Can Scientists Dance? – A bevy of students, postdocs, and professors perform interpretive dances for their Ph.D. dissertations. Like Simone Recchi performing Dynamical and chemical evolution of blue compact dwarf galaxies a la Daft Punk’s “Around the World”.

Quote, Unquote – There has been a bit of discussion (read: ire) over the widespread use of “dumb quotes” (straight) over “smart quotes” (curved). Straight apostrophes denote inches and degrees and minutes and seconds, while curved apostrophes are used in conjunctions and quoting. There are a number of reasons to purposely use one or the other, but anything else is just laziness. Thankfully, Wordpress has me covered.

10 trends that will define logo design in 2008 – I guess it’s already time for another makeover.

Slide Show – “Are you ready for PowerPoint karaoke?” No.

How do you build a public library in the age of Google? – Slate.com photo essay on the changing architecture and role of public libraries. As digital content becomes more and more pervasive, there’s less need for a stuffy old library filled with nothing but books. Public libraries in major cities around the country are responding to this not only with new offerings (coffee shops, movie rentals, more computers) but with new architecture as well.

The 2008 Tournament of Books

In which we would seed the year’s most celebrated works of fiction in a March Madness-type bracket and pit those novels against each other in a “Battle Royale of Literary Excellence.” In honor of our favorite character in contemporary literature, David Sedaris’s brother, aka “The Rooster,” we decided to present the winning author with a live chicken.

Interview with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber – A Mix of the Technical, the Artful, the Thoughtful, and the Absurd:

What graphic design is to a visual idea, writing is to a verbal idea. My goal is to craft my writing in such a way that makes it as easy and obvious as possible for the reader to “get” exactly what it is I’m hoping they get.

Obsolete Skills – Such as coding in BASIC, adjusting the rabbit ears on top of a TV, and getting to know your neighbors. Also: obsolete skills, identification of.

Spy Satellite Blast, Caught on Tape – Wired.com has updated coverage on the recent Star Wars-esque shenanigans of the US Navy. In space, no one can hear you scream, but we can definitely watch you explode into a million pieces.

Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe [NSFW] – Bert Stern, the photographer responsible for the most famous photos of Marilyn Monroe, has recreated the series with Lindsay Lohan. Maybe it’s Lohan’s fake blonde hair, or maybe it’s just my eyes’ dislike of the obscene, but the whole thing comes off as a terrible idea. Still, Lindsay Lohan naked, hurray?

Upside-Down-Ternet – The 100% fun, safe, and nerdy way to deal with those hooligans stealing your wireless internet. In other words, this XKCD strip.

This week on NPR’s In Character: Cookie Monster:

Homeless: Can you build a life from $25? – An interview with Adam Shepard, who left his comfortable life to start anew on the streets. Inspired by Nickel and Dimed, he went armed with only $25 and the clothes on his back to see if he could go from the streets to a furnished apartment, car, and $2,500 in savings within a year.

Just how tough are NASCAR fans? – Like Adam Shepard above, Hampton Stevens had a goal: With only $20, a cell phone, and a camera, Stevens had 24 hours to find a ride to the Subway 500 and a $75 ticket to the sold-out race. Just as inspiring.

Homer Simpson – a portrait in the style of Rembrandt. His eyes have never been more captivating.

The Appeal of the MacBook Air – John Gruber proselytizes for the MacBook Air a bit more, comparing it to a sexy convertible coupe (not unlike the iPod Mini or Nano). I pretty much agree with Gruber, and am still surprised that there is a strong group of people who foresee the MacBook Air failing. Would I buy it? No. But it is a good machine for a lot of people besides me. (Then again, this is a lot more than $50 we’re talking about; analogies only go so far.)

Things I have learned from mostly linkblogging for more than 10 years – Ben Tesch has been speaking to my heart lately with all of his ideas.

It makes sense that a video post and a photo post and an audio post look different, but why is there only one type of text post? Why is a Tweet handled in the same way as a 2,000-word essay? Where is the book or movie review type? Jason has done this kind of stuff for years, and had to manage entire multiple blogs just to do it. Why can’t I take a feed, create a new post template specifically for it, and plug the feed into it? And if I can, why is it so difficult?

Alltop.com – Like popurls.com except organized by topic. Click a topic and find the newest stories from at least thirty related sites. For example, click Science and get the top stories from New Scientist, Nature, New York Times, ABC, and more. Or in their own words:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections—”aggregations”—into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page.

Bottom line, all web apps suck – Not to bite the hand that feeds me…Matt Haughey brings up some good points, and strikes up a good conversation (see the comments). And I love Wordpress, but even it falls prey to some of Haughey’s complaints.

How camera lenses are made – A piece from the Discovery Channel’s “How It’s Made”. Not the best bit the show’s ever had, but who knew it took six weeks to make one lens? Shenanigans.

Sitepoint CSS Reference – I am such a dork.

USB 3G modems don’t fit with MacBook Air – One of the smallest USB 3G modems out now won’t fit in the custom MacBook Air USB port. Not much of a surprise, but who cares? Air users shouldn’t have to attach plastic tumors to get cellular broadband.

MacBook Air Craft – That’s one solution…

For Sale: Pink Upholstered Vagina Chair – Man, I love Craigslist sometimes. Who’s up for a trip to California?

Books that make you dumb – Take the top ten most popular books at every college, compare it to the average SAT/ACT scores for those colleges, and bango presto! A descending list of books that make you dumb. The Bible is pretty average, but The Holy Bible could use some Princeton Review courses.

To end: Kate Beaton’s History Project – Twenty comics about different historical figures or cultural themes. Like the Professor Brothers, but static. Educated humor has never been so hilarious.

One of the most persistent is that of the broken window—one breaks and this is celebrated as a boon to the economy: the window manufacturer gets an order; the hardware store sells a window; a carpenter is hired to install it; money circulates; jobs are created; the GDP goes up. In truth, of course, the economy is no better off at all.

Wants For Sale – Christine and Justin are a couple from New York City who paint a portrait of something they want, priced to sell at however much money they need to purchase that something. Dinner at Nobu? $152. Financial security? $1,000,000. Sleep? Free.

The Observatory – The Columbia Journalism Review recently launched The Observatory, “a full-time department dedicated to critiquing the press coverage of science and the environment”. Relevant articles are light at the moment, but the archives will grow heartily as time goes on.

Overdub Tampering Committee – For about three years, this group has been downloading recently leaked albums and re-leaking them with some minor additions. A bass line here, a piano part there, and you suddenly have in your possession music that seemed to be legitimate, but was very obviously and cleverly not.

This got us thinking: what if this problem got more insidious, subtle, and widespread? What if there was a network of musicians who got a hold of albums right as they leaked, added subtle yet very much additional overdubs all over the album, and then re-leaked it to the internet?

We imagined a scenario where someone would get in a car with their friend, he would put on the new _____ album, and you would say, “Where’s all the piano parts?” to which the driver would say, “What piano parts? This album is all guitars and drums.” Finally, you would scratch your head and say, “Not my copy!”

Aviary – Still in private beta testing, Aviary is a collection of web applications “for artists of all genres”. You can (will be able to) choose from Phoenix (image editor), Myna (audio editor), Owl (desktop publisher), Horus (font editor), and a dozen others. This is likely to be astounding if it comes anywhere close to meeting expectations.

Flickr: Photos from the decapitator – Find billboard with image of person’s or animal’s head. Replace head with bloody stump. Guerilla artfare was never so much fun.

Schnabel, Strike, and Helvetica – Kurt Anderson over at Studio 360 has a short romp through New York with Helvetica director Gary Huswit. And, as you may have guessed, some bits on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the ongoing writer’s strike.

Don’t Fear Starbucks – Contrary to popular belief, the mass reproduction of Starbucks coffeehouses has generally led to mom-and-pop shops being more profitable. While the number of Starbucks locations tripled between 2000 and 2005, the number of local coffeehouses did not decline, but jumped 40%. And when Starbucks opened six new stores in Omaha, all during 2002, business went up at every local coffeehouse.

Small is beautiful – the best new literary journals – A quick list of notable literary journals that have emerged over the last few years. (The Paris Review makes the list because of its reinvention in 2005.) With only seven entries, it is hardly comprehensive, but I love it if only for including A Public Space, my number one resource at the moment for discovering new writers.

Songza – Pretty much the better looking version of SeeqPod. In other words: browse for mp3s, play, collate, share.

Lastly, a sad note: Can atheists be parents? TIME Magazine reports on a New Jersey couple denied the right to adopt based on their lack of belief in a “Supreme Being”. (I place that phrase in quotes not out of derision, but out of befuddlement. The wife is a pantheist, which while not anywhere aligned with the conventional Christian perspective, certainly belies a strong spirituality. And isn’t