Peculiar Picks

Scientific Achievement Parodied by lg Nobel Prizes

The Ig Nobel Prizes, a parody of the Nobel prizes, were awarded last week. They recognize quirky, funny and sometimes legitimate scientific achievements. The winners included scientists, in the category of nutrition, who showed people will eat stale chips if they're crunchy. (Audio)

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Facebook being used to recruit spies

It has emerged that Britain's Secret Service has admitted to using Facebook to recruit tomorrow's James Bonds.

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Superheros on Bikes Lend a Helping Hand

A group of do-gooders based out of Missouri are on a mission to help people in need. They're also superheros... It's an event where people dress up as superheroes and take off for a month-long bicycle journey, providing service to the public with no agenda, and no pre-established course or plans. So far, they have traveled through 23 states and 5 different countries.

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Street corner science lessons with a Nobel Laureate

In 1988, Leon Lederman shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work to understand elementary particles called neutrinos. ScienCentral set Lederman up with a desk on a street corner and encouraged curious passersby to ask science questions. The two-part video was part of SciCentral's Web show series called "Street Corner Science." Lederman talked about time travel, nuclear power, and, particle physics. Street Corner Science with Leon Lederman. (Video )

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Camping? Yes. Roughing It? Not Quite.

14 SEP 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

If the eco-friendly idea of falling asleep under the stars and roasting marshmallows around a campfire appeals to you, but the reality of pitching a tent and sleeping on bumpy ground does not, glamping, the new term being used for upscale — or glamorous — camping, could be your ideal green vacation. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: PSFK

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On Autumn

Host Andrea Seabrook offers parting words from novelist George Eliot: "Delicious autumn. My very soul is wedded to it. And if I were a bird I would fly about the Earth seeking the successive autumns." (Audio)

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Cycle of life

06 SEP 2008 from the Boston Globe | Read the full story»

"I never intended to write a poem" about Sept. 11, 2001, Tom Flynn says. "What got me going was rereading Dante. The combination of that and riding my bike on the Cape Cod bike path."

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The New Pranksters

12 SEP 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Unlike many pranks of the past, today's most popular stunts don't feature one prankster at the center of the action, but hundreds of people in on the joke. Using the Internet to organize, pranksters create highly choreographed public spectacles that aim to entertain passersby, or at least take them by surprise. (Subscription required)

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Available Soon Online: Fun From Depression-Era Playland

05 SEP 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

It is hard to squelch the human desire for fun. It seems almost a bodily need, like food and sleep. Even war and catastrophe won’t dampen it entirely. That is part of the charm of more than 3,000 photographs of Playland that within a year will become available on the Internet. Most were taken in the depths of the Depression, and they show that even then, grown-ups and children shrieked with delight as they spun, soared, plunged and careered on Playland’s carnival of rides. (Subscription required)

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Don LaFontaine, Voice Of Movie Trailers, Dies

Don LaFontaine, the man who popularized the catch phrase "In a world where..." and lent his voice to thousands of movie trailers, has died. He was 68. His agent said LaFontaine died Monday in Los Angeles from complications in the treatment of an ongoing illness. (Audio)

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Priest to hold nun beauty pageant

25 AUG 2008 from BBC News | Read the full story»

An Italian priest says he is organising the world's first beauty pageant for nuns to erase a stereotype of them as being old and dour.

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Blame It on the Moon

Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute say you can blame the moon — at least during part of its cycle. Their study found that more pedestrians are killed in traffic on nights when there’s a new moon... This sign at a crosswalk in Seattle does a good job of placing the responsibility back on the pedestrian (and his athletic ability).

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PenguinDating: "Where Book Lovers Meet"

PenguinDating is a new site by Penguin UK that aims to - you guessed it - help bookworms find love. In partnership with Match.com, Penguin launched the site to introduce a little literary twist to the online dating scene.

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What Do You Want, An Olympic Medal?

Watching the Olympics always fills me with a series of complicated emotions -- a veritable frisson of admiration, pity and jealousy. Admiration because these competitors represent the pinnacle of achievement in all of their respective fields; whether they are a Decathlete gliding toward the finish line of a 1500 meter race at the close of a grueling 2-day event ...

