Man gets 218-trillion-dollar phone bill: It's good to see that the Malaysian phone company is as on the ball as here in the States.
The Chinese zombie ships of West Africa: "We move to the second ship, where again, a bunch of friendly young guys have been sitting at anchor for two months, waiting technical help and a new crew." And there, seventy miles off the coast of Guinea, the fishing trawlers rust and rot.
Protectors of the Krispy Kreme Brand: I'm utterly fascinated by this blog, run by a large California franchisee and dedicated to exploring the attempts to pull the HOT DONUTS NOW company out of its nosedive.
tesg's guide to big chain road food consumption: From the giants like McDonald's and Subway to huge regional chains like Jack in the Box to crazy Cincinnati chili joints that don't travel outside the Kentucky/Ohio/Indiana area. America has a lot of fast food chains I've never heard of.
Cement Shortage Could Affect Cricket: Some people's priorities are not the same as my priorities.
OptOutPrescreen.com: Get your name off credit card mailing lists -- all the nicer post-Cockeyed's discovers about the quality control on credit card applications. I've been told that this actually works, if laggily.
Girlhacker's annual Oscar loot list: Lilly puts this together every year, and every year I'm staggered by how much people are willing to dole out in the hopes of a celebrity endorsement.
A GM conspiracy theory: The House of Rothschild is trying to put GM out of business! The Chevy Tahoe hybrid engine isn't a hybrid engine! Rick Wagoner cut himself a sweetheart deal on a pension!
Some guy really doesn't like Robert T. Kiyosaki: A lot of this page is simply angry net ranting, but I found "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" not only to be dreadful, destructive advice but poorly written to the point of incoherence.
Prettiest factory ever: VW's factory for their ridiculously overpriced Phaeton has floors nicer than the ones in my house.
On the ubiquity of flair: I can think of few jobs as simultaneously fascinating and soul-deadening as kitsch purchaser for TGI Fridays.
Charlie Munger on how to think: Warren Buffett's partner on Pascal, cash registers, and the price of wheat in Liverpool.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Perfume Oils: Wanderlust: "Whitechapel: A gentlemen's blend, possessed of dignity, charm, and refinement, but in truth masking a corrupted, hideous, soulless core." Also: Neo-Tokyo, Gomorrah, R'lyeh.
The Yakuza turns to outsourcing: To get around -government regulation-. No lie. Japan is -deeply weird-.
Malls of America: "Vintage photos of lost Shopping Malls of the '60s & '70s."
Muji: Your life in their hands: The Muji store I went to in London was a revelation -- think a higher-quality IKEA for the non-furniture things one buys.
Eggheads and Bookies: How "Scientific" Wagers Beat Wall Street: Starring Edward Thorp, the MIT mathematician who invented card counting, and Claude Shannon, the Bell Labs genius who might lead my all-history dinner party guest list.
The Taming of the Screw: Illinois Tool's Kenneth LeVey digitizes a 1936 manual of screw design and reinvents a simple machine.
The Dark Magic of Oil Sands: Greenhouse gases, boomtowns, the Anglophone Saudi Arabia, and really big trucks: "Their tires, weighing 40,000 pounds each, are 14 feet tall, and you have to climb two flights of stairs to reach the driver's seat."
How Portland implemented Kyoto: And how its economy didn't implode.
Paul Graham makes like an economist. Or a sociologist. Or something.: In his defense, at least this time he's managed an infuriating and (to my eye) deeply under-researched essay without mentioning LISP's innate superiority for all hackers everywhere.
Bet On Iraq.com: Because nothing says "conservative investment" like Iraqi dinars purchased over the internet from a site with black-on-black text at the bottom!
Blue Jeans of Death: What happens when counterfeit jean manufacturers use buggy Microsoft macros to drive their operations.
Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, loses his mind.: Check out the Aug. 12 webcast. Even if some of what he's saying is true, he just sounds... unhinged. Queeg-esque.
XXXXXXXXL: The Secret History of the Galaxy Tall Tee: A fascinating story of one Jewish importer, fifty thousand African-American men, and a very long white t-shirt.
The DeMoulin Bros. Catalog of fraternal society gear: Amuse your friends at the next Odd Fellows lodge initiation with this 1930 catalog of "Burlesque and Side Degree Specialties".
