraz movie, uh, why not Escape from Alcatraz? Perhaps Criterion felt they needed a couple of signature "explosion" films to represent the genre. But given that logic, why not throw in Every Which Way but Loose to represent the "truck driver with an orangutan sidekick" genre too?
Also, Michael Bay is doing a remake of Hitchcock's The Birds? What? WHAT??
Best music of the 2000s
From Largehearted Boy, a roundup of lists of best music of the 2000s.
Music videos of the decade
Antville has a list of the 100 best music videos of the decade, the first 50 or so are embedded right on the page. (via fimoculous)
The best of Worldchanging
If you haven't had occasion to dip into the Worldchanging site, they've compiled a list of their favorite/best/most popular articles from the past on the occasion of their sixth anniversary.
Best NBA players of the 2000s
I'm not exactly sure what I expected from such a list, but this wasn't quite it. Kobe at #3 and Shaq is #6? Hrm.
The top 200 albums of the 2000s
Pitchfork continues their look back at the 2000s with the top 200 albums of the decade. Here are the top 20.
The best movies of 2009
Too soon for that title? Anyway, Hitfix takes an early look at the Oscar contenders for 2010. Among them, Clint Eastwood's Invictus, Star Trek, Where the Wild Things Are, Malick's The Tree of Life, The Road, Amelia, and The Lovely Bones.
Where's the world's best food?
The Guardian lists the best 50 foods to eat and where to get them. I've had a few of these (ravioli at Babbo, pork at Gramercy, pho at Pho 24, pastrami at Katz's, etc.) but, sucker that I am for such things, I particularly enjoyed reading about the Turkish olive oil available at an electrical supply shop in London:
At his electrical supply shop in London's Clerkenwell, Mehmet Murat sells wonderful, intensely fruity oil from his family's olive groves in Cyprus and south-west Turkey. Now he imports more than a 1,000 litres per year. His lemon-flavoured oil is good enough to drink on its own.
Astronomy Photographer of the Year winners
The Royal Observatory has announced the winners of its Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest.
I had no idea that images this sharp and detailed could be taken with non-pro ground telescopes...particularly these shots of the Horsehead Nebula and the surface of the Moon. More winners listed here.
Update: Jonathan Crowe notes that the gear used to take these photos isn't cheap.
The winner's photo of the Horsehead Nebula (mpastro2001 also had a second photo in the top five) used a 12 1/2" Ritchey-Chretien telescope ($21,500) and an SBIG STL11000 camera ($7,195 and up) with an AO-L adaptive optics accessory ($1,795) on a Paramount ME mount ($14,500). Total cost for just the equipment mentioned here: $44,990.
Who won the recession?
Vanity Fair has released their 2009 list of the "top 100 Information Age powers"...Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and the Google triumvirate make up the top five. Only 12 women made the list, most of them coupled with a man. A similar list from Business Insider has a better name: The 25 Who Won the Recession. I thought this recession business was supposed to kill the influence of the financial sector...funny how that never happens.
Pitchfork's songs of the decade
As part of their review of the music of the 2000s, Pitchfork listed the top 500 tracks of the past decade. Here are the top 10:
10. Arcade Fire, "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
9. Animal Collective, "My Girls"
8. Radiohead, "Idioteque"
7. Missy Elliott, "Get Ur Freak On"
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Maps"
5. Daft Punk, "One More Time"
4. Beyonce [ft. Jay-Z], "Crazy in Love"
3. M.I.A. [ft. Bun B and Rich Boy], "Paper Planes (Diplo Remix)"
2. LCD Soundsystem, "All My Friends"
1. OutKast, "B.O.B."
Be sure to click through for the extensive explanations. It would easy to nitpick specific selections, but that's a pretty good top 10.
Gorilla vs. Bear also shared their top songs and albums of the decade.
The world's worst healthcare reforms
Foreign Policy has a list of the worst healthcare reforms in the world...the list includes China, Russia, the United States, and Turkmenistan.
So, in a frankly insane healthcare reform effort, [Turkmenistan's "President for Life" Saparmurat Niyazov] restricted the public's access to care by replacing up to 15,000 doctors and nurses with unqualified military conscripts. The next year, he ordered hospitals and clinics outside of the capital, Ashgabat, to close -- even though the vast proportion of Turkmenistan's population lives in rural areas. The BBC quoted him as saying, "Why do we need such hospitals? If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat." He also implemented fees and created an "unofficial" ban on the diagnosis of certain communicable diseases, like hepatitis.
(via mr)
Quentin Tarantino's top 20 movies
Quentin Tarantino talks about his 20 favorite movies that have been made since he became a director.
Here's the full list in handy text form:
Battle Royale
Anything Else
Audition
Blade
Boogie Nights
Dazed & Confused
Dogville
Fight Club
Fridays
The Host
The Insider
Joint Security Area
Lost In Translation
The Matrix
Memories of Murder
Police Story 3
Shaun of the Dead
Speed
Team America
Unbreakable
Some of my favorite books
The Week asked me to choose a selection of my favorite books for this week's issue. I'll take any opportunity to recommend Tom Standage's The Victorian Internet.
Even though it's a history of the telegraph, this book is always relevant. The rise of the 1830s communication device continues to be a fantastic metaphor for each new Internet technology that comes along, from e-mail to IM to Facebook to Twitter.
50 essential films
Roger Ebert annotates the top 10 from The Spectator's list of 50 Essential Films.
1. The Night of the Hunter, Laughton
2. Apocalypse Now, Coppola
3. Sunrise, Murnau
4. Black Narcissus, Powell & Pressburger
5. L'avventura, Antonioni
6. The Searchers, Ford
7. The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles
8. The Seventh Seal , Bergman
9. L'atalante, Vigo
10. Rio Bravo, Hawks
Lots of notable titles missing...and only a couple post-1980s films make the list.
The best film titles ever made
Perhaps someday I'll get tired of posting links to lists of good movie title sequences, but today is not that day. (via quipsologies)
Not-so-good great books
Fired from the Canon is a collection of well-regarded books that perhaps shouldn't be so revered. Includes White Noise, One Hundred Years of Solitude, On the Road, and A Tale of Two Cities.
Nice custom lettering
Lettercult has a round-up of some notable "custom letters" from the first half of 2009...hand lettered type, calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti....stuff like that. This is one of my favorites:
(via do)
Chip Kidd's favorite covers
Chip Kidd shares his seven favorite book cover designs (that aren't his). (via do)
Top 50 movie trailers
IFC lists the 50 greatest trailers of all time. Trailers are like episodes for Law & Order for me -- ten minutes after viewing and I can't remember a thing about them -- so I don't really have any favorites, but this list seems like a solid collection.
Update: They also polled a number of experts to weigh in on their favorites. The article led me to the Golden Trailer Awards, an annual awards show for the best movie trailers and posters. This year's winner was the trailer for Star Trek (I'm guessing it's trailer 1).
The architecture of Star Wars
The Architects' Journal selected their top 10 structures from the Star Wars films.
Not quite a building, but the monumental quality of its form and its polygonal facades lend this Jawa Sandcrawler a building-like presence. These large treaded vehicles have inspired buildings from a Tunisian hotel to Rem Koolhaas' Casa de Musica in Porto.
(thx, janelle)
Beautiful words
Are these the 100 most beautiful words in the English language?
50 Films You Can Wait to See After You're Dead
Death to Smoochy
The Boondock Saints
The Karate Kid, Part III
Cool as Ice
Dice Rules
Basic Instinct 2
Gigli
SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2
From Justin to Kelly
The Hottie & the Nottie
Glitter
Car 54, Where Are You?
Son of the Mask
Leonard Part 6
Lady in the Water
Norbit
Swept Away
White Chicks
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
Spice World
Jaws 3-D
Bratz: The Movie
Troll 2
Howard the Duck
Battlefield Earth
The Postman
I Know Who Killed Me
Kazaam
Rambo III
Freddy Got Fingered
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
Striptease
Caddyshack II
The Adventures of Pluto Nash
Barb Wire
Ishtar
Bio-Dome
Jingle All the Way
Catwoman
Disaster Movie
Rocky V
BloodRayne
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
The Love Guru
Crossroads
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas
It's Pat!
Batman & Robin
Speed 2: Cruise Control
Absurd Time cover stories
Reason recalls the ten most ridiculous Time cover stories, including the infamous 1995 CYBERPORN story, which was the first time I remember the web collectively and vigorously fact-checking the ass of a mainstream media outlet.
The "principal researcher" for the study that inspired Time's cover was actually an undergraduate, and experts began picking the study apart the moment the issue hit newsstands. Three weeks after the wee, wide-eyed web surfer cover, Time backpedalled -- on page 57 -- explaining that real experts say "a more telling statistic is that pornographic files represent less than one-half of 1 percent of all messages posted on the Internet" and that, "it is impossible to count the number of times those files are downloaded; the network measures only how many people are presented with the opportunity to download, not how many actually do."
(via fimoculous)
What was the most important year ever?
Long-time readers know that I love "best _____ of all-time" lists and questions. Arriving at a precise answer for a question like "What's the best movie ever?" is an impossible task but it's lots of fun to argue about it. Over at the Economist's Intelligent Life Magazine, they've taken up the most preposterous (by which I mean awesome) "best of" question I've ever heard: What was the most important year ever?
But alongside 1776, we must include 1945. The atomic bombs alone changed the world's sense of itself, never mind the final defeat of Nazi Germany, whose attempted genocide of the Jewish people remains the single most important moral fact of modern times, the one that has done most to change the way we think. It was the year when American hegemony in the West was established and when the long Stalinist bondage of eastern Europe began, and when India took decisive steps towards independence.
Update: Several more Economist writers have weighed in. Their choices: 5 BC (birth of Jesus), 1204 (Christianity divided by Crusades), 1439 (Gutenberg's press), 1791 (invention of telegraph), and 1944 (beginning of worldwide ideological war). Don't like those choices? Vote for your own.
Best TV of the decade
Variety polled members of the Television Critics Association for their picks for the best TV of the past decade. Here are their choices for drama series and comedy series:
Drama: Friday Night Lights, Lost, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Wire.
Comedy: 30 Rock, Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Daily Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Office.
Twist endings in movies
A list of the best and worst twist endings in movies.
3. The Usual Suspects. Considered the best twist ending by many people, it was hard to put this so far down at #3. I've seen a couple people put this crime thriller starring Kevin Spacey on "Worst Twist Endings" lists, but those people are just idiots wanting to sound smarter and more sophisticated than everyone else.
(via house next door)
The Ten Most Influential Films of The Last Ten Years
/film has an interesting list of the most influential films of the last ten years. You'd expect to see The Matrix and The Bourne Ultimatum on there but Sky Captain? The Polar Express? The comments contain some better choices.
A new golden age of type
After a thorough review, Typographica has chosen their favorite typefaces of 2008.
Sensationalism aside, it's significant that the ever-increasing quality in type design these days -- dubbed by some as the new "golden age" of type -- has caused this year's list to supersede previous lists in many ways.
Best movie ensembles
The House Next Door has a post up about their favorite movie ensembles.
My selections are movies featuring fairly large herds of individuals who clash or collude directly, whose lives intersect or intertwine, who sustain the illusion of continuing to lead their lives beyond the frame, long after the credits roll.
The initial selections include Gosford Park and LA Confidential with the commenters adding many more excellent suggestions like Ocean's Eleven, Glengarry Glen Ross, Big Night, and Do the Right Thing.
Up in a down market
Mother Jones magazine has a list of ten people who have profited from the current financial crisis.
[John] Paulson is a hedge fund manager who has been ridiculously successful betting against banks and other entities that had exposure to the subprime crisis: In 2007, his funds were up $15 billion. In 2008, he didn't do as well: His main fund rose 38 percent in a year when the S&P 500 fell almost 40 percent. His 2007 earnings were in the neighborhood of $3.7 billion. According to Forbes, while 656 billionaires lost money last year, Paulson was one of the 44 who added to their fortunes.