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What Is the Future of Segway Polo?

19 AUG 2008 from Freakonomics Blog | Read the full story»

When does a new technology cross the line from niche to mainstream?
For new modes of transportation, maybe that line runs across a polo field. Since 2004, Segway enthusiasts in California have been organizing matches of Segway polo. The group has grown into the International Segway Polo Association, which hosts an annual championship tournament called the Woz Challenge Cup (named after Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak).

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the farmer as celebrity

"Just a few years ago, only a celebrity chef could have stirred up so much epicurean excitement. Back then, the food chain extended only as far back as the restaurant kitchens we viewed—sometimes literally, at, say, the Mercer Kitchen or Café Gray—as staging grounds. But we’ve come to realize that dinner originates in the planting row, not on the prep line. We’re increasingly conscious of how our food is produced, and where—and who—it comes from. So New Yorkers are now beginning to fetishize farmers the way we once did chefs."

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Eccentricity Fuels a Revival of Vermont’s River Towns

07 AUG 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Revisiting some of the river towns nowadays finds them trying to rebound from factory closings, farm consolidations and fading Main Streets by again embracing idiosyncratic ideas, and drawing on the bedrock that once made these towns vibrant: the river, the railroad and a hardy independent streak. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Using Economics To Predict Olympic Medal Standings

Using a few simple factors, Dartmouth professor Andrew Bernard can guess, with a high degree of accuracy, how many medals countries will win at the Beijing Olympics. Bernard talks with Renee Montagne about his economic model for predicting the medal count. (Audio)

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Shanghai 2020: a 1,000 meter^2 diorama

Neatorama rounds up some of the best Flickr photos of the third floor of the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum, where abides a 1,000 square meter scale model of Shanghai as it will appear in 2020 (provided that all goes according to plan without variation for the next 12 years, a near certainty, natch).

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Can't Get There from Here

3 AUG 2008 from the Boston Globe | Read the full story»

With bridges shaky, what if Boston lost its links to Cambridge?

They're the pulsing arteries between two cities, connecting the Boston Brahmin with the Cambridge liberal, the button-down number crunchers with the big-think biotech lab rats, the thousands of students from Boston University with those at MIT and Harvard.

But after a century of service, the Longfellow Bridge and its sibling up the Charles River, the Boston University Bridge, are crumbling; so much so that the MBTA has ordered Red Line trains to a 10-mile-per-hour crawl across the Longfellow, and walkers and bicyclists on the BU Bridge have seen their sidewalks reduced from two to one. Cars and trucks face restrictions as well.

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Beer-Drinking Tree Shrews: Sober as Judges

28 JUL 2008 from NPR Programs: All Things Considered | Read the full story»

Tree shrews are believed to be the only animal other than humans to chronically consume alcohol. (Audio)

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Coffee, Tea, or Red Espresso?

28 JUL 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Red espresso is a tea designed to be ground and brewed in coffeemakers. As coffee, it underwhelms. But as a tea—regular or iced—it's a hit

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How to deal with an anaconda bite

If an anaconda bites your hand, should you pull your hand out, push it in further, or give the snake a good poke in the eye? National Geographic tells you as part of their series of "Survival Guide Videos." In this clip, you can watch a herpetologist get bitten in the hand and, fortunately, get free.
Anaconda Bite video (National Geographic)

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Poet Kay Ryan On Words, Writing

Last week, the Library of Congress appointed Kay Ryan to be the nation's next poet laureate. Ryan, who will take the position in the fall, shares a pair of poems and talks to host Andrea Seabrook about her approach to words and writing. (Audio)

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On Language: Fist Bump

Is this the end of high-five? (Subscription required)

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Every Body's Talking

24 JUN 2008 from the Washington Post | Read the full story»

An ex-FBI agent 'thin-slices' behavior to read emotions that are not put into words.