The Patrick Byrne story gets weirder: Accusations of massive conspiracy are one thing, but once an exotic dancer enters the equation, you've got a Cinemax original movie.
New mini-nuclear-plant design approved for use in Galena, AK: "The reactor unit is 50 feet to 60 feet tall and 6 to 8 feet in diameter. It will be built outside of Alaska, installed in the Yukon River community, encased in several tons of concrete and not be opened during its operating life, which is now estimated a
The Bessemer Venture Partners greatest misses page: "Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, 'How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?'"
Brad DeLong's commentors on the economics of Two-Buck Chuck: Tariffs, margins, expansion, appelation, and why the Midwest has "Three-Buck Chuck".
The eWorld That Was and Wasn't: "And here is what really killed eWorld. What we forget about those days at Apple was how dark they got." The life and death of Apple's first online offering.
Matthew Lesko, the question mark man: Entrepreneur, flim-flam artist, fashion plate. "'The government would say something like, "The Urban Homesteading Act." I’d call it, "Houses for a Dollar!" Well, there you go!'”
Snark Hunting: a meanspirited blog about branding: Written by someone in the naming industry. Delightful.
theboxtank: A group blog "focused on retail and urbanism" (although largely devoted to bashing Wal-Mart).
Buy a school on eBay: Only an hour from Cinncinnati! Complete with basketball court! Perfect for your horse farm or third-rate superhero team headquarters!
Uniqlo: Cheap, basic, remarkably bland clothes -- it's the Old Navy of Japan!
Foreclosure filings jump in Mass. as home values soar: Up 27.8%, year-over-year to date.
And this is why sumptuary laws fail: "The World’s Most Exclusive Pencil: Limited Edition Perfect Pencil in White Gold with Diamonds"
Real-estate insanity is becoming the norm in Florida: "...Its for-sale sign lacks the usual 'SOLD' label. Instead, the real-estate agent has slapped on a neon-orange banner that screams: 'TOO LATE.'"
Ron Pinkoski's Banking Solution: "Ron Wyatt and I had not yet met -- but as Ron Wyatt was discovering the Ark of the Covenant in that cave system in Israel January 1982 I was in California attempting to tell people that, 'YES, there is a solution to our economic system . . .'"
Krispy Kreme's downfall: The insider-franchisee buyback seems to have amounted to a disguised payoff to former executives, but the whole company was a mess. (via Waxy)
The economics of Nintendo: Nintendo is the most profitable console maker because it has bulletproof franchises and doesn't pay a lot for R&D. (via hello, nintendo)
TheTransitioner : Open Money Home Page: The idea escapes once again from Bruce Sterling fiction and Long Boom-era exropian white papers. (via Futurismic)
It's Not a Bubble Until It Bursts: "In 2003, new owners surveyed said they thought the value of their homes would increase an average of 13% a year for a decade. By last year, they expected 22.5%."
The economics of urban decline: "The combination of cheap housing and low labor demand attracts indivudals of low human capital... Bill Gates does not live in Buffalo."
Interest-only loans fueling San Francisco Bay housing market: Further evidence of a California real estate bubble. (via Angry Bear)
Nickel and diming Ohio's Bureau of Workers' Comp: Ohio's pension fund invested in a rare coin portfolio that -lost- hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of coins. Was the fundraiser who ran it skimming?
Time's Up, Einstein: Like every other non-physicist in the world, I can't follow (though wouldn't the non-reversibility of time present problems?), but the marketing angle makes this interesting.
Muji House: Muji is the greatest thing, sort of a cross between American Apparel and Ikea. I wish I could read their design suggestions.
Mongol nomads like home on range: Hernando De Soto-style land reform hits Mongolia. (via Hit and Run)
Insider trading in the Harry Potter deathpool?: Bookies are refusing bets from the town where the new Harry Potter book was printed. (Warning: spoilerific!!)
The Education of David Stockman, Cont'd: I saw the news about Collins and Aikman today and started looking for the hagiographic profile of Stockman and Heartland that ran in the Times a few years ago.