This is the peculiar thing about financial markets: if you know something bad is going to happen (you know, like the global collapse of the financial markets), you can either sound the alarm and save a lot of people a lot of grief or you can make a billion dollars.
2009's emerging photographers
PDN recently posted their list of 30 emerging photographers to watch in 2009. Go here to access the photos without popups. Some nice stuff in there, including a couple photographers featured previously on kottke.org. (thx, youngna)
These aren't the pants you're looking for
The best lines from Star Wars that are improved by replacing a word with "pants".
I find your lack of pants disturbing.
Chewie and me got into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
In his pants you will find a new definition of pain and suffering.
Han'll have those pants down - we've gotta give him more time!
I have altered the pants, pray that I don't alter them further.
Mindfuck movies
Matthew Baldwin lists sixteen of his favorite mindfuck films, including La Jetée, Dark City, and Memento.
As I stood in line to buy my tickets, I noticed a small hand-lettered sign in the box-office window that read, "People arriving five or more minutes late to Memento will not be allowed entrance." This was at a small art-house cinema -- not one to place arbitrary restrictions on its patrons -- and it struck me as odd that the limitation applied solely to this one film, so I asked the cashier about it when I reached the front of the line.
"You can't understand anything about the film if you miss the first five minutes," she told me with a roll of her eyes. "We've had late-comers charge out here after the end and demand that we explain the whole thing to them."
Baldwin gives Primer some much-deserved love, which is always appreciated around here.
Best robots
The best robots of 2008, including soccer players, humanoid bots, and a self-healing robotic chair.
The 20 worst foods of 2009
Men's Health has a listing of the 20 worst foods of 2009, all of which fit the description of "calorie bombs". For instance, the worst "healthy" sandwich is the Blimpie Veggie Supreme, which contains 1100 calories, and 33 grams of saturated fat. And Jesus, the worst food is a shake from Baskin Robbins that has 2600 calories.
We didn't think anything could be worse than Baskin Robbins' 2008 bombshell, the Heath Bar Shake. After all, it had more sugar (266 grams) than 20 bowls of Froot Loops, more calories (2,310) than 11 actual Heath Bars, and more ingredients (73) than you'll find in most chemist labs. Rather than coming to their senses and removing it from the menu, they did themselves one worse and introduced this caloric catastrophe. It's soiled with more than a day's worth of calories and three days worth of saturated fat, and, worst of all, usually takes less than 10 minutes to sip through a straw.
Best movie shots, 2008
A review of 2008's best cinematographic moments: part one, part two.
This year the challenge was of a different sort. The field was curiously thin. It wasn't that the talent wasn't on display. God knows, a number of the greats were lining up behind the camera this year. But the images weren't as instantly iconic or as viscerally gripping as they were in 2007, which might have left me a bit disappointed on one hand. Then again, it just made searching for my favorites all the more involved and interesting, and I'm happy to offer my findings to you in this space, even if it meant doubling up.
This was one of my favorite "best of" lists from 2007 and I'm glad to see it return this year.
Update: Hmm, all the permalinks on that site appear to be broken. Maybe check back later?
Loathsome people
The 50 most loathsome people in America for 2008. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both make the list but She Who Shall Not Be Named Ever Again is #1. "You" makes the list at #43 and is my favorite.
You're hopping mad about an auto industry bailout that cost a squirt of piss compared to a Wall Street heist of galactic dimensions, due to a housing crash you somehow have blamed on minorities. It took you six years to figure out what a tool Bush is, but you think Obama will make it all better. You deem it hunky dory that we conduct national policy debates via 8-second clips from "The View." You think God zapped humans into existence a few thousand years ago, although your appendix and wisdom teeth disagree. You like watching vicious assholes insult each other on TV. You support gun rights, because firing one gives you a chubby. You cuddle falsehoods and resent enlightenment. You think the fact that 43% of whites could stomach voting for an incredibly charismatic and eloquent light-skinned black guy who was raised by white people means racism is over. You think progressive taxation is socialism. 1 in 100 of you are in jail, and you think it should be more. You are shallow, inconsiderate, afraid, brand-conscious, sedentary, and totally self-obsessed. You are American
Exhibit A: You're more upset by Miley Cyrus's glamour shots than the fact that you are a grown adult who is upset about Miley Cyrus.
Beatles songs ranked
A list like this could spark endless debate: a ranking of all the songs by The Beatles, from #185 (Revolution 9) to #1 (A Day In The Life).
To novice Beatles fans, I warn you not to believe the hype about "Revolution 9." I've listened to it many times over the years, waiting for the light in my head to switch on so I could unlock its mysteries. All I've ever gotten out of it is the vague feeling that immediately after listening to it, something is going to rise out from under my bed and butcher me in my sleep.
Each choice is extensively annotated and defended; start here if you want to work your way through them all.
The best Mac ever
I love stuff like this: what is the best Mac ever? Now, I'm no McIntosh expurt like Herr Gruber, but the best Mac ever has to be one of their notebooks...an iBook or Powerbook or MacBook Pro.
2008's television reviewed
I didn't watch a lot of TV last year but Todd VanDerWerff's review of 2008's television season makes me feel like I did.
I mean, not ALL television was bleak -- Mad Men ignored the industry-wide memo and gave us one of the best seasons of television ever, while Lost and Battlestar Galactica each hit new creative highs -- but the fact that The Wire and The Shield both wrapped up, with BSG and Lost soon to follow, made things SEEM that much bleaker.
I especially liked his definition of "socks folding TV":
A good socks-folding show is one that you can sort of pay attention to and enjoy. It's generally well-crafted, but not especially ambitious.
My all-time fave socks folding show is Star Trek: TNG. Even if you fold only when Troi is chattering away pointlessly, you can get a whole basket of clothes done before the second commercial.
Bad critics, Blu-ray, and unseen movies
A trio of movie-related links: Criticwatch runs down the movie critic whores of the year, DVD Beaver picks the Blu-rays of the year, and the best movies that you perhaps didn't see in 2008.
Top 100 science stories of 2008
Discover has a list of the top 100 science stories of 2008 (scroll a bit for the whole list). Post-oil, LHC, ice on Mars, cheap genomes, quantum spookiness, etc.
2008 is best sports year ever
Sports Illustrated named 2008 the best year ever in sports. In my best links post, I said that three 2008 sporting events stuck out in my mind but this article reminded me of one more: Jason Lezak's amazing anchor leg in the 4x100 freestyle.
Best special effects shots
A wide-ranging and carefully considered list of the top 50 special effects shots in movies. The Matrix bullet-time effect doesn't make this list because:
An effect extraordinarily limited in what can usefully be done with it, it has nonetheless been flogged to death in the 10 years since The Matrix.
The Burly Brawl from the second Matrix movie thankfully didn't make the list either, likely because the whole thing looks like a cartoonish video game (and not in a good way). The only quibble I can think of: maybe Titanic should have been on there somewhere? (via fimoculous)
Update: Titanic actually made the worst effects list. (thx, rob)
The Best Links 2008
This is the fifth annual selection of my favorite things I've linked to on kottke.org. This year's list includes games, photography, top-notch journalism, time-related material, architecture, design, and even politics, about 100 links in all. The format of the list is a bit different this year. Sprinkled amongst the usual high quality links are collections of links which fit into accidental categories that sprang up while going over the material, including my picks for the sites/blogs of the year. Enjoy.
Passage is a game that takes 5-minutes to play which possesses a poignancy that you wouldn't expect from such a simple game.
Beautiful slow-motion skateboarding with explosions. Directed by Spike Jonze. See also this video of slow-mo skateboarding tricks filmed with an ultra high resolution camera.
An extensive history of visual communication, from cave paintings on up to the present-day computer.
The NY Times published a stacked graph of movie box office receipts from 1986 to Feb 2008. More about stacked graphs.
Sites/blogs of the year: The growing cache of vintage photos from museums and other public institutions on The Commons project on Flickr barely edges out excellently edited superb photography of The Big Picture for the site of the year.
On the final episode of St. Elsewhere, it was revealed that an autistic child named Tommy Westphall had dreamt the whole show. Since St. Elsewhere had a number of connections to other shows, it turns out that a surprising number of other popular TV programs all took place in Tommy's mind too.
From The Onion: Pornography-Desensitized Populace Demands New Orifice To Look At and Researchers Discover Massive Asshole In Blogosphere.
Big Dog is a large robotic dog that can walk in snow and cannot be knocked down, even when kicked.
A 2104 messageboard about time travel reveals that you can't just go and kill Hitler whenever you'd like.
Maps of the Apollo 11 moon walks superimposed on a soccer pitch and a baseball diamond. They sure didn't walk very far.
This peeping shrubbery photo taken at a wedding by Mindy Meyers still makes me laugh.
David Attenborough narrates while two leopard slugs mate while hanging off of a tree branch.
An obituary recounting the almost unbelievable life of Charles Fawcett, actor, filmmaker, and adventurer.
Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: Backed by two huge and clueless media conglomerates, Hulu was never supposed to succeed but NBC and Fox managed to create a simple and compelling site for watching TV and movies online.
Matthew Dent's awesome designs for the new UK coinage.
Sentence Drawings and other literary visualizations from Stefanie Posavec.
2008 video for Something Good by The Utah Saints. Don't know why, but this makes me smile.
Elevators and stories about elevators, including an account of Nicholas White, who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Includes security camera footage of White's ordeal.
A map of all the streets in the lower 48 United States by Ben Fry.
An account of when Dateline NBC's To Catch a Predator segment goes wrong and someone dies.
The financial mess of 2008: Early in the year before the full extent of the chaos was known, n+1 had a lengthy interview with a hedge fund manager and followed up with him a couple months later. This American Life aired two radio programs that did an excellent job of explaining what caused the crisis: The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show about the Economy. After much of the smoke had cleared, former bond salesman and current bestselling author Michael Lewis sums up what happened in The End of Wall Street's Boom.
City of Shadows, timelapse photos of people in St. Petersburg taken by Alexey Titarenko. Particularly this one.
Stunning photos of the electrified plume of the Chaitén volcano in Chile. Some bigger photos at The Big Picture.
John Resig ported the Processing visual programming language to JavaScript.
Photos of a wedding and then an earthquake in Sichuan, China.
A retrospective of the NYC restaurant Florent by Frank Bruni for the NY Times doubles as a history of Manhattan's ebbs and flows over the past 20 years.
US political election logos from 1960 to 2008.
Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: It technically launched in 2007, but this was the year that many people realized that Amazon's MP3 store finally made it easier and more convenient to search for and buy DRM-free music than getting it for free and illegally elsewhere (Bittorrent, etc.). And I haven't bought a single mp3 on iTunes since Amazon's MP3 store opened.
Unbeknownst to the family who hired him to renovate their house, architect Eric Clough hid a puzzle in their apartment that remained unsolved for more than a year.
Atul Gawande writes about itching in the New Yorker. Really, really interesting.
Urban prankster Remi Gaillard kicks soccer balls into all sorts of unlikely goals, such as garbage cans, drive-thru windows, and police station entrances. The AC/DC soundtrack makes it perfect.
The covers for the books in Volume III of Penguin's Great Ideas series, most notably the brilliant cover for The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
A classic text on the economics of POW camps in Europe during WWII.
A 1985 BBC documentary about the painter Francis Bacon. Entertaining and enlightening even if you don't care about painting.
Sports: Three 2008 sports happenings stick out for me. 1. The epic Federer/Nadal final at Wimbledon. It was almost 5 hours long (not including the rain delay) and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. 2. Usain Bolt winning both the 100m and 200m in world record time at the Beijing Olympics. Bolt celebrating so early before crossing the finish in the 100m was impressive but the margin of victory in the 200m was an astounding athletic feat. 3. The Michael Phelps / Milorad Cavic photo finish in the men's 100m butterfly final provoked much discussion and some of the only excitement on the way to Phelps winning a record eight golds at the Beijing games.
Christopher Hitchens writes about being waterboarded. Here's the video of his experience.
This Lego version of Stephen Hawking is uncanny.
A selection of thirty stunning satellite photos of the Earth that appear abstract.