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Asymmetrical Glasses for Asymmetrical People

Back in the 90s, V-8 commercials promised to "straighten out" those who lived life a little lopsided. Now in 2008, lopsided is the new cool. Sugarkane is an Italian company that produces photochromatic glasses - prescription lenses that are clear when you’re inside and turn into sunglasses outside - with asymmetrical frames. The glasses come in a variety of lollipop and neon colors.

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Cubicle Warfare - office fun for the summer

No matter how fun or creative your job is, there's always the office space issue to deal with. Cubicles, frustrating fax machines, a copier that seems to run out of toner only for you, fluorescent lights and the scent of old coffee grounds. One of the best ways to cope with these conditions is humor--and sometimes pranks.

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Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area

29 MAY 2008 from the Los Angeles Times | Read the full story»

Stealth growers seed or plant on land that doesn't belong to them. The result? Plants that beautify or yield crops in otherwise neglected or vacant spaces.

Hat tip: boingboing

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Online game: balance the US budget

American Public Media recently launched Budget Hero—our newest interactive game that lets people explore the major issues of the election by changing the federal budget to match their stands on issues and their values. Budget Hero tries to bring a level of clarity and simplicity to the federal budget.

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Amy Walker's "21 Accents" video

Amy Walker saying basically the same sentence in 21 different accents.

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Music affects wine taste

New research suggests that the type of music one listens to while drinking wine can dramatically affect the taste.

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Twistories: A Ticker of Thoughts (Twittered)

Twistori is a new social/art experiment by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs that distills the thoughts, feelings, and hopes expressed in twitters around the world, running them in an ongoing ticker on Twistori.com. The site, following closely in the footsteps of Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar’s “We Feel Fine” project, picks out six keywords - love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish - from all the free-floating twitters buzzing about the web and runs them in a constant stream of anonymous tweets, divided by keyword.

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Not-So-Silent Rave

In step with recent smart mob activity mentality we’ve been covering, a dance revolution broke out when hundreds gathered in NYC’s Union Square for a ‘silent rave’ event on Friday, April 19^th. iPods in hand, the crowd began dancing at 6:15pm sharp. Each hearing only the song in their headphones, the group convulsed disparately. The not so silent dance-a-thon buzzed with onlookers and spontaneous hoots from dancers in the zone.

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Storytelling with Google Maps

It seems a fair statement to say that the art of storytelling has not yet caught up with the internet's capabilities, at least not in the mainstream. A new project from UK-based Penguin Books' digital fiction group, however, is using the power of the internet to tell stories in new and surprising ways.

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The Mike Wallace Interview

It's astonishing to watch television in which the host asks real questions and the guests answer in full sentences. Wallace never lets people off the hook ... He interviews Frank Lloyd Wright, Salvadore Dali, Leonard Ross (a 12-year-old California school boy who won a total of $164,000 on the game shows The Big Surprise and The Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Challenge), Aldous Huxley, Gloria Swanson, Tony Perkins, Eldon Edwards (Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan), Philip Wylie, Jean Seberg, Earl Browder (former head of the Communist Party in the United States), Mary Margaret McBride (the "First Lady of Radio"), David Hawkins (the youngest of 20 prisoners to defect during the Korean War), Dr. Henry Kissinger, and many more.

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Top 10 Wired Reader Self-Portraits, Decided by You

We challenged our readers to give us their best self-portraits and vote on which ones they liked best. Here are the results.

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A Poem for the NCAA Basketball Tournament

Bill Littlefield of Only a Game (from NPR and member station WBUR in Boston) celebrates basketball's "March Madness" with an ode to "Bracketology." (Audio)

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PowerPoint Karaoke

In a typical event, a few brave people volunteer to "present" a random deck of slides pulled off the Web, or borrowed from friends or employers. The audience laughs, cheers, and yells out suggestions as the presenters gamely struggle to link one slide to the next, transforming something that probably started life as a tedious corporate monologue into a five-minute flight of creative irony.