Google Will Eat Itself: A slow wave corporate takeover/performance art project, in which Google Adsense funds purchase of Google shares. (via We Make Money Not Art)
Christian Century: New world order, old world anti-Semitism: Pat Robertson, populism, Christian anti-usury movements, economic unrest, and the Elders of Zion.
STRANGEco: Designer Toys, Art and Curiosities: Part zine, part catalog of crazy cute mutant toys.
Clarke American chases the Comic Book Guy market: Poor Aquaman gets dissed again. And is that Comic Sans?
The trouble with GM: Tom Bozzo makes the case that healthcare is a shuck and jive to avoid the real problem: people don't want to pay full price for boring GM cars.
Mark Cuban continues his flamebaiting: Am I bad for being so amused that a billionaire chooses to spend his time picking fights with the pseudonymous "Bob O'Brien" over illegal shortselling?
Calculated Rish: The Mug's Game: Secure your bragging rights by predicting the start of the next US recession!
MSN's Online Banking forum: Huge trove of information about online-only banks (USAA, ING, State Farm) and the online efforts of many national and large regional operators.
Laura DiDio and the Yankee Group Linux survey: A Business Week column is, ah, -highly skeptical- of the survey methodology and DiDio's reporting. (via Groklaw.net)
Daniell Gross: A Moneyblog: Slate's excellent "Moneybox" writer gets a blog of his own.
Modern Cleveland: Come along on a tour of Cleveland's secret treasures -- things with character and style, and that engender a sense of culture and community.
Sisyphus as Social Democrat: Brad deLong on the meaning and meaninglessness of J.K. Galbraith.
Morgan Stanley's Bill Roach kicks Alan Greenspan in the teeth: "I am not a believer in conspiracy theories. But the Fed's behavior since the late 1990s is starting to change my mind."
Wanna buy this house? Send your resume.: Real estate agents are being forced to write long recommendation letters for their clients as the home-ownership froth continues to get frothier.
Gold lures Mongolians from the land: "Across Mongolia, an estimated 100,000 people like Oyungerel are turning away from traditional occupations ... to illegally scavenge the country's old gold mines for leftover nuggets and gold dust." (via Hit and Run)
Blacksocks.com: Italian cashmere and cotton socks by subscription.
United's pension woes: sign of bigger issue: The airline industry gears up to bone its workers and the American taxpayer. Again.
Some Like It Hot: Chris Mooney outlines the TechCentralStation/JunkScience.com/Exxon effort to throw chaff up in response to scientific consensus on global warning.
Due Diligence: Rant: Abusing The Long Tail: Actually most interesting for the comments about Eastern European vacuum tubes as a Long Tail phenomenon
The Starbucks effect and highway planning: What happens when a significant proportion of the nation's commuters need to stop and get their morning latte?
Bankrupt and Swamped With Credit Offers (washingtonpost.com): The market shows a continued hunger for risk -- the punchbowl hasn't been taken away yet.
Oriental Pearl Cream: Nancy Kwan's ads for this still haunt my nightmares.
"As you can see, I have lot of questions about pork dairy potential.": And other letters to the world's most patient PR drones. (via delicious/redfox)
Compound Interest: A Feminist Take on Work Culture: My friend Mary sidesteps from her Washington Post column to writing a blog.
The Big Picture: Dynamic Pricing: DVD versus CD Strategies: Or, why the MPAA is smarter than the RIAA.
Peerflix: a P2P network for physical DVDs: Vaguely similar to Mark Anderson's Booklend.net, only decentralized and for-profit.
"If you can fog a mirror, you can get a mortgage.": Massive speculation? Check. Greatly increased participation in the market, and a corresponding decrese in credit quality? Check. Bad things coming? ...
The real estate boom reaches the "mania" phase: " This is so insanely simple. I didn't have to attend a seminar. I didn't have to read a book."
The man who sold the moon.: Next step: Libertarian space utopia! Step after that: Bollywood musical!
Doomsaying economist Stephen Roach on Alan Greenspan: Given some of the things Roach has said about America's impending fiscal trainwreck, this is remarkably fairminded.
Coming soon: the Wal-Mart Visa?: Wal-Mart's move into baking, particularly for the underbanked, is going to get awfully interesting; hopefully it will play out well for the customers.
The top-selling albums ever: Americans love best-of albums. (via Ask MeFi)
Confessions of a Car Salesman: Edmunds.com sends a writer to work as a car salesman for two months and find out what it's really like.
Coalblog: A fascinating example of the weblog-as-trade-journal.
The Day After Tomorrow: Man, those goldbugs sure can spin a horror story.
An Economic Evaluation of the Moneyball Hypothesis: The efficient market theory hits baseball. (via Infectious Greed)
Ordinary Least Square: The Puck Stops Here: Ongoing analysis of the forces determined to kill hockey.
Kuwaiti media conglomorate buys "Cracked": I'm glad it'll survive, even if it's not nearly as good as "Mad" (and if the Kuwaitis think it'll drive worldwide growth, they've got another think coming). (via Mark Evanier)
How far would you go for a piece of real estate?: One man's two-year-quest for a cheap Brooklyn building took him to Spain, cost him his girlfriend, and made him a burglar.
When Jack Welch Was Director of Intelligence: A CIA exercise in future history, starring the former CEO of General Electric.
Wired shills for nuclear power: I even -agree- with the thrust of the article, but the relentles strawmanism in the face of real problems and sneering contempt for people who don't get it turn the piece into Tech Central Station meets "The Long Boom".
The Global 100: Most Sustainable Corporations in the World: It's fascinating that a metal smelter, a car manufacturer, and a giant fossil fuel extractor are their finalists for #1. (via Claxy)
A little bubble flashback from James Cramer: "Heck, people are just learning these stories on Wall Street, and the more they come to learn, the more they love and own!"
A red letter day in the annals of product placement: Wow. That's.. painfully awkward.
Wall Street Scandals, complete in one drawing: If only it worked the Templars in there somewhere... (via the Big Picture)
Yourmusic.com: BMG Music Club meets Netflix: Queue up a bunch of CDs you'd like to buy, and have one a month sent to you for $6. The catch? Forget to queue something and they charge you anyway.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner goes indie: The British composer starts his own label after a Bach cantina project gets dropped by his (major) label. (via Long Tail)
R.BIRD: Patterns: Analyzing design patterns in consumer packaging -- the bread typography is particularly interesting.
Distributed Power News: There is very little in life quite so fascinating -- in principle, if not in fact -- as an obscure trade journal for an interesting industry.
A handful of the worst doctors measurably affect malpractice lawsuit frequency: But because of the currently flavor of political correctness, nobody is ever going to do anything about this common-sense observation. (via Off the Kuff)
Bill Fleckenstein: Is the Fed a Short Sale?: "I guess a fair alternative title for my talk could be: 'An Indictment of Alan Greenspan and What to Do About It.'"
Trans-Dniester Republican Bank: "According to the Decree of the President TMR from November 29, 2000 the old names in English Trans-Dniester Moldavian Republic ayd Trans-Dniester Republican Bank." Wow. I hope the country and bank eventually get moose and squirrel.
Why did the market crash in 1987?: "Because everyone was thinking about 1929." This guy's explanation is nutty, but at least its amusing.
The paper clip evolutionary tree: The brief flourishing of weird paper clips corresponds to the Jurassic Period of the modern office, I guess. (via)
The paper clip evolutionary tree: The brief flourishing of weird paper clips corresponds to the Jurassic Period of the modern office, I guess. (via)
Shaw Industries abandons PVC: The nation's largest carpet manufacturer switches to a recyclable material that uses less energy.
"This will end badly.": Fund manager John Hussman is a touch bearish.
Dollar's Fall Tests Nerve of Asia's Central Bankers: "Generally lacking any financial experience outside China, they sit at trading stations around a gold stand bearing a jeweled globe, two feet in diameter and with seas of lapis lazuli, in a rented room on the fourth floor of an insurance building."
Desperately seeking referral bonuses: ING Direct unintentionally created what looks very much like a positive feedback loop for spam
American Institute for Economic Research Cost-of-Living Calculator: Useful for making sure you get the occasional gag in the 1953 Peanuts collection.
D.C. At The Bat: Baseball Prospectus ran the numbers on the boning Tony Williams and Bud Selig dreamed up.
Jamming a C64 into a joystick: The spirit of Philo Farnsworth and the Homebrew Computer Club lives on in a thirty-year-old high school dropout and former racecar designer.
New home sales plunge unexpectedly in November: Then again, maybe it's not just California.
Housing boom could be history soon, experts say: Every bubble eventually bursts. (Let's hope it's a California-only bubble.)
Hacking Coke Machines: I always assume that this sort of BBS textfile info is bogus, but this seems to work.
del.icio.us spam: The serpent enters paradise, yet again.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator: Memories of the Boy Plunger, the frantic trader who made as much as $100 million during the 1929 crash. (PDF)
The Cuban Biotech Revolution: A sugar daddy in Castro, a well-educated population with few opportunities, a decent health system, and a weird relationship to the profit motive
Koyono BlackCoat Classic: "The Ultimate Overcoat Alternative"
Prof. Piggington's San Diego Real-Estate Chrono-Collapsometer: I wonder what similar graphs would look like in DC
Profile of a BzzAgent: This ruins a lot of my ideas about social networks and trust metrics (and explains a lot about the 2004 election). Creepy.
Applying game theory to shipping: Mars (of M&M fame) has 1,000 shippers participating in a tricked-up reverse auction, all trying to maximize their payoff.
Kempa plays with a working Japanese model gramaphone recorder: ...And then discovers that they make Edison cylinder kits as well.
Moleskine gets a facelift: You'd think the perfectly-designed notebooks were perfectly designed. You'd be wrong.
Newegg.com - KINGMAX MSAD42D-KI Memory: Comes recommended for Powerbook use, and it's frighteningly cheap.
Smokers need not apply: I'm genuinely curious as to how some of the libertarians behind the anti-DC smoking ban protests feel about this. I trust their honest belief in private transactions, but isn't it just a little creepy? (via)
Roger Ebert gets in Conrad Black's grill: "Since you have made my salary public, let me say that when I learned that [Lord Black's wife] Barbara received $300,000 a year from the paper for duties described as reading the paper and discussing it with you, I did not feel overpaid."
The eBay Reader: "he first book-length academic inquiry within the humanities into the cultural implications of eBay": Okay, I confess that even I want to make fun of this.
'50s ads from Ephemera Now: "Flaming Fruit Jubilee... So easy with this gay, glistening Square Skillet!"
The American Package Museum: Wrappers and boxes from a time when men were men and women bought Postum.
Panda-Z HamGear may be the cutest toy ever.: I mean, it will kill you it is so cute.
The many targets of Ram Man: I can't believe I wasted my childhood watching this show.
Sinclair Broadcasting and the Berlisconi-ing of America: I don't know which is most depressing, the article, the comments, or the breakdown in responsibility to shareholders that I think Sinclair represents.
Antique fishing lures: I think I saw some of these in "Dead Ringers". (via)
Ramtha's School of Enlightenment: Warning: MIDI files! If I were a Cro-Magnon warrior from Atlantis, I'd want a better website. (and her elf capes) (via)
Threadless t-shirts: T-shirts designed by an online community and sold for $10 a pop.
1935 Tokyo Giants road jersey: I know nothing about Japanese baseball, but what a gorgeous replica jersey that is.
Airline logos: I found myself admiring the AeroMexico logo while stuck on a runway. (via)
Drum and barrel recycling: The part of me that grew up reading "Backwoods Home" and "Whole Earth Review" thinks this is pretty damn cool. (see also)
Richard Perle vs. Lord Conrad Black, round 2: These guys so deserve each other.
Adult Sized Big Wheels!: Complete with adult sized price tags, alas.
Some classy anti-Kerry buttons: I'm particularly fond of the one that mocks my grandfather's Purple Heart.
Richard Perle and Lord Conrad Black's excellent adventure: How a neo-conservative defense policy analyst and a conservative Canadian media baron became friends, then enemies, then figures in a huge financial scandal. (see also)
Hot girls, frisky delegates: The Village Voice gets a strip club waitress to keep a tally of how her week goes. A cheap shot, but it's shaping up to be really amusing.
The Save the Regular Guy Association: Protecting St. Louis from totally gay shampoo.
Hey, Apple! Don't break my iPod!: Real Networks unleashes a mass movement in an attempt to cash in on their vast stores of goodwill among the internet-using peoples of the world. (Mysteriously, they no longer link to this site.)
The Times on Hong Kong art toys: I've seen these in Giant Robot, and they're fabulous.
Craig of Craigslist on the eBay deal: "The deal we're announcing today basically allows us to operate without changing our mission of community service, while making available to us expertise and resources we could really use." I wish Craig the best of luck with that.
The great middle class tax shift: Now that the CBO has confirmed it, can we stop calling the idea that Bush's tax cuts benefit the affluent "class warfare"?
The Marine recruiter bucket shop: The sales techniques Marine recruiters turn to in my affluent (and therefore unpromising) home town.
Mythical Geography: For sale: Maps of explorers' and cartographers' honest mistakes. (via)
The Numbers: Box Office Data, Movie Stars, Idle Speculation: A cheat sheet for the business of movies: box office speculation, weekly theater counts, daily box office drops, and more.
Izzle Pfaff: At the River: Skot's summer job: "I was, then as now, a puny ectomorph, ill equipped either mentally or physically to challenge Ma Nature in all her roaring, spuming glory."
Play By the Rules: An effort to encourage Olympic sportswear manufacturer Fila to use non-sweatshop labor.
Creation Safaris: "Creation Safaris™, now in our 20th year, take you to unusual and beautiful places where you can have fun, fellowship and worship God while enjoying the Great Outdoors. And while you’re at it, you will learn important evidence for creation and against evolution."
Why wasn't eBay around when I was eight?: Admittedly, I would need to have been eight and sitting around with fifty grand burning a hole in my pocket.
The birth of Image Comics: How a bunch of young guns saw their chance to break loose, get rich, make enemies, and blow up an entire industry. (via)
Edward Jay Epstein's "The Diamond Invention": Epstein is a little bit of a nut, but he's an excellent writer, and the machinations of the diamond cartel -- and the efforts to spread the idea that diamonds are hugely rare -- are fascinating, so I bet this book is a swell read.
The tale of a Shellac rarity: One ultra-rare album by the math rock supergroup produces discussion of the ethics of regifting, a testimonial to an amp supplier, Steve Albini weighing in on property rights, and proof that friends will always betray you. (via)
Rock and Roll McDonald's is no more: Cry a little tear for Wesley Willis, everybody. (see also) (via)
"Cigarettes were also subject to the workings of Gresham's Law.": A British economist on his stint in a World War II P.O.W. camp. (via)
The miracle of Älmhult: How a Swedish furniture dealer became richer than Bill Gates. (via)
Where have all the pirates gone?: I blame the RIAA. (see also)
The Amazon kneejerk contrarian game: Find a classic that someone dissed. "I think about Kenny G., for instance. His rythmic session is much more regular, whereas Coltrane's session seems sometimes to loose the beat."
EFF prepares to challenge 10 patents: As some day it may happen that a victim must be found, / They've got a little list, they've got a little list. (via)
Condos, gated communities, and shadow governments: A libertarian considers the problems of semi-voluntary associations.
Fresh Roast Plus personal coffee roaster: A coffee roaster designed for one or two people. Nice. (via)
William Tozier's bibliophilic expidition: 1 minivan, 1000 miles, 2000 pounds of books. Also, mummies.
Making teenagers disappear: Tranquility Bay is disturbing and creepy. It is somehow unsurprising that they would hire someone a little bit disturbing and creepy to bring them their charges. (see also) (and this)
Pack goats!: Rent a goat for your next extreme hike! Has the added bonus of cutting down on illegal cross-border tin-can smuggling.
Canada's Mint is funnier than ours: Although that Sacajewea dollar gag had me going for a while.
Donald Sterling, basketball's savviest, lamest owner: It's like Bizarro "Moneyball" -- instead of finding ways to win cheaply, Donald Sterling finds ways to lose very, very cheaply.
Rev. Moon vs. the Washington Times?: "Insiders said that Japanese backers of the church had been especially unhappy with the Times's huge losses and with its right-wing positions on global political issues."
Libraries get screwed in the CD settlement: Have the big record companies ever dealt fairly with anyone? (via)
The architecture of Wal-Mart: "The biggest buildings most people routinely visit are not Skidmore, Owings & Merrill skyscrapers; they're Wal-Marts." (via)
The Washington Post's home price reports: Find your Congressman's tax assessment!
The serial montage and the myth of communicative transcendence: Part of a site dedicated to "the semiotics of advertising".
What the Bagel Man Saw: A bagel delivery service as a Petri dish for studying white collar crime. (via)
Window Into Hell: The Images of Children's Toys Today: Finally, it is revealed: Optimus Prime is the Devil, and glamorous, bosomy Barbie is his bride.
It's All in the Cards: A history of playing card design. (via)
IMDB and Yahoo chatter predicts commercial success: But what about whiny fans on Usenet? And Ain't It Cool News? If Harry Knowles likes it, it must be box office gold! (via)
Lab notebooks: At work, I occasionally run into a guy who uses these where I might use a legal pad, and it seems like a nice idea.
Wiki hype, part 2: Business journalists have discovered wikis. Next step: three zillion crappy startups!
Daily Speculations: The webloggish thing of Victor Niederhoffer, the former squash champion, hedge fund manager, and author of "The Education of a Speculator". One part insight, one part technical analysis, one part libertarian rant, and he thinks "High Noon" is un-American.
Something Wiki This Way Comes: Sweet merciful heavens, the relentless hyping of another useful tool has begun.
An inkpot full of pen links: A lovely companion to Phil "Red Rock Eater" Agre's cheap gel pen roundup.
Kitsch and Kalashnikov: Afghan wars, Afghan rugs: "Early pictorial, or 'aksi', war carpets are a fascinating hybrid of traditional abstract motifs slowly transforming into military objects. Where one might expect to find a 'boteh' symbol (an ancient precursor to our paisley), one finds instead a woman in a burka beside a tiny Kalashnikov rifle -- or a view from the ground of a B-52 unloading its deadly cargo." (via)
Aranzi Aronzo: Insanely kawaii little Japanese doodads -- bags, notebooks, even fabric.
Zingerman's: The coolest small company in America: Especially if we define "coolest" as "having the best mail-order Spanish cheese".
Doug Pappas' Baseball Prospectus archive: Doug Pappas wrote for fans and sabrematricians interested in the "money" part of "Moneyball"; Baseball Prospectus made all his work available after his untimely death. (see also)
Namiki Vanishing Point pens: Pretty, retractable fountain pens.
Gorgeous (and pricey) throwback baseball jerseys: The minor and Negro league jerseys are particularly nice. San Francisco Seals forever!
The history of credit & debt: For all those who have wanted to see what debtor's prison looked like.
Gallery of industrial art: Beautiful patent drawings and mechanical schema. (via)
Gloomy bear: Very cute, only moderately gloomy.
The Talmudic scholarship of tax protestors: Actually, the analogy to the world of subterranean world of s.f. fandom seems really, really apt. Tax code parsing as fanwank! (via) (see also)
Baron Munchausen trading cards: Smoke Little Joker Tobacco and thrill to the exploits of the greatest liar since Herodotus. (via)
The Business Plan Archive: Business plans of the dotcom boomtimes, preserved as a lesson for future generations.
Mocoloco: Like Gizmodo, but for shelter mag obsessives.
Limn furniture: Some purty modernist-influenced furniture. I like the chairs.
20% off any one item from Borders: Use it by a week from Sunday. (via)
Stump the Bookseller: Spend $2 to get the name of that children's book you vaguely remember from 3rd grade.
Bob Stupak and Me: One man's experience with the life's work of Bob Stupak, the Strip's sketchiest casino owner.
5 Minutes to Live video: Probably a bit dodgy if they're offering Todd Haynes' "Superstar", but still. "Bunny Lake is Missing"! "The Collector"! "I Walked With a Zombie"!! (see also) (via)
Julian Dibbell wraps up Play Money: He did not quite earn more as a Ultima Online retailer than he earned as a professional writer, but four grand a month isn't anything to sneer at.
The return of the Apple Extended Keyboard: Hurrah for clickety-clackity keyboards! (via)
SaveDisney.com: The very steamed Roy Disney wants his uncle's company back. (via)
SaveDisney.com: The very steamed Roy Disney wants his uncle's company back. (via)
Brain sandwiches: "The decision means customers will have to switch to pork brains, which they tend to not like as much because they are smaller and more difficult to work with..." (via)