David Carr recounts his time as a single parent and crackhead in Minneapolis.
Dorothy Gambrell documents a trip around the world, part of which happened aboard a cargo ship. Read from the bottom and keep clicking "Next Entries".
Things which aren't so much links as products:The Apple keyboard is the best keyboard ever made. RjDj is an iPhone app that samples sounds from your immediate environment and plays them back to you with music.
On June 19th, the Mars Phoenix Lander twittered that it had discovered evidence of ice on Mars.
Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats showcases vintage photography in categories such as The Cool Hall of Fame, The Heretofore Unmentioned, and When Legends Gather.
Frédéric Bourdin is a French con man who made his way to the United States posing as an abducted teenager even though he was in his mid-20s at the time.
Brain researcher Jill Boyte Taylor tells the audience at TED about the time she had a massive stroke and how the experience informed her later research.
Bill Sizemore, a long-time observer of Pat Robertson's activities, pens a lengthy profile of the fundamentalist Christian for VQR.
Lenny "Nails" Dykstra, former Met and Philly, is faring well in the business world and remains highly entertaining.
Fantastic Contraption, an incredibly addictive Flash game where you build machines out of seemingly simple parts to solve increasingly difficult puzzles.
Switched at Birth tells the tale of two girls who were swapped for one another at the hospital and didn't find out more than 40 years later even though one of the mothers knew the whole time. See also The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar.
Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: Roger Ebert's blog demonstrates that he might be a better cultural commentator than film critic. Either way, he's never been better.
Some well-meaning kids show off their unintentionally hilarious science project posters.
Dyna Moe's excellent illustrated moments from Mad Men.
Merlin Mann wants to do Better.
Improv Everywhere used a Jumbotron, dozens of crazy fans, color programs, mascots, NBC sportscaster Jim Gray, and the Goodyear blimp to make a typical Little League game between the Lugnuts and Mudcats into The Best Game Ever.
Dan Hill explains extensively about the process for designing the web site for Monocle magazine.
The literal version of A Ha's Take On Me video.
R.I.P. David Foster Wallace: Wallace gave what I think is his final interview to the WSJ's Christopher Farley about Wallace's book about John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. After Wallace died, I collected a number of online remembrances. David Lipsky's The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace for Rolling Stone and McSweeney's reprint of a 1987 profile of Wallace both capture who Wallace was and how much he gave of himself to his family, friends, and the world.
Test your visual geometric accuracy with the eyeballing game.
Michael Pollan's letter to the next President of the United States: "we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine".
Filip Dujardin stitches together parts of different photographs of buildings to make pictures of new and sometimes crazy & impossible buildings. This one of those "I wish I'd thought of that" projects.
A segment from the This American Life TV show about a Chicago restaurant called The Wieners Circle which turns into a sexually and racially charged free-for-all on weekend nights, much to the delight of the patrons, the heavily tipped workers, and the owners.
Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: The Art of the Title blog obsesses over the increasingly elaborate and celebrated craft of movie title sequences.
Steward Brand posted the entirety of How Buildings Learn online. The 1997 BBC documentary was based on Brand's excellent book of the same name.
Charles Mann on the Earth's soil for National Geographic Magazine.
Google's archive of millions of photographs from Life magazine.
Barack Obama (and the other guy): Since meeting him more than four years ago, photojournalist Callie Shell has taken a number of great photos of Obama. Just after the election, Newsweek posted an epic seven-part series about the Obama, McCain, and Clinton campaigns resulting from a year of behind-the-scenes reporting. David Remnick weighed in on Obama and race in America. And a March 2008 interview with rapper DMX reveals that he has no idea who Barack Obama is. "The nigga's name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain't his fuckin' name."
The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway.
Video showing how to build an igloo, a must-see for those interested in architecture.
Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: I couldn't leave this one off. Christoph Niemann doesn't post to his NY Times blog very often, but each entry is a gem. I love his kids' obsession with the NYC subway.
Vanity Fair constructs several menus for George W. Bush's final days in the White House. Includes such dishes as Gored hearts of Palm Beach, with hanging chad; Deep-fried Halliburton, in Saddam Hoisin Sauce; and New Orleans flounder.
If you're still information deprived after all that, you can check out the lists from 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.
Favorite posts of 2008
As an appetizer before my annual best links of the year post (coming Monday, I hope), I put together a list of kottke.org posts from 2008 that I liked the most and that may be worth a look if you missed them the first time around.
In January, I liveblogged the Mythbusters episode about the airplane on the conveyor belt. I still get email telling me that the plane won't take off.
Time merge media is a collection of video and photographic works which display multiple time periods at once.
A collection of single serving sites, single-page sites like Barack Obama Is My New Bicycle, Khaaan!, and Is Lost A Repeat?
A liveblog of the Oscars written without actually watching them.
A post about the end of The Wire.
In March, kottke.org turned 10 years old and I collected a bunch of the previous designs together.
One of my all-time favorite threads on kottke.org: saying words wrong on purpose.
My favorite graph which doubles as a picture of my son.
Stanley Kubrick, Pablo Ferro, and Arthur Lipsett.
A photo of Ollie attempting to walk in Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern.
A collection of early movie reviews, including one by Maxim Gorky from 1896.
Survival tips for the Middle Ages, another great thread about how a contemporary person might fend for themselves in 1000 AD.
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a book printed in 1499 but which looks quite contemporary.
The most beautiful suicide, a photo of Evelyn Hale taken by Robert Wiles a few minutes after she jumped from the Empire State Building
A pair of posts about the Metropolitan Life Tower: the tower's past and future and an unusual death that occurred in the building shortly after it opened.
A collection of election maps from the 2008 US Presidential election.
And finally, the opening space scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey with chickens from The Muppet Show clucking the Blue Danube waltz.
Buzzwords, 2008
Grant Barrett and Mark Leibovich review the buzzwords of 2008. Good to see "nuke the fridge" and Flickr's "long photo" make it.
Best architecture of 2008
Paul Goldberger, the New Yorker's architecture critic, lists his ten favorite buildings of 2008.
In time for the 2008 Olympics, the world saw the fruits of China's decision to put aside nationalism, hire the greatest architects from around the world, and let them do the kind of things they could never afford to do at home. That brought us two of the greatest buildings of the year, Herzog and de Meuron's extraordinary Olympic Stadium, the stunning steel latticework structure widely known as the Bird's Nest; and Norman Foster's Beijing Airport, a project that was not only bigger than any other airport in the world, but more beautiful, more logically laid out, and more quickly built. And the headquarters of CCTV, the Chinese television network, by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture -- a building which I had thought was going to be a pretentious piece of structural exhibitionism -- turned out to be a compelling and exciting piece of structural exhibitionism.
Big disagree on Eliasson's NYC waterfalls...they were underwhelming.
Worst/best logos of 2008
Brand New runs down the best and worst new logos of 2008. Some of the bad ones are downright awful...the WGN one is crazy bad.
Big Picture's photos of the year
The wonderful Big Picture presents part one of the year 2008 in photographs. I'll say it again, seeing these fantastic photos large is a whole 'nother ball game. Parts two and three to come later today and tomorrow.
Update: Part two.
Update: And part three.
Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2008
Bad Astronomy has its list of the top 10 astronomy pictures of 2008 up. It includes this video of the moon orbiting the earth, comprised of a series of photos taken by a reassigned space probe.
There has never been a generation of humans in all of history who could see such an event. If you ever get a little depressed, or lonely, or think like there's nothing going on that's interesting any more, think on that for a moment or two. A thousand generations of people could only imagine such a thing, but we can actually do it.
(thx, amos)
Obama, Time's Person of the Year for 2008
In an obvious move, Time named Barack Obama their Person of the Year for 2008. But give Time credit; they got Shepard Fairey to do the cover based on his iconic poster of Obama.
Update: They've also compiled some of the best photos of Obama from Flickr.
Update: Here's a video of Fairey talking about his work and how he created the Time cover.
Designs of the year, 2008
Some design heavies -- Paula Scher and Gary Hustwit among them -- choose their design highlights of 2008.
The best conceived, designed, and expressed total idea, ever: Barack Obama's entire campaign, each and every part of it, including Barack Obama.
Two designs I found interesting were the Surface Table (made of carbon fiber, it's only 2mm thick for a 13-foot-long table!) and Boudicca Wode Perfume, which sprays on blue and fades to transparent over time. (via quips)
The Year in Media Errors and Corrections
Regret the Error has released their annual roundup of media errors and corrections for 2008. The absurd corrections are always the best:
We have been asked to point out that Stuart Kennedy, of Flat E, 38 Don Street, Aberdeen, who appeared at Peterhead Sheriff Court on Monday, had 316 pink, frilly garters confiscated not 316 pink, frilly knickers.
And this:
A film review on Sept. 5 about "Save Me" confused some characters and actors. It is Mark, not Chad, who is sent to the Genesis House retreat for converting gay men to heterosexuality. (Mark is played by Chad Allen; there is no character named Chad). The hunky fellow resident is Scott (played by Robert Gant), not Ted (Stephen Lang). And it is Mark and Scott -- not "Chad and Ted" -- who partake of cigarettes and "furtive man-on-man action."
They also highlighted a Guardian typo: "Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel is One Hundred Years of Solitude, not One Hundred Years of Solicitude". I don't know though...2006 and 2005 were pretty great.
The Year in Ideas
The NY Times has posted their annual Year in Ideas collection for 2008, packaged this year in an "interactive feature", which is Esperanto for "no permalinks". A favorite so far in paging through is Tokujin Yoshioka's Venus Natural Crystal Chair, a piece of furniture grown in mineral water.
Update: Permalinks are a go. I repeat, permalinks are a go. Here's the one for the crystal chair. (thx, everyone)
The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008
Foreign Policy has their annual list of The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008. For instance, more coca than ever is being grown in Colombia despite the billions the US has spent to "win" the "war" on drugs.
The Year in Reading 2008
It's time again for The Year in Reading, the annual feature from The Millions that asks a few trusted readers to share what they were into this year, bookwise.
American Dialect Society
The American Dialect Society is now accepting nominations for the word of the year of 2008.
The best "word of the year" candidates will be:
-new or newly popular in 2008
-widely or prominently used in 2008
-indicative or reflective of the national discourseMulti-word compounds or phrases that act as single lexical items are welcomed, as well.
Hit up their email address with your nomination.
Best book cover design of 2008
The Book Design Review lists their favorite book covers for 2008. Go forth and drool.
Best Esquire stories
In celebration of its semisesquicentennial1, Esquire magazine shares the seven greatest stories ever told in the pages of their magazine and has published them online in their entirety. (See also Esquire's 70 greatest sentences.) Get a load of these initial paragraphs.
The School by C.J. Chivers:
Kazbek Misikov stared at the bomb hanging above his family. It was a simple device, a plastic bucket packed with explosive paste, nails, and small metal balls. It weighed perhaps eight pounds. The existence of this bomb had become a central focus of his life. If it exploded, Kazbek knew, it would blast shrapnel into the heads of his wife and two sons, and into him as well, killing them all.
The Falling Man by Tom Junod:
In the picture, he departs from this earth like an arrow. Although he has not chosen his fate, he appears to have, in his last instants of life, embraced it. If he were not falling, he might very well be flying. He appears relaxed, hurtling through the air. He appears comfortable in the grip of unimaginable motion. He does not appear intimidated by gravity's divine suction or by what awaits him. His arms are by his side, only slightly outriggered. His left leg is bent at the knee, almost casually. His white shirt, or jacket, or frock, is billowing free of his black pants. His black high-tops are still on his feet. In all the other pictures, the people who did what he did -- who jumped -- appear to be struggling against horrific discrepancies of scale. They are made puny by the backdrop of the towers, which loom like colossi, and then by the event itself. Some of them are shirtless; their shoes fly off as they flail and fall; they look confused, as though trying to swim down the side of a mountain. The man in the picture, by contrast, is perfectly vertical, and so is in accord with the lines of the buildings behind him. He splits them, bisects them: Everything to the left of him in the picture is the North Tower; everything to the right, the South. Though oblivious to the geometric balance he has achieved, he is the essential element in the creation of a new flag, a banner composed entirely of steel bars shining in the sun. Some people who look at the picture see stoicism, willpower, a portrait of resignation; others see something else -- something discordant and therefore terrible: freedom. There is something almost rebellious in the man's posture, as though once faced with the inevitability of death, he decided to get on with it; as though he were a missile, a spear, bent on attaining his own end. He is, fifteen seconds past 9:41 a.m. EST, the moment the picture is taken, in the clutches of pure physics, accelerating at a rate of thirty-two feet per second squared. He will soon be traveling at upwards of 150 miles per hour, and he is upside down. In the picture, he is frozen; in his life outside the frame, he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears.
What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? by Richard Ben Cramer:
Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those. There's a story about him I think of now. This is not about baseball but fishing. He meant to be the best there, too. One day he says to a Boston writer: "Ain't no one in heaven or earth ever knew more about fishing."
"Sure there is," says the scribe.
"Oh, yeah? Who?"
"Well, God made the fish."
"Yeah, awright," Ted says. "But you have to go pretty far back."
Frank Sinatra Has a Cold by Gay Talese:
Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.
M by John Sack:
One, two, three at the most weeks and they would give M company its orders -- they being those dim Olympian entities who reputedly threw cards into an IBM machine or into a hat to determine where each soldier in M would go next, which ones to stay there in the United States, which to live softly in Europe, and which to fight and to die in Vietnam.
The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes! by Tom Wolfe:
Ten o'clock Sunday morning in the hills of North Carolina. Cars, miles of cars, in every direction, millions of cars, pastel cars, aqua green, aqua blue, aqua beige, aqua buff, aqua dawn, aqua dusk, aqua aqua, aqua Malacca, Malacca lacquer, Cloud lavender, Assassin pink, Rake-a-cheek raspberry. Nude Strand coral, Honest Thrill orange, and Baby Fawn Lust cream-colored cars are all going to the stock-car races, and that old mothering north Carolina sun keeps exploding off the windshields. Mother dog!
Superman Comes to the Supermarket by Norman Mailer:
For once let us try to think about a political convention without losing ourselves in housing projects of fact and issue. Politics has its virtues, all too many of them -- it would not rank with baseball as a topic of conversation if it did not satisfy a great many things -- but one can suspect that its secret appeal is close to nicotine. Smoking cigarettes insulates one from one's life, one does not feel as much, often happily so, and politics quarantines one from history; most of the people who nourish themselves in the political life are in the game not to make history but to be diverted from the history which is being made.
[1] That's seventy five years, yo. Quattuordecennial is the anniversarial name for fourteen years. Others. ↩
European Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008
Check out the winners of the European Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 competition...lots of amazing photography here. Warning: the winning image is a little disturbing for the faint of heart.
Best of list season starts earlier and earlier
And so it begins. The Ralph Lauren Rugby store near Union Square took delivery of its Christmas decorations on Monday and the end of the year lists have already started appearing online. So far there's Time's best inventions of 2008 and Amazon's best books of 2008.
Best news photos
Vanity Fair has a list of the 25 best news photographs. Many are familar but I had never seen the photo of Roman Polanski sitting outside his house after his wife's murder. (Quite a few of these photos are disturbing. Viewer beware.)
Best sports journalism
In a recent column, ESPN sports writer Bill Simmons shared his list of best sports pieces ever written. Max from The Millions took Simmons' list and found many of the articles were available online for your complementary reading pleasure. Authors include Gay Talese, Roger Angell, George Plimton, and David Foster Wallace.
23 of the toughest math questions
DARPA is soliciting research proposals for people wishing to solve one of twenty-three mathematical challenges, many of which deal with attempting to find a mathematical basis underlying biology.
What are the Fundamental Laws of Biology?: This question will remain front and center for the next 100 years. DARPA places this challenge last as finding these laws will undoubtedly require the mathematics developed in answering several of the questions listed above.
(via rw)
Scariest movies?
In preparation for a panel at the New Yorker Festival, Ben Greenman put together a list of the five scariest movies of all time. I've never seen a horror movie (unless Blair Witch Project counts) so Silence of the Lambs would be my top pick.
26 actors who deserve better careers
A list of actors who deserve better careers. Quentin Tarantino should do a film starring all of these actors and raise their boats like he did with John Travolta.
Best magazine covers of the year
Finalists for the 2008 magazine cover of the year competition. That Spitzer one always makes me laugh.
Best show poll results
Almost 4000 people have taken the best show on TV poll so now is a good time to take a look at the results. Here are the top five:
The Wire: 16%
The Simpsons: 8%
Seinfeld: 7%
Arrested Development: 7%
The West Wing: 6%
No other show got more than 4% of the total vote. As expected, The Wire topped the list1. Some notes:
- Arrested Development ranked 4th overall, way higher than I would have thought. People love this show more than the ratings and its duration (it was cancelled after 3 seasons) would indicate.
- The Sopranos was not in the top five. My feeling is that if this poll were conducted five years from now, it would rate higher...the influence this show has had on TV is only starting to be felt.
- Beavis and Butt-head beat out The Honeymooners for second-to-last place. Ralph and Alice deserve better.
- Shows I would have liked to see higher in the list: Deadwood, Sesame Street, The Sopranos.
- I love Seinfeld, but it was ranked too high. At 2%, Buffy got 2% more of the vote than I would have given it.
- Shows that some thought should be on the list: Law & Order (love the show but it defines formulaic TV), The Twilight Zone (perhaps), Doctor Who (again, love it, but nothing this cheesy can be the best show on TV), Sex and the City, Rome, Carnivale, Heroes, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Thanks to everyone who voted.
[1] I got some emails saying that The Wire ranked first only because I talk about the show so much on the site. That was probably a factor, but it's not like this is a Wire fan site or something. The poll wasn't that scientific anyway. Run a similar poll on Perez Hilton and American Idol might have won. Or on a site that appeals to 50-somethings and some of the older shows on the list might have done better. All this poll really shows is what people who like the kinds of things I post about on kottke.org also like to watch on television. (This was also not, as someone suggested, an attempt to gather information about viewing habits for advertisers. Duh.) ↩
Best show on TV ever?
Just for fun, I whipped up a little poll based on the best show(s) on TV post the other day:
What's the best show that's ever been on television?
There are around 30 shows on the list; please consider all the options before choosing.
Production notes: My methodology can be described as "half-assed". I consulted a number of "best of" lists in choosing the shows -- not just the ones listed in yesterday's post -- and excluded some currently airing shows on which the jury is still out (e.g. 30 Rock, Mad Men) for lack of sufficient evidence. No miniseries allowed, episodic only. My feeling is that there are still too many show on the list (there are four or maybe five real choices) but I wanted to give people options. Also, unless the list is missing something *very* obvious, I'm not looking for additions so don't even think about Cmd-N'ing that mail message.
The best show on television, all of them
According to several TV writers, bloggers, and cultural critics, each of these is the best show on television.
The Wire
Lost
Friday Night Lights
Deadwood
30 Rock
The Daily Show
Battlestar Galactica
The Sopranos
Arrested Development
Studio 60
South Park
Veronica Mars
Six Feet Under
Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Dallas Cowboys
The Colbert Report
Mad Men
The West Wing
Mad Men is getting the most buzz lately but The Wire is still the high-water mark (in my opinion as well as the web's collective opinion according to Google). The Sopranos gets surprisingly little love as the top show, although its relatively weak competition back in the early 2000s perhaps means it didn't need to be said. The quality of television for the past 3-5 years is impressive...most of the shows listed above were all on at the same time.
Great arts videos
A list of fifty great arts video available on YouTube, including Joy Division playing on Granada Television in 1978, Jack Kerouac reads On the Road in 1959, and Jackson Pollock making one of his drip paintings in 1951.
Best TV commercials by movie directors
Ten cool TV commercials done by movie directors. Ridley Scott's 1984 Apple ad makes the list along with spots by Messrs. Jonze and (Wes) Anderson. BTW, Jonze's Ikea commercial is superior to his Gap ad. (via self-employedsandwich)
Best photos of the Beijing Olympics
Three galleries of the best photos taken at the Olympics. Part 2 and part 3. NSFW.
Update: Caveat to the links above: all the photos above are lifted from elsewhere. You may prefer the collection at Big Picture instead. I've got mixed feelings about sites that take photos from other sites without proper attribution. On one hand, the photographers are not getting their due credit and payment for those photos but on the other, the act of collecting and curating adds something new to the work and results in something worthwhile. I wish there were a way for sites to make groups of photos like these without the hefty licensing expenses...the photographers get more of their photos out there and we get all sorts of neat views through the lenses of the photographers and talented curators. (thx, josh)
Top ten psychology videos
The top ten psychology videos includes footage of the Stanford Prison Experiment and Jill Boyte Taylor's TED talk about having a stroke. Surely this 45-min video about The Milgram Experiment should have been on the list.
Stupid ideas captured
Maggie collects the top ten stupidest ideas depicted on Flickr. These are pretty amazing.
Top 25 documentaries
In October 2007, the International Documentary Association made a list of the 25 best documentaries.
1. Hoop Dreams (1994), Steve James
2. The Thin Blue Line (1988), Errol Morris
3. Bowling for Columbine (2002), Michael Moore
4. Spellbound (2002), Jeffrey Blitz
5. Harlan County U.S.A. (1976), Barbara Kopple
6. An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Davis Guggenheim
7. Crumb (1994), Terry Zwigoff
8. Gimme Shelter (1970), Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin
9. The Fog of War (2003), Errol Morris
10. Roger & Me (1989), Michael Moore
11. Super Size Me (2004), Morgan Spurlock
12. Don't Look Back (1967) D.A. Pennebaker
13. Salesman (1968), Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin
14. Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (1982), Godfrey Reggio
15. Sherman's March (1986), Ross McElwee
16. Grey Gardens (1976), Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer
17. Capturing the Friedmans (2003), Andrew Jarecki
18. Born into Brothels, (2004), Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
19. Titicut Follies (1967), Frederick Wiseman
20. Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Wim Wenders
21. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Michael Moore
22. Winged Migration (2002), Jacques Perrin
23. Grizzly Man (2005), Werner Herzog
24. Night and Fog (1955), Alain Resnais
25. Woodstock (1970), Michael Wadleigh
Recent classic book covers
Entertainment Weekly recently compiled a list of well-designed book covers from the past 25 years. Not fantastic but a solid list worth browsing.
Dumb Pixar ranking list
Vulture's wrong, wrong, wrong list of the best Pixar films. Finding Nemo belongs in #1 with The Incredibles and Ratatouille close behind. Then Toy Story 2 followed by the rest. Putting The Incredibles in the #7 spot, that's just plain irresponsible.
100 best movie posters
A list of the 100 best movie posters of all time. There's a lot to disagree with on this list. American Beauty at #2?
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
Ok, we've done books so let's move on to movies. From the book by Steven Jay Schneider comes a list of 1001 movies you must see before you die. Since it's less time consuming to watch movies rather than read books, I did a lot better on this list...I've seen 214/1001 movies on the list. My favorites are marked with an asterisk.
Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror(1922)
The General (1927)
King Kong (1933)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Pinocchio (1940)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
On the Waterfront (1954)
Rear Window (1954)
The Seven Samurai (1954)
Touch of Evil (1958)
The 400 Blows (1959)
North by Northwest (1959)
La Jetee (1961)
West Side Story (1961)
Lolita (1962)
Goldfinger (1964)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)*
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Faster, Pussy Cat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
The Graduate (1967)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)*
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Harold and Maude (1971)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Deliverance (1972)
The Godfather (1972)*
The Sting (1973)
American Graffiti (1973)
The Conversation (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Chinatown (1974)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
The Godfather Part II (1974)*
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Barry Lyndon (1975)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
All the President's Men (1976)
Rocky (1976)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Network (1976)*
Star Wars (1977)*
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Annie Hall (1977)
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Grease (1978)
Alien (1979)
Life of Brian (1979)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Jerk (1979)
The Muppet Movie (1979)
The Shining (1980)*
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)*
Airplane! (1980)
Raging Bull (1980)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)*
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1981)
E.T.: The Extra-Terestrial (1982)
Blade Runner (1982)
Tootsie (1982)
Gandhi (1982)
A Christmas Story (1983)
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
The Right Stuff (1983)
Scarface (1983)
Amadeus (1984)
The Terminator (1984)
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
Ghostbusters (1984)
The Killing Fields (1984)
The Natural (1984)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Back to the Future (1985)
Brazil (1985)
Stand By Me (1986)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Aliens (1986)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
A Room with a View (1986)
Platoon (1986)
Top Gun (1986)
Raising Arizona (1987)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Withnail and I (1987)
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
The Princess Bride (1987)
The Untouchables (1987)
Fatal Attraction (1987)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Akira (1988)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
The Naked Gun (1988)
Big (1988)
Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
Die Hard (1988)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Rain Man (1988)
The Accidental Tourist (1988)
Batman (1989)
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Roger & Me (1989)
Glory (1989)
Say Anything (1989)
Goodfellas (1990)
Jacob's Ladder (1990)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Pretty Woman (1990)
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Total Recall (1990)
Boyz 'n the Hood (1991)
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)*
JFK (1991)
Slacker (1991)
The Player (1992)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)*
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Unforgiven (1992)
The Crying Game (1992)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Philadelphia (1993)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Schindler's List (1993)
The Piano (1993)
Hoop Dreams (1994)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Clerks (1994)
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
The Lion King (1994)
Natural Born Killers (1994)
Pulp Fiction (1994)*
Muriel's Wedding (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)*
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Casino (1995)
Babe (1995)
Toy Story (1995)
Braveheart (1995)
Clueless (1995)
Heat (1995)
Seven (1995)*
Smoke (1995)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Fargo (1996)
Independence Day (1996)
The English Patient (1996)
Shine (1996)
Trainspotting (1996)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Princess Mononoke (1997)*
The Butcher Boy (1997)
The Ice Storm (1997)
Boogie Nights (1997)*
Titanic (1997)*
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Buffalo 66 (1998)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Run Lola Run (1998)
Rushmore (1998)*
Pi (1998)
Happiness (1998)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
There's Something About Mary (1998)
Magnolia (1999)*
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Three Kings (1999)
Fight Club (1999)
Being John Malkovich (1999)
American Beauty (1999)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
The Matrix (1999)*
Gladiator (2000)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Amores Perros (2000)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Traffic (2000)
Memento (2000)
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Amelie (2001)
Spirited Away (2001)
No Man's Land (2001)
Moulin Rouge (2001)
Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)*
The Pianist (2002)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Oldboy (2003)
Good Bye Lenin! (2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)*
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
A Very Long Engagement (2004)
Sideways (2004)
Caché (2005)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
The Constant Gardener (2005)
If you'd like to post your movie list, I used this list along with a list of additions and subtractions.
Update: The very latest edition of the book adds and subtracts some more movies to/from the list; here are the added movies that I've seen:
Crash (2004)
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
The Prestige (2006)
United 93 (2006)
Children of Men (2006)
El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)
The Queen (2006)
Apocalypto (2006)
The Departed (2006)
Volver (2006)
And deleted from the list:
Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
A Very Long Engagement (2004)
Caché (2005)
It's interesting to watch the churn on a list like this. With the newest movies, they're making guesses as to how they'll age and in many cases, the guesses aren't that good. Also, removing Caché for Apocalypto? No fucking way. (thx, jack)
100 essential jazz albums
David Remnick lists the top 100 essential jazz albums. Caveat:
I thought it might be useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums, more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of quarrelling for the collector.
The list is a companion piece to Remnick's article on jazz DJ Phil Schapp.
1001 Books That You Must Read Before You Die
A list of 1001 (fiction) Books That You Must Read Before You Die, from a book of the same name. I read too much nonfiction to be well-read fiction-wise, but I have read these thirty from the list:
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace*
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami*
Contact, Carl Sagan*
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov*
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell*
Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
Animal Farm, George Orwell
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien*
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen*
Candide, Voltaire
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Some of my very favorites are on there.
Update: Following Marco's lead, I've marked some favorites with an asterisk. Under duress, I'd admit to the following as my top three favorite fiction books, in order: Infinite Jest, 1984, and Lolita.
Fifty greatest TV shows of all time
There's much to argue with on this list of the 50 greatest TV shows of all time. Too many 1 or 2 season shows and recent shows. And Buffy at #2? Christ, whatever.
A list of the top one articles
A list of the top one articles by Neal Pollack about how sportswriters should stop writing about the NBA MVP race and, oh yeah, lists of stuff are dumb:
Sportswriters and pundits, on the other hand, are treating the MVP race with the gravitas of a presidential election. That's because they make up the Electoral College. When they're debating who's going to win the award, they're not really talking about who they think the best player is; they're talking about whom they should pick as the best player. It's the ultimate circle-jerk of sports-guy self-regard.
A somewhat uneven list of the best
A somewhat uneven list of the best films that never won a Best Picture Oscar. As the commenters point out, lots of good films (like Raging Bull & Dr. Strangelove) were missed. (via house next door)
A visual look at the top 10 trends
A visual look at the top 10 trends in spring/summer 2008 fashion, including parachute silk, higher waistlines, and skinny belts.
It will take you literally hours to
It will take you literally hours to get through this list of the 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time (video often included). (thx, miguel)
Video of the top 50 soccer goals. A
Video of the top 50 soccer goals. A dubbed-from-VCR YouTube video is probably not the best way to watch these, but that's the hand we've been dealt.
A large list of interesting print catalogs
A large list of interesting print catalogs for niche industries and hobbies.
Cabela's. 1400 pages of hunting, fishing & outdoor gear. Comes with foldout index tabs and if you spend appalling amounts there (like my SO), they send you a hardbound version.
(via mathowie)
Top ten artists suffering the Lindsey Buckingham
Top ten artists suffering the Lindsey Buckingham Paradox.
The Lindsey Buckingham Paradox is what happens when otherwise brilliant musicians decide they're better than their bandmates (creative differences, natch), strike out on their own with solo "careers", and somewhat curiously never again manage to grasp his or her own genius in the way we all know is possible.
Sting clocks in at #2:
Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers brought their own special flavors to the Police party, and without them, Sting is just a big bowl of goddamned puffy cheetos. Like Bono, maybe, without the passion or, you know, cred.
In a review (of sorts) of the
In a review (of sorts) of the Paris Hilton vehicle The Hottie and the Nottie on the eve of its UK release, critic Joe Queenan picks his worst movie of all time, along with the criteria he used to choose it.
To qualify as one of the worst movies ever made, a motion picture must induce a sense of dread in those who have seen it, a fear that they may one day be forced to watch the film again -- and again -- and again.
Gigli wasn't that bad. Neither was Jersey Girl.
The world's 50 best works of art and
The world's 50 best works of art and where to go to see them. Random Knowledge has links to all the art so you can check them out virtually in less time and for less money.
If you can ignore the stupid one-logo-per-page
If you can ignore the stupid one-logo-per-page interface, check out the 25 best band logos.
The UK Sunday newspaper The Observer recently
The UK Sunday newspaper The Observer recently published a list of the world's 50 most powerful blogs. kottke.org is fourth on the list. "Powerful" seems to be a word used here for its succinct headline value...that adjective doesn't fit many of the blogs on the list. But The Observer has made an effort to build a wide-ranging list of blogs that you should be reading...it's very nice to be included.
Typographica's list of their favorite typefaces of 2007.
Typographica's list of their favorite typefaces of 2007. Some great work in that list. I also enjoyed Mark Simonson's explanation of the difference between a font and a typeface:
The physical embodiment of a collection of letters (whether it's a case of metal pieces or a computer file) is a font. When referring to the design of the collection (the way it looks) you call it a typeface.
Oh and also good was that they were thoughtful enough to wait until 2007 was actually over to make their selections.
Top shots of 2007
An annotated list of the top ten cinematographic moments in film in 2007: part 1 and part 2.
The shot that stuck out in my head the very first time I saw the film spoke to me so deeply that I referenced it in my initial review: "A few years trickle by as Plainview adds onto his enterprise until finally, oil. A black-tarred hand reaches to the sky and suddenly you sense the influence of Stanley Kubrick on the film. Like the apes who discovered weaponry in "2001: A Space Odyssey," Plainview has come upon the object that will dictate America's destiny for the next century and more." I don't thiink I could say it any better now.
(via house next door)
Missed this a couple of months ago:
Missed this a couple of months ago: the shortlisted passages in the Bad Sex Award 2007 competition.
She nods and smiles. She is absurdly beautiful. I start to slip off my jeans and I feel her gaze as I stand in my bra and pants. Why am I embarrassed about taking off my clothes right in front of a robot? I pull the dress over my head like a schoolgirl, untie my hair, and sit down. She is smiling, just a little bit, as though she knows her effect.
To calm myself down and appear in control I reverse the problem. 'Spike, you're a robot, but why are you such a drop-dead gorgeous robot? I mean, is it necessary to be the most sophisticated machine ever built and to look like a movie star?'
The Curly Tail Grub holds the top
The Curly Tail Grub holds the top slot in the list of the 50 greatest fishing lures of all time.
A list of the 100 books every child
A list of the 100 books every child should read. No Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and probably a little Brit-heavy for those in other countries but otherwise solid. Plenty of Roald Dahl (I still occasionally reread Danny, the Champion of the World).
Grading the world's flags. Gambia is a
Grading the world's flags. Gambia is a surprise #1. (via marginal revolution)
On the occasion of Tom Brady's incredible
On the occasion of Tom Brady's incredible season, ESPN compiles a list of the 25 greatest individual seasons in sports history.
If you were still on vacation last
If you were still on vacation last week, you might want to check out my list of the best links of 2007. I guarantee you'll find something to get your mind off of that looming deadline.
The 2007 installment of the BBC's list of 100
The 2007 installment of the BBC's list of 100 things we didn't know last year.
31. There is mobile phone reception from the summit of Mount Everest.
2007: The Year in Pictures from the NY Times.
2007: The Year in Pictures from the NY Times.
The Best Links 2007
For the fourth year running, here are some of my favorite articles, videos, games, photography, discussions, and design pieces that I linked to in 2007. After you're done with these, try the lists from 2004, 2005, and 2006.
The streets of Portland are an ice skating rink for cars in this video.
Reconsidering the original three Star Wars movies in light of the prequels. R2D2 = top rebel spy.
Adam Gadahn's journey from rural California teen and death metal fan to a trusted member of Osama bin Laden's team of operatives.
Chris Jordan's photo series, Running the Numbers.
Michael Poliza's aerial photos of Africa. More here.
Malcolm Gladwell on Enron and the difference between puzzles and mysteries, investigationally speaking.
Smashing Telly, a collection of TV on the web, with an emphasis on documentaries and factual programs. I liked David's post on Zeitgeist and FEBLs.
Video of an autistic person describing the language she uses to communicate with her surroundings.
Good People, a short story by David Foster Wallace.
Nicholas Felton's personal annual report for 2006.
A pair of posts from Neatorama on photography: 13 Photographs That Changed the World and The Wonderful World of Early Photography.
Susan Orlean on Robert Lang, former physicist and current world-class origami master. Here's my post on Lang.
A Line Rider masterpiece. (Line Rider?)
Kremlin Inc., a story of Vladimir Putin's de facto dictatorship of Russia.
2007 was the year of book art: Thomas Allen's pulp cutouts, Cara Barer's water-crumpled books, Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books whose spines tell small stories, and Brian Dettmer's book sculptures.
Joel Johnson's great post on Gizmodo scolding the site's writers, gadget makers, and the site's readers "for supporting the disgusting cycle of gadget whoring".
Denis Darzacq's photographs of people seemingly floating above the pavement.
Panoramic photos from the Apollo missions. These are stunning.
Michael Pollan on the rise of nutritionism. His advice for healthy eating: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Desktop Tower Defense. This would top my Ten Best Games of the Year list if I'd done one.
On Conscientious, several photographers answer the question "What makes a great photo?"
Shorpy, a photoblog of old photographs, and FFFFOUND!, an image bookmarking site. Neither is probably legal in the strict sense, but they're both great online curated galleries.
Alberto Forero has collected a staggering amount of photography and design imagery and posted it to his Flickr account.
Social Explorer, interactive demographic maps.
Hypermilers try to wring as many miles per gallon out of their cars as they can. (My post.)
Darwin's God. Are humans biologically wired to believe in God?
Dan Hill reviews Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, a film that follows soccer star Zinedine Zidane through a single game.
Minority Kart, possibly the GAGOAT (greatest animated gif of all time).
Miranda July's wonderful handcrafted web site for her book No One Belongs Here More Than You.
An article on commuting, this crazy thing that most Americans do too much of.
The graph of US home prices from 1890 to the present as a rollercoaster.
As a social experiment, the Washington Post arranged for internationally acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell to play outside a DC subway station. Would anyone notice?
The New Yorker on David Belle and parkour, the sport he invented.
Maciej Ceglowski reports on the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.
NB: Studio's map of London constructed entirely out of type.
Trulia Hindsight, a map of property development through time.
Movies showing a closeup view of the Sun's surface.
Video footage of Joseph Kittenger's record jump from 102,800 feet up. Photo from Life magazine and a Boards of Canada music video that uses the footage.
Alex Reisner's site, especially the baseball section. (My post.)
Interview with journalist Jonathan Rauch.
The greatest long tracking shots in cinema, including those in Touch of Evil and Children of Men.
Meg Hourihan took a bunch of different chocolate chip recipes, averaged the ingredients, and made cookies from the resulting meta-recipe.
The infamous four guys humping an ottoman video.
Does the Piraha language upend the theory of universal grammar?
Vimeo's sign in page is lovely.
Tim Knowles' drawings by trees. (My post. And more.)
How a woman randomly bumped into the person that stole her identity and chased her around until the police showed up to apprehend her.
Portraits of breaking sculpture by Martin Klimas.
Photo gallery that shows families from around the world and the amount of food they eat in the course of a week.
Errol Morris' investigation of a pair of Roger Fenton photographs in three wonderful parts.
Roger Federer's conservation of energy and attention helps him perform when it counts.
Jay Parkinson M.D. makes house calls, visits with patients via IM, and is generally trying to find new ways of doctoring.
Anthony Lane's appreciation of the Leica.
Kohei Yoshiyuki's photos of voyeurs watching lovers in a Japanese park. (My post.)
A restaurant review from the NY Times, circa 1859. My post about the review and lots more from the archives of the Times.
The story of Oscar the Cat, who comforts the dying at a Rhode Island nursing home.
Portraits of bears by Jill Greenberg. More photos at Greenberg's site.
Long New Yorker profile of David Simon and The Wire.
Elizabeth Kolbert on bees and colony collapse disorder. And bee space.
Photoshopped pictures of people's faces combined.
A video round (turn on the sound).
Optical illusion: is the woman rotating clockwise or counterclockwise?
From the excellent xkcd web comic: Little Bobby Tables.
Aicuña is a small secluded town in Argentina with an extremely high percentage of albino residents.
David Foster Wallace's wonderful introduction to The Best American Essays 2007.
Video depicting several ways to melt a chocolate bunny.
Tyler Cowen on some of the opportunity costs of the war in Iraq.
Beautifully terrifying photos of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.
Standing witness to a Guitar Hero wunderkind playing the game's most difficult song on expert level.
How America Lost the War on Drugs.
God's Eye View is an art project by The Glue Society depicting four Biblical scenes as they would have been captured by Google Earth.
The best way to deflect an asteroid turns out to be reflecting sunlight on it with a swarm of mirror bees.
Paul Otlet presages the web in 1934, calling it the "radiated library" or "televised book". (More context.)
This was my favorite post of the year. I hope you'll excuse the self-link.
Oh, and maybe the best thing I didn't link to this year: Daft Hands.
Thanks for reading kottke.org for the past year. Happy new year to you and yours.
The 2007 robot of the year is a
The 2007 robot of the year is a mechanical arm made by Fanuc Ltd. and used for packaging. The arm is capable of grabbing 120 items per minute from a conveyor belt.
Swiveling frenetically, they analyzed digital images of items scattered randomly on a swiftly moving conveyor belt and picked up the items using suction cups that blow air in and out at their tips. They then worked together to place line up the items in rows inside boxes.
Here's a video of three of these babies in action.
The year in buzzwords from the NY
The year in buzzwords from the NY Times. Written by Grant Barrett of the excellent Double-Tongued Dictionary.
A list of the 50 most loathsome people
A list of the 50 most loathsome people in America for 2007. #9 is "you" because:
You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over.
The top 10 archeological discoveries of 2007 as determined
The top 10 archeological discoveries of 2007 as determined by Archaeology Magazine. Among the discoveries are a cuneiform tablet naming someone who is also named in the Bible, more evidence that Polynesians visited the Americas before the Europeans "discovered" it, early agriculture in Peru, and early urbanization in Syria that followed a different model than other early cities.
Tell Brak seems to have grown from the outside in. In the south, cities began as a central settlement -- under a single authority -- that grew outward. But Ur's field survey shows that Tell Brak started as a central community ringed by smaller satellite settlements that expanded inward. "There isn't a very tight control over these surrounding villages, at least at this beginning period," says Ur. "So the assumption that we're making is that people were coming in under their own volition."
Very few science and ideas books made
Very few science and ideas books made it on to the 2007 "best of" lists so Edge has provided a list of their picks for the year. I didn't read any of the books on this list, although I'm currently 1/3 of the way through Jonah Lehrer's Proust Was a Neuroscientist.
Roger Ebert's list of the best films
Roger Ebert's list of the best films of 2007. He gives Juno the top slot.
The International Herald Tribune's Year in Pictures for 2007.
The International Herald Tribune's Year in Pictures for 2007.
Long long list of the most overrated
Long long list of the most overrated and underrated books, movies, tv shows, etc. for 2007. (via mr)
Best blogs of 2007
Rex has released his list of the Best Blogs of 2007 That You're (Maybe) Not Reading over at Fimoculous. Like last year, he's focused his best-of-blogs list on lesser-known sites instead of the biggies, a strategy I applaud. In fact, he doesn't even need to qualify the list as the best unknown blogs; many of the well-known blogs that usually make best-of lists, much of the Technorati Top 100, and most multi-author plastered-with-ads blogs are unremarkable...too much volume, too calculated, too focused on filling post and pageview quotas, and limited passion. If you look at the sites on Rex's list, you'll see a lot of blogs done by people who are passionate about something, not writing for a paycheck.
Rex's #1 choice is an inspired one and absolutely right on...Twitter and Tumblr revitalized personal publishing in the eyes of many who had either tired of blogging or had never seen the point in it in the first place. My only complaint about the list is that there are too many one-hit wonders on it, sites that are worth a chuckle or squee! when you first see them but don't hold up over time unless you really really like, say, snowclones. Oh, and Vulture...I really wanted to like it but really didn't get it. (Oh oh, and and Jezebel? Being against a thing is not the same as standing for something.)
Foreign Policy has posted its annual list
Foreign Policy has posted its annual list of The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2007 (unless, presumably, you read Foreign Policy).
A list of the top 10 astronomy images
A list of the top 10 astronomy images of 2007, including entwined galaxies and a dying star.
I enjoyed reading the AV Club's The
I enjoyed reading the AV Club's The Year in Film 2007. Their hands-down best of the year was No Country For Old Men. (BTW, the term "hands-down" comes from horse racing.)
The 25 best rock posters of all time,
The 25 best rock posters of all time, according to Billboard. A hit-or-miss list at best. (via quipsologies)
Tyler Cowen has taken a look at
Tyler Cowen has taken a look at a lot of this year's "best of" lists and has some meta-recommendations for you.
Regret the Error's annual list of media
Regret the Error's annual list of media errors and corrections is one of my favorites...the 2007 installment doesn't disappoint. The corrections in the UK newspapers are awesome:
An article about Lord Lambton ("Lord Louche, sex king of Chiantishire", News Review, January 7) falsely stated that his son Ned (now Lord Durham) and daughter Catherine held a party at Lord Lambton's villa, Cetinale, in 1997, which degenerated into such an orgy that Lord Lambton banned them from Cetinale for years. In fact, Lord Durham does not have a sister called Catherine (that is the name of his former wife), there has not been any orgiastic party of any kind and Lord Lambton did not ban him (or Catherine) from Cetinale at all.
Ten incredible sound recordings, including those of
Ten incredible sound recordings, including those of a castrato (a man who was forcibly castrated so that he would retain his boyish soprano), the first recorded human voice from 1878, and the last 30 minutes of audio from the Jonestown Massacre.
The Year in Ideas, 2007
The NY Times Magazine is out with its annual Year in Ideas issue. 2007 was the year of green -- green energy, green manufacturing, and even a green Nobel Prize for Al Gore -- and environmentalism featured heavily on the Times' list. But I found some of the other items on the list more interesting.
Ambiguity Promotes Liking. Sometimes the more you learn about a person or a situation, the more likely you are to be disappointed:
Why? For starters, initial information is open to interpretation. "And people are so motivated to find somebody they like that they read things into the profiles," Norton says. If a man writes that he likes the outdoors, his would-be mate imagines her perfect skiing companion, but when she learns more, she discovers "the outdoors" refers to nude beaches. And "once you see one dissimilarity, everything you learn afterward gets colored by that," Norton says.
I'm an optimistic pessimist by nature; I believe everything in my life will eventually average out for the better but I assume the worst of individual situations for the reasons proposed in the article above. That way, when I assume something isn't going to work out, I'm rarely disappointed.
The Best Way to Deflect an Asteroid involves a technique called "mirror bees".
The best method, called "mirror bees," entails sending a group of small satellites equipped with mirrors 30 to 100 feet wide into space to "swarm" around an asteroid and trail it, Vasile explains. The mirrors would be tilted to reflect sunlight onto the asteroid, vaporizing one spot and releasing a stream of gases that would slowly move it off course. Vasile says this method is especially appealing because it could be scaled easily: 25 to 5,000 satellites could be used, depending on the size of the rock.
What an elegant and easily implemented solution. But Armageddon and Deep Impact would have been a whole lot less entertaining using Dr. Vasile's approach.
The Cat-Lady Conundrum. More than 60 million Americans are infected with Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that most people get from their cats. And it's not exactly harmless:
Jaroslav Flegr, an evolutionary biologist at Charles University in the Czech Republic, is looking into it. He has spent years studying Toxo's impact on human behavior. (He found, for example, that people infected with Toxo have slower reflexes and are 2.5 times as likely to get into car accidents.)
This may explain why I can't seem to get past "Easy" on Guitar Hero.
The Honeycomb Vase is actually made by bees. One unintended consequence of having a vase made out of beeswax is that flowers last longer in it:
Libertiny is convinced that flowers last longer in them, because beeswax contains propolis, an antibacterial agent that protects against biological decay. "We found out by accident," he explains. "We had a bouquet, which was too big for the beeswax vase, so we put half of the flowers in a glass vase. We noticed the difference after a week or so.
Prison Poker. This is a flat out brilliantly simple idea:
[Officer Tommy Ray] made his own deck of cards, each bearing information about a different local criminal case that had gone cold. He distributed the decks in the Polk County jail. His hunch was that prisoners would gossip about the cases during card games, and somehow clues or breaks would emerge and make their way to the authorities. The plan worked. Two months in, as a result of a tip from a card-playing informant, two men were charged with a 2004 murder in a case that had gone cold.
The Gomboc is the world's first Self-Righting Object.
It leans off to one side, rocks to and fro as if gathering strength and then, presto, tips itself back into a "standing" position as if by magic. It doesn't have a hidden counterweight inside that helps it perform this trick, like an inflatable punching-bag doll that uses ballast to bob upright after you whack it. No, the Gomboc is something new: the world's first self-righting object.
More information is available on the Gomboc web site. You can order a Gomboc for €80 + S&H.
Update: The Gomboc is available for sale but it doesn't come cheap. The €80 version is basically a paperweight with a Gomboc shape carved out of it. It's €1000+ for a real Gomboc, which is ridiculous. (thx, nick)
The NY Times list of the 53 places
The NY Times list of the 53 places to go in 2008.
Update: Greg notes something about the list that I noticed as well:
I was intrigued as the next guy by the list of 53 Places we're supposed to go in 2008, then I realized that almost without exception, the "reason" to go is the opening at long last of that destination's first "luxury" accommodations. Which seems about the dumbest reason I can think of for choosing where to travel.
Almost a year late, Roger Ebert shares
Almost a year late, Roger Ebert shares his top movies of 2006 with us.
Yes, I know it's a year late, but a funny thing happened to me on the way to compiling a list of the best films of 2006. I checked into the hospital in late June 2006 and didn't get out again until spring of 2007. For a long while, I just didn't feel like watching movies. Then something revolved within me, and I was engaged in life again.
I've never met Ebert, but his love of movies resounds so emphatically from his writing that if he didn't feel like watching them, he must have been closer than I thought to shuffling off the ol' mortal coil. It's nice to hear his enthusiasm again. (via crazymonk)
As an alternative to the various bestseller
As an alternative to the various bestseller lists, the National Book Critics Circle is creating a monthly Best Recommended List of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as voted on by NBCC members. The first list is already up for your perusal and holiday gift-buying idea generation.
On the heels of their 100 notable books
On the heels of their 100 notable books list, the NY Times whittles it down to the ten best of the year. I interviewed Alex Ross back in October about his top tenner, The Rest is Noise.
Top 50 photo series from the 2006 Critical Mass
Top 50 photo series from the 2006 Critical Mass competition. Some good stuff in there if you poke around a bit...2005 and 2004 too. (via ffffound!)
The NY Times has released their list
The NY Times has released their list of the 100 Notable Books of 2007. Because of the amount of online reading I do and Ollie, my book-reading rate has declined dramatically...I only read two of the books on this list and one of those was Harry Potter 7.
Rex Sorgatz is once again compiling "best
Rex Sorgatz is once again compiling "best of" lists for 2007 in more than 30 categories. Time to get an intern, dude.
The top 60 Japanese buzzwords and buzzphrases of 2007.
The top 60 Japanese buzzwords and buzzphrases of 2007.
The term "monster parents" refers to Japan's growing ranks of annoying parents who make extravagant and unreasonable demands of their children's schools.
(via bb)
The Book Design Review blog offers up
The Book Design Review blog offers up its picks for the best book covers of the year.
The American Society of Magazine Editors picks
The American Society of Magazine Editors picks their magazine favorite covers of 2007.
87 bad predictions about the future. Irving Fisher,
87 bad predictions about the future. Irving Fisher, economics professor at Yale University, in 1929:
Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
And Variety, passing judgement on rock 'n roll in 1955:
It will be gone by June.
But we all know expert predictions are crap, yeah?
As a supplement to Alex Ross' musical
As a supplement to Alex Ross' musical recommendations, a reader recommends NPR's list of 50 essential classical music CDs and Jazz 100, a list of the best jazz on CD. (thx, john)
A list of fast food menu items
A list of fast food menu items that are really high in trans fats. The list is a bit misleading as no attempt is made to normalize portions (the top two items are multi-portion side orders) but still handy, especially for the list of places that had no items on the list (Subway, Pizza Hut, Wendy's, In-N-Out, etc.). (via serious eats)
Update: Many Eyes user Michael created two charts to accompany the list above: a bar chart and a treemap. (thx, michael)
Every once in awhile, my friend Matt
Every once in awhile, my friend Matt takes a photo of the whiteboard at Orbital Comics in London. The most recent one features a list of the top 10 greatest moments in movies from comics. Orbital's MySpace page has more of their whiteboard lists.
The Best American Essays 2007
I've had this damn thing up in a browser tab for literally months1 and finally got around to reading it, "this damn thing" being editor David Foster Wallace's introduction to The Best American Essays 2007. In it, Wallace describes his role in compiling the essays collection as that of The Decider. As in, he Deciders what goes into the book according to his subjective view and not necessarily because the essays are "Best", "American", or even "Essays".
Which, yes, all right, entitles you to ask what 'value' means here and whether it's any kind of improvement, in specificity and traction, over the cover's 'Best.' I'm not sure that it's finally better or less slippery than 'Best,' but I do know it's different. 'Value' sidesteps some of the metaphysics that makes pure aesthetics such a headache, for one thing. It's also more openly, candidly subjective: since things have value only to people, the idea of some limited, subjective human doing the valuing is sort of built right into the term. That all seems tidy and uncontroversial so far -- although there's still the question of just what this limited human actually means by 'value' as a criterion.
One thing I'm sure it means is that this year's BAE does not necessarily comprise the twenty-two very best-written or most beautiful essays published in 2006. Some of the book's essays are quite beautiful indeed, and most are extremely well written and/or show a masterly awareness of craft (whatever exactly that is). But others aren't, don't, especially - but they have other virtues that make them valuable. And I know that many of these virtues have to do with the ways in which the pieces handle and respond to the tsunami of available fact, context, and perspective that constitutes Total Noise. This claim might itself look slippery, because of course any published essay is a burst of information and context that is by definition part of 2007's overall roar of info and context. But it is possible for something to be both a quantum of information and a vector of meaning. Think, for instance, of the two distinct but related senses of 'informative.' Several of this year's most valuable essays are informative in both senses; they are at once informational and instructive. That is, they serve as models and guides for how large or complex sets of facts can be sifted, culled, and arranged in meaningful ways - ways that yield and illuminate truth instead of just adding more noise to the overall roar.
Although there are some differences between what Wallace and I consider valuable, the Decidering process detailed in his essay is a dead-on description of what I do on kottke.org every day. I guess you could say that it resonated with me as valuable, so much so that were I editing an end-of-the-year book comprised of the most interesting links from 2007, I would likely include it, right up front.
Oh, and I got a kick out of the third footnote, combined here with the associated main text sentences:
I am acting as an evaluative filter, winnowing a very large field of possibilities down to a manageable, absorbable Best for your delectation. Thinking about this kind of Decidering is interesting in all kinds of different ways. For example, from the perspective of Information Theory, the bulk of the Decider's labor actually consists of excluding nominees from the final prize collection, which puts the Decider in exactly the position of Maxwell's Demon or any other kind of entropy-reducing info processor, since the really expensive, energy-intensive part of such processing is always deleting/discarding/resetting.
My talk at Ars Electronica 2006 on the topic of simplicity touched on similar themes and the main point was that the more stuff I can sift through (and throw away), the better the end result can be.
From this it follows that the more effective the aggregator is at effectively determining what the group thinks, the better the end result will be. But somewhat paradoxically, the quality of the end result can also improve as the complexity of the group increases. In constructing kottke.org, something that I hope is a simple, coherent aggregation of the world rushing past me, this complexity is my closest ally. Keeping up with so many diverse, independent, decentralized sources makes my job as an aggregator difficult -- reading 300 sites a day (plus all the other stuff) is no picnic -- but it makes kottke.org much better than it would be if I only read Newsweek and watched Hitchcock movies. As artists, designers, and corporations race to embrace simplicity, they might do well to widen their purview and, in doing so, embrace the related complexity as well.
Welcome the chaos because there's lots of good stuff to be found therein. I also attempted to tie the abundance of information (what Wallace refers to as "Total Noise") and the simplification process of editing/aggregating/blogging into Claude Shannon's definition of information and information theory but failed due to time contraints and a lack of imagination. It sounded good in my head though.
Anyway, if you're wondering what I do all day, the answer is: throwing stuff out. kottke.org is not so much what's on the site as what is not chosen for inclusion.
[1] In actual fact, I closed that browser tab weeks ago and pasted the URL into a "must-read items" text file I maintain. But it's been open in a browser tab in my mind for months, literally. That and I couldn't resist putting a footnote in this entry, because, you know, DFW. ↩
A list of 15 of the top small
A list of 15 of the top small workplaces of 2007. If you run a small company, there are lot of good examples to follow here.
Without the associated covers, this list of
Without the associated covers, this list of the AIGA's 50 Books/50 Covers winners for "outstanding book and book cover design produced in 2006" is pretty useless. (Anyone want to track all of these covers down? I'll host (or link to) the results on kottke.org.)
Update: Photos of the covers and books are all available on the AIGA Design Archives site. No permalink tho. :( (thx, tbit)
The Guardian has been collecting the best
The Guardian has been collecting the best interviews from the past century. Interviewees include John Lennon, Marlon Brando, Adolf Hitler, and Marilyn Monroe. An impressive trove.
A subjective list -- is there any
A subjective list -- is there any other kind? -- of the top 10 issues of McSweeney's magazine.
The top 100 greatest beatdowns in history, most
The top 100 greatest beatdowns in history, most of them related to sports. #1 is Secretariat's 31-length victory at Belmont, the footage of which is well worth a look if you haven't seen it. That horse so totally pours it on down the stretch that it gives me goosebumps every time I watch it. (thx, david)
Top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills, including
Top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills, including Cobol, PowerBuilder, and cc:Mail. "A rough translation of OS/2 could be 'wrong horse.'"
100 blogs they love so much that they're
100 blogs they love so much that they're not going to link to a single one.
Update: Several people pointed out that the original list is available with links at PC World. Of course, it's a pageview-pumping multiple page situation, so you'll want the print version instead. (Yes, this is me punching a gift horse in the mouth, or whatever that expression is.)
The American Film Institute has refreshed their
The American Film Institute has refreshed their list of the top 100 movies...here's a listing comparing the new list with the one from 1998. Godfather Part II at #32 is still a travesty.
Update: Roger Ebert weighs in on the list.
100 hot women chosen by lesbians
Hot 100 women chosen by lesbians. A nice counterpoint to similar lists from Maxim and People.
The 2007 MacTech 25 "honors the most influential people
The 2007 MacTech 25 "honors the most influential people in the Macintosh community". Includes a single woman.
Top 20 plays of the 2007 NBA playoffs (so
Top 20 plays of the 2007 NBA playoffs (so far). It's a good list but YouTube sucks for watching sports highlights...the quality is just too low. (via truehoop)
Tiger Woods tops this year's list of
Tiger Woods tops this year's list of top-earning American athletes. He makes $111M a year, more than twice as much as the fellow in second place. A list of the top-earning non-American athletes is available as well. (via cyn-c)
From a poll in the Guardian: George
From a poll in the Guardian: George Orwell's 1984 is the definitive book of the 20th century. Gatsby, Grapes, and Brave New World also make the top 10 list.
Some prominent writers (Eggers, Foer, Nicole Krauss)
Some prominent writers (Eggers, Foer, Nicole Krauss) tell us about what they've been reading recently. In other summer reading news, Rebecca Blood is keeping track of various summer book lists that are popping up around the web.
Another one of those lists you love
Another one of those lists you love to hate: the 25 best movies you've never seen. Putting the horrible Boondock Saints on the list is a major boner, especially just ahead of Peter Jackson's pre-Rings gem Heavenly Creatures.
Popular names for twins born in 2006. Almost
Popular names for twins born in 2006. Almost all of the top name pairs start with the same letter: Jacob/Joshua, Landon/Logan, Ella/Emma, and the stunningly confusing Taylor/Tyler.
A list of film's most impressive and
A list of film's most impressive and famous long takes, including those from Boogie Nights, Touch of Evil, Children of Men, and The Player. Featuring the now-standard YouTube clips of each long take.
Technology Review asked several designers to name
Technology Review asked several designers to name their favorite technology products. Worth a look for the photos of pristine Sony Walkmans, Ataris, and Polaroid cameras.
If you're writing a song, you probably
If you're writing a song, you probably don't want to use any of the following phrases: "serious as cancer", "Serengeti", "nuclear war", or "Aztec priest".
The top-ten 8-bit games. Can't argue with
The top-ten 8-bit games. Can't argue with the top 5 too much, but the other selections might be a bit off. Whither Metroid? And Tetris?
HotelChatter lists their picks for hotels with
HotelChatter lists their picks for hotels with the best Wifi experiences. (via bb)
List of the seven most overrated Hollywood
List of the seven most overrated Hollywood actors, including Ben Kingsley, Kate Hudson, and Ben Stiller, a personal unfavorite of mine. (via house next door)
In addition to a just-launched redesign, outside.
In addition to a just-launched redesign, outside.in took a look at their data for the past six months and came up with a list of the "bloggiest neightborhoods" in the US. "The results below are based on a number of variables: total number of posts, total number of local bloggers, number of comments and Technorati ranking for the bloggers." Interestingly (but upon reflection, not surprisingly), most of the places listed are in the process of gentrifying. Disclosure: I am an advisor to outside.in.
Finalists in Smithsonian magazine's 2007 photo contest. Some
Finalists in Smithsonian magazine's 2007 photo contest. Some good stuff in here, but some of it is a little cheesy.
Results of the Type Directors Club type
Results of the Type Directors Club type design competition for 2007. I really like Subtil. (via quipsologies)
A photo of a Jewish settler seemingly
Update: In an earlier iteration of this post, I incorrectly identified the woman in the photo as a Palestinian...she is a Jewish settler. (thx to everyone who wrote in)
An unusually informative top 10 list: the most
An unusually informative top 10 list: the most magnificent trees in the world. The Quaking Aspen organism and the baobab trees are awesome.
The top 1000 books owned by libraries around
The top 1000 books owned by libraries around the world. Surprisingly, no Stephen King book appears in the top 1000 but John Grisham appears 13 times. In an interesting use of del.icio.us, the entire list is tagged and categorized on the bookmarking site.
A group of people who are interested
A group of people who are interested in preserving video games as culturally and historically important artifacts has chosen their list of the top 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar!, Star Raiders, Zork, Tetris, SimCity, Super Mario Bros. 3, Civilization I/II, Doom, Warcraft series and Sensible World of Soccer. Sensible World of Soccer?
The top 11 underground transit systems in the
The top 11 underground transit systems in the world. The London Tube is #1, NYC is #7, Hong Kong is #10. (via rob)
Top 10 most litigious US companies from 2001-2006 (
Top 10 most litigious US companies from 2001-2006 (based on trademark cases): 1. Microsoft. 2. Cendent. 3. Altria/Philip Morris. 4. Best Western. 5. Dunkin' Donuts. 6. Lorillard Tobacco. 7. Levi Strauss. 8. Baskin-Robbins. 9. Chanel. 10. Nike. Found in the sidebar of this article on Levi Strauss suing other jeans companies for their triangle pockets.
A list of 16 genuinely good Oscar-winning songs.
A list of 16 genuinely good Oscar-winning songs. As noted in the comments, Lose Yourself by Eminem should have been included.
Two structural engineers pick their ten favorite man-made structures.
Two structural engineers pick their ten favorite man-made structures.
If Roger Federer keeps going the way
If Roger Federer keeps going the way he's going, he could one day be considered the greatest sportsman in history.
Update: Via email, a nomination for Pakistani squash player Jahangir Khan, who engineered a 5+ year unbeaten streak during which he won the International Squash Players Association Championship without losing a single point. (thx, abbas)
Update: Also via email, a vote for darts champion Phil Taylor, who has won 13 world titles, including 11 out of the last 13. (thx, krush)
The top 100 fonts as determined by a
The top 100 fonts as determined by a panel of designers and type experts. Top 10: Helvetica, Garamond, Frutiger, Bodoni, Futura, Times, Akzidenz Grotesk, Officina, Gill Sans, and Univers. A PDF of the results (with photos, in German) is also available. (via type for you)
Two lists, both alike in dignity: the
Two lists, both alike in dignity: the top 10 best best actress Oscar winners and the top 10 worst best actress Oscar winners. Anyone they missed?
The Oscar nominees have been announced. Compare
The Oscar nominees have been announced. Compare with the top movies as determined by the film critics.
A list of Reel Pop's ten favorite
A list of Reel Pop's ten favorite dystopian films. Running Man, La Jetée, and Blade Runner all make the cut.
Over at Typophile, they're debating the 20 most
Over at Typophile, they're debating the 20 most important type designers of all time.
Metacritic's aggregated view of the film critics'
Metacritic's aggregated view of the film critics' top 10 lists is always worth a look, both for the information and the information design. United 93 appeared on the most lists and tied with Army of Shadows for most #1 rankings.
1994 best/worst-of the internet lists with predicitons
1994 best/worst-of the internet lists with predicitons for 1995. "Pick any tragic event and you can probably recall seeing a newsgroup that taunted its seriousness. There was alt.tonya-harding.whack.whack.whack. Then we had alt.lorena.bobitt.chop.chop.chop. And no, I haven't forgotten alt.oj-simpson.drive.faster."
The Best Links 2006
Compiling a list of the best things I've linked to from kottke.org seems to get harder each year. I estimate posting about 2400 links to kottke.org in 2006, which is roughly one link every 2.5 hours on weekdays. Which is insane...I don't know how you guys read all of that. Last year I managed to whittle down the best-of list to ~65 links (2004's list had ~40 links), but I couldn't manage less than 100 this year. (Hell, the overflow list contains another 100 links that didn't quite make the cut...hopefully I'll be posting those in a few days.)
But enough with the statistics. Besides containing some really entertaining, informative, and provoking reading/viewing material, this list also functions as kottke.org's year in ideas for 2006, akin to the annual list in the NY Times Magazine. Climate change, the industrialization of childbirth, race & class in college & professional sports, the inherent messiness of science, adults who don't want to grow up, the role of journalism in the age of information abundance, and how creative work gets done are all ideas represented in the links below. Even the funny YouTube videos signal the arrival in 2006 of online video, especially if you throw Ze Frank in the mix. Enjoy.
Pruned found art in petri dishes. More.
The M.C. Escher-inspired art of Rob Gonsalves.
David Remnick's review of An Inconvenient Truth (and short biography of post-2000 Al Gore).
A collection of color photographs of WWII-era America from the Library of Congress. (I color-corrected some of the photos.)
New Yorker piece about the possible solving of the Poincare conjecture by Grigory Perelman.
NY Times Magazine piece by Michael Lewis on Michael Oher, excerpted from his book, The Blind Side.
The Smoking Gun's takedown of James Frey was fair, accurate, and devastating.
Line Rider. Not quite a game, not quite a toy, but hours of fun.
Tetris documentary, From Russia With Love.
Stabilized version of the Zapruder film of John F. Kennedy's assassination.
Matthew Barney and Bjork on the phone with Ikea.
The Omarosa Experiment reveals the inner workings of reality TV.
Dorodango: shiny balls of mud.
Olivo Barbieri's aerial photographs taken with a tilt-shift lens spawned some amazing Photoshopped fakes on Flickr.
Details on how to speak to a live customer support person for hundreds of companies. Indispensable.
The story of how Pixar came to be.
Wasp creates zombie cockroaches.
Falling sand, another not-a-game game.
Tap out a rhythm and Song Tapper will tell you what song it's from.
London Tube map where all the stations are sponsored by companies.
The Simpsons intro done with live actors.
Interview with Jonathan Rauch about his popular piece about introverts for The Atlantic Monthly.
Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness.
Pregnancy is a tug of war between mother and fetus over nutrients.
Extensive primers for more than three dozen film genres.
It's a bad time to start a company.
Horrible Segues, With Local Anchorman Clive Rutledge.
American Express commercial directed by Wes Anderson.
Photo essay of female Israeli soldiers.
The four different types of explanations.
Pictures I Like For a Variety of Reasons.
David Copperfield thwarts would-be robbers with slight of hand. Hands down, the link of the year.
Magnum photographer Paul Fusco's photo essay of Chernobyl survivors.
Dozens of old Sesame Street clips on YouTube.
How to cure your asthma or hayfever using hookworm.
How one man fell for a Nigerian email scam.
Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner tell us that expert performers -- in math, football, ballet, chess -- are made, not born.
Michael Wolf's 100x100, 100 photos of Hong Kong apartments each 100 square feet in size.
1989 New Yorker profile of Errol Morris.
Dozens of historical sounds in mp3 format.
10,000 sheep created by people hired online through Amazon's Mechanical Turk program.
Web 2.OH, YEAAHH!! t-shirts. Pun of the year.
Extensive gallery of Russian/Soviet propaganda and advertising posters.
Implanting magnets in your fingertips gives you a sixth magnetic sense.
A history of Manhattan's diamond district and its informal historian, Stephen Kilnisan.
Photographs of a flock of more than a million European starlings.
Photographs of burn victims by John Brownlow.
What if great photographers posted their work on the web?
Why play "what if"? Here's an Henri Cartier-Bresson being rubbished on Flickr.
An image of human eyes placed above an honesty pay box results in more people paying for their food/drinks. More.
A blue-skinned family in the hills of Kentucky. More.
Daniel Raeburn writes about his stillborn daughter Irene. About two years later, her sister Willa is born.
Easily mispronounced domain names.
Turning innocuous video clips into naughty scenes with selective bleeping. Hilarious.
Kristoffer Garin follows a group of American men on a bride-hunting trip to the Ukraine.
MotherLoad, an extremely addictive online game.
Watch as Lake Peigner drains entirely into a hole created by an errant oil drill. More info.
The Art of the Shiv, a photo essay of prison weapons.
The Show with Ze Frank. The most consistently entertaining and informative online media in 2006.
The physical impossibility of gigantic and microscopic movie creatures.
Argentina on Two Steaks a Day.
Bijou's Bag of Tricks. This photo makes me laugh until I cry.
Geoffrey Chaucer gets an Xbox 360.
Six years of daily photographs compiled into a movie.
The Voyager spacecraft escapes from the solar system.
David Foster Wallace writes about Roger Federer as Religious Experience.
The vast majority of the decisions in the Senate are made for economic reasons, not social ones.
1964 New Yorker profile of Bob Dylan.
How to Write a Fugue, featuring a fugue of Britney Spears' "Oops, I Did It Again".
State of Emergency, a surprisingly political fashion shoot from Vogue Italia.
What if the inflight announcement you heard while traveling was honest?
The photography of Corey Arnold, particularly of the Bering Sea crabbers.
Billionaire Steve Wynn pokes a hole in one of his Picassos with an errant elbow.
Malcolm Gladwell talks about the myth of prodigy.
Atul Gawande tells us how childbirth became industrialized.
2003 New Yorker profile of the late R.W. Apple by Calvin Trillin.
Time lapse video of a man putting on 155 t-shirts, one over the other.
The world's best worst movie pitches.
Why There Almost Certainly Is No God by Richard Dawkins.
Scott Adams cures himself of losing his voice.
Phil Gyford's beginner's guide to freelancing.
New Yorker profile of Will Wright.
Maureen Gibson finds a picture of her rapist on the Engagements page of her hometown newspaper.
Comedian Aries Spears does great impressions of rappers Snoop Dogg, DMX, and Jay-Z.
A cognitive neuroscience grad student games Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
How to talk to a climate skeptic.
NPR piece with Jason Simmons, professional rock, paper, scissors player.
Lasse Gjertsen's Amateur music video.
What NFL games are going to be on in your part of the country?
Photo of young homeless man Beavis shooting up in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.
NPR interview with Ed Burns, creator of The Wire.
Hans van der Meer's photos of European soccer fields.
Giant magazine's list of the 50 greatest commercials of the 80s (with accompanying videos).
Slate interview with Ed Burns, creator of The Wire.
Writers Dreamtools History by Decades...facts, figures, styles, language, and goings-on for fiction writers.
Thirteen photographs that changed the world, featuring
Thirteen photographs that changed the world, featuring Robert Capa, Man Ray, Matthew Brady, and Ansel Adams.
Perched on top of Time magazine's list
Perched on top of Time magazine's list of best video games for 2006? Wii Sports.