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Food Court Musical, by Improv Everywhere

The pranksters at Improv Everywhere describe their latest noble work thusly:

For our latest mission, 16 agents staged a spontaneous musical in the food court of a Los Angeles shopping mall. We used wireless microphones to amplify the vocal performances and mix them together with the music through the mall’s PA system. We filmed the mission with hidden cameras, mostly behind two-way mirrors. Apart from our performers, no one in the food court was aware of what was happening.

(Video )

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Obsessives: Monocolorists

New York magazine interviewed five New Yorkers who wear only one color all day, every day. They include a shoe designer who only wears blue; a fashion designer who dons grey; an industrial designer who clads himself in white half the time, and pink half the time; a fabric designer wrapped in kelly green; and a singer-songwriter who only wears brown (probably like half of New York, now we think of it).

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Vineyard Winters

In summer, Martha’s Vineyard is all about the tourists, but in winter, the locals engage in "an alternative economy of eating, one in which modern capitalism takes a back seat," reports Joan Nathan in The New York Times (1/23/08). Taking its place is "a looser, island-grown style of bartering..."

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Why Aren’t There More Old Criminals?

The Freakonomics in-box regularly fills up with interesting tales (like this one and this one). The other day, a reader from Dallas named Erik Hille took reader e-mail to a whole new level. He was writing about the Feb. 1 entry in our fact-a-day calendar, which excerpts a fact from our book in the chapter ...

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Photos from Istanbul's Grand Bazaar

Curious Expeditions has posted a gallery of photos taken at Istanbul's Kapalıçarşı, or Grand Bazaar. It has been in existence since the 1400s.

Swinging platters holding steaming cups of tea zoom past us. Mustachioed men give us their best sales pitch, trying at least seven different languages; “Hallo! Guten tag? Bonjour? Buenos Dias? Konichiwa?” We wander past the slipper-merchants, mirror-merchants, leather-merchants, past the carpet-merchants, pipe-merchants, lamp-merchants, fur-merchants, gold-merchants, and then we find it. The store we didn’t know was there, but once we saw it, knew we had been looking for.

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You Think It’s Easy to Schlep Those Cases in Four-Inch Heels?

13 FEB 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

For the 26 women who take the stage each week on the NBC hit game show, life is not all glamour and sequins and witty repartee with the host, Howie Mandel. At this taping in mid-January, for instance, there was the 14-hour workday, 8 1/2 hours of which involved some or all of the models standing on an Arctic-like soundstage in short, short sleeveless dresses and four-inch heels.

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China plans to halt rain for Olympics

30 JAN 2008 from the Los Angeles Times | Read the full story»

Determined not to let anything spoil their party, organizers of the 2008 Summer Olympics said Wednesday that they will take control over the most unpredictable element of all -- the weather.

Hat tip: boing boing

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High School Teaches Thoreau in the Woods

The Walden Project, an alternative high-school program in northern Vermont, focuses on environmental studies and the teachings of Henry David Thoreau, who did some of his best thinking outdoors at Walden Pond. (Audio)

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On the Job

17 JAN 2008 from the Smithsonian | Read the full story»

A lobsterman in Maine talks about the lure of working on the water.

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Contemporary tribute to the educational film

A group of students at an "Interactive Art Director" course at Hyper Island in Sweden have produced a pitch-perfect "educational film" about their field; the short's a great little homage to the golden age of industrial films. (Video )

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A Chance to Fly Naked

A German travel agency is offering flights for vacationers who want to travel naked. The destination is a Baltic Sea resort popular with German nudists. Clothing is required until takeoff -- at which point travelers can take it ALL off. (Audio)

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Being Funny

FEB 2008 from the Smithsonian | Read the full story»

What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.

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Holden Caulfield: Giving Voice to Generations

Since his debut in 1951, Holden Caulfield -- the funny, complex, wry protagonist of J.D. Salinger's classic The Catcher in the Rye -- has given voice to generations of teenagers caught between childhood and the adult world. (Audio)

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City of Lyon being cloned in Dubai

Dubai is cloning the city of Lyon, France on a 700-acre plot, replicating its cultural institutions in a grand and surreal gesture of I'm-not-sure-what. Alas, the newtown is called "Lyons-Dubai City" and not "Baudrillardville."

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National Zoo Sells Sounds of Wild Life for Ring Tones

The National Zoo in Washington D.C. is bringing calls of the wild to cell phones by selling animal ring tones. In addition to the Sumatran tiger, incoming calls can sound like an anteater, or North American river otters, or sounds of a laughing hyena. (Audio)

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Laziness Museum Displays Couches, Hammocks

A "Museum of Laziness" has been open for one week in Bogota, Colombia. Among its exhibits is a couch set before a TV, hammocks and various beds. Its curator says the city sponsored museum is aimed at exploring the idea that "laziness is the enemy of work." (Audio)

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In Dark Winter, Chekhov Brings Comfort and Joy

Growing up in central New York, writer Diana Abu-Jaber spent many snowstorms curled up indoors with a book. She says Anton Chekhov's short stories reassured her that warmth can be found even in the coldest, darkest places. (Audio)

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Author Attempts to Make Speaking Latin Hip

Author Harry Mount thinks that a little Latin does a body (and mind) good. Jacki Lyden speaks with the writer about his new book, Carpe Diem: Put a Little Latin in Your Life and why he wants to breathe new life into the dead language on Angelina Jolie's belly. (Audio)

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Rankin's Eyescapes photographs

Rankin, photographer and founder of Dazed and Confused magazine, created an incredible photographic series of more than a dozen decontextualized irises. Scrolling horizontally back and forth across these images is quite trance-inducing. The project is called Eyescapes. Link

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Merriam-Webster's 2007 word of the year: w00t

In the spirit of the Stephen Colbert-fueled "truthiness," the dictionary giant crowns a l33t-speak favorite with its annual award.

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Inflatable Festive Blow-Up Doll Snatched

The owner of Dixon Farms said that “Frosty” is worth about $10,000. He was last seen wearing a red hat and scarf, and had a pipe in his mouth. Officials fear the worst ...

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Engineers Say N. Pole Wrong Base of Santa

A Swedish engineering firm still believes in Santa Claus. But it says the North Pole is all wrong for him. To finish his job in time for Christmas morning, the firm calculated that Santa's base should be in Kyrgyzstan. It took into account the main population centers and the Earth's rotation. (Audio)

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Annual Day of the Ninja

It's the Annual Day of the Ninja. As popular as these masked men and women have become you might forget that in feudal Japan, ninjas were real and really sneaky. Under cover of darkness, dressed in black, ninjas were hired assassins and spies. So on this day you can dress like a ninja. (Audio)

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New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India

26 NOV 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Eight thousand miles from Manhattan, barefoot, shirtless, whip-thin men rippled with muscle were forging prosaic pieces of the urban jigsaw puzzle: manhole covers. (Subscription required)

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Art Pepper's 'Straight Life' Goes Straight to YouTube

Art Pepper was a self-taught jazz legend. He played with Miles Davis and was hailed as one of the greatest alto players to follow in the footsteps of Charlie Parker. He also spent ten years in prison on narcotics charges. Now his widow is turning his life story into a series of short films she's posting on YouTube. (Audio)

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Laptops designed by 7-year-olds

You may have seen a link circulating a while ago about a group of 7-year-olds designing laptops (it was on a CNET blog post by Amy Tiemann). Well, I tracked them down, and now many permission slips later, we just published a gallery on TMN of what the future looks like in laptop design if 7-year-olds are to be believed. There's an interview with Ms. Tiemann about the club, as well as some interviews with the kids.

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Thanksgiving Music Gets Its Due

The overwhelming canon of Christmas music tends to overshadow a small but charming group of Thanksgiving songs. Music teacher Allyson Ledoux belts out a few of her favorites for Andrea Seabrook. (Audio)

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Dumb security questions

If asked to list US states, which would you remember last? Who is your sixth-favorite novelist? Where exactly did you get the most lost?

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The Way We Live Now: Mind of a Rock

Is everything conscious? (Subscription required)

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Finding Music in 'Finnegan's Wake'

James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake poses a challenge even to the most ambitious readers. Poet Paul Muldoon and Jacki Lyden discover Finnegan's musicality as they listen to an archival recording of James Joyce reading from his final novel. (Audio)

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Screensaver displays security cam images

Michael says: SurveillanceSaver is an OS X screen saver that shows about 400 live security camera videos from public accessible Axis network cameras. It shows surprising scenes from underwater pool cameras, cows in milking machines, to shopping malls and street cameras.

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Wi-Fi Detector Shirt

The smart geeks at ThinkGeek are now selling a Wi-Fi Detector t-shirt that dynamically displays the current surrounding Wi-Fi signal strength with a glowing animation. You’ll need three AAA batteries to make the magic happen. The decal is removable so you can wash your shirt and not be a stinky geek. (via LaughingSquid)

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Curious office supplies

Dark Roasted Blend showcases a selection of unusual and extreme office supplies. Seen here at left, a dinosaur staple remover from Jac Zagoory Designs. And at right, Tom Balhatchet's hamster-powered paper shredder. (It's an art project.) Link

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Olympic Fever Sparks Creativity - Chinese Cyclist Promotes Games

This Chinese biker took two months to convert his normal bike into the five rings of the Olympics. He will ride it around Yinchuang, China to show his welcome to Olympic competitors and visitors.

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Inside Baseball: The Man who Puts the Socks on Fenway

If you're watching the World Series tonight, as I am at the moment, you've seen that cool Red Sox logo on the infield grass. Let me introduce you to the man responsible for that creative touch, Dave Mellor, director of the grounds at Fenway Park.

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How Manga Conquered the U.S., a Graphic Guide to Japan's Coolest Export

Welcome to Wired's visual history of manga in America! Like many of the popular manga that have been translated into English, we are using the Japanese page and panel order. Japanese writing reads from right to left, so pages and panels are sequenced in what seems like reverse order to Western readers.

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Still Punk, Still Proud, Still Breaking the Rules

16 OCT 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Ms. Harry demurred. "It’s hard for me to think that Blondie was so completely original," she said. "I don’t really think that I’m an icon. I think an icon is a statue, something that’s frozen, you know. I don’t feel like that." (Subscription required)

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'Leaves of Grass' Still Growing, Inspiring

Author Diane Ackerman writes that Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is an epic journey of self-discovery. He began with a microscopic eye focused on a leaf of grass, and then stretched his mental eye out to the beauty of the farthest nebulae. (Audio)

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Italian: The Language That Sings

Even when it isn't sung, the Italian language sounds like music, which is part of why Italian words are used to tell musicians how to play—presto, lento, adagio, forte. Commentator Miles Hoffman explains why Italian is the lingua franca of classical music. (Audio)

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László Moholy-Nagy's visual representation of Finnegan's Wake

"Not only did he understand Joyce’s extraordinary work better than anyone else writing at that time, but Moholy also provided a chart that, as it uses his favorite visual forms of the rectangular grid and circles, remains to this day the most succinct (and inspired) presentation of the Joycean technique of multiple references."

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I Dare You To Explore Our City

Urban Dare is a new competition that takes teams of two and sends them out into the city to complete various challenges in what is essentially a modern scavenger hunt. Part photo hunt, part trivia, part dares, teams solve clues to reach checkpoints where they must complete challenges and document it with a digital camera before receiving a ‘passport stamp’ and moving onto the next checkpoint.

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Don’t Even Think of Touching That Cupcake

23 SEP 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

It’s a haute Betty Crocker treat for us grown-ups, but devil’s food for our little angels. (Subscription required)

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A room with a point of view

19 SEP 2007 from TheStar.com | Read the full story»

Artist converts dumpster to a chic hotel room for Nuit Blanche as comment on gentrification.

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Owner of Bonds Home Run Ball Leaves Fate to You

The man who bought Barry Bonds' record-setting baseball says he did it for you. Fashion designer Marc Ecko paid $750,000. He wants you to vote by Internet on what to do with the ball. You can send it to the Hall of Fame, or brand it with an asterisk, or put it on a rocket and send it into space. (Audio)

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The boss isn't in today . . . ever

It's important in business to keep up appearances. But what if your office was all appearances? As in, more like a movie set with extras posing as your staff? Cash Peters reports on the growing trend of virtual offices.

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Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides Then Sit the Hell Down

At pecha-kucha events, designers, architects and dilettantes each showcase 20 PowerPoint slides in 20 seconds. They say what they need to say in those six minutes and 40 seconds and then take their seat. The result? Compelling beat-the-clock performance art.

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Yes, Mark Cuban will be on 'Dancing with the Stars'

The Dallas Mavericks owner and digital-media entrepreneur will be on the dance contest TV show, according to the Associated Press.

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Competitive Mobile Throwing - Air-Time Gets New Meaning

As with most things connected with mobile phones, the Finns seem to be ahead of the pack. Leading by example, they've decided that the newest cell phone craze includes, quite literally, tossing them around. Tommi Huotari took gold with a throw of 89.62 meters in the distance category...

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The Gibberish Generator

Putting together a business prospectus for a technology or internet company can be tough these days. How do you know what business gibberish to use to make your company sound "in-the-know"? What you need is the Corporate Gibberish Generator.

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The Galapagos Post Office

On a deserted beach on a small island near the equator, there's a barrel and some ziploc bags. This post office has been here for more than a hundred years...

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We Feel Fine

If the world were a swirling vortex of conflicting emotions, We Feel Fine would be its pictorial representation.

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Full Moon Determined Safe

It's often said that a full moon makes people more accident prone. So researchers with Austria's government took time to study it. They examined half a million industrial accidents. They found that you're in no more danger during a full moon. Now we're left with no explanation for people's mistakes except people. (Audio)

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When smart people use bad grammar

24 JUL 2007 from the Bing Blog | Read the full story»

I'm sitting at a lounge last week in Los Angeles with a top business reporter. True, we're drinking, but that doesn't really explain what happens next. I'm conversing with him about something that doesn't really concern you, and things get kind of confidential, and I ask for his promise that the matter will remain off the record. "Don't worry," says the reporter, a graduate of a fine college and probably a reputable journalism school. "That will just be between you and I."

See anything wrong there? I do, but I don't say anything about it. I don't want to come off as Miss Grundy.

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The Greatest Gadgets of All Time? Make Your Picks in Our Tournament

Wired presents the "Greatest Gadget of All Time" -- an interactive tournament where you can vote for your favorite gadgets. And if you're lucky, you could win an Apple iPhone.

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Song titles as movie posters photoshopping contest

Cory Doctorow: Today on Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday: Song-titles as movie posters. I'm partial to this Strangelove/End of the World as We Know It, though the Indiana Jones "Whip It" poster was very fine indeed.

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Video: White Stripes play one second show

The White Stripes completed a tour of every Canadian province and territory they'd never played before. The last gig was in St. John's, Newfoundland and it was a short one. Very short. One note, in fact. (Video )

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A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

08 JUL 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers? Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is "looking to put the 'hep cat' in cataloguing." (Subscription required)

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Bird Cinema: YouTube, with Feathers

Introducing birdcinema.com, a YouTube for birdwatchers.

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Satellite dishes as decorative objects

A local artist and his pupils decorated the dishes of Amsterdam's "satellite city," an immigrant neighborhood.

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Would-Be Groom Seeks Refund

His fiancée called off the wedding. So Layne Hess wanted a refund. He went to court, demanding payment for everything he did during their courtship. There was the cruise to Alaska, and the trip to France, and the vasectomy. Hess says he wouldn't have spent all that money if they weren't getting married. But the court turned him down, saying Jody Johnston never provided a money-back guarantee. She did, at least, return the ring. (Audio)

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Out of a Nigerian Slum, a Poet Is Born

Nigerian poet and activist Aj Dagga Tolar lives in a shack in Ajegunle, a slum on the outskirts of Lagos that is also called "The Jungle." He says he tries to escape the tough reality of slum life by being creative, making music and poetry. (Audio)

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Bob Barker Leaves Game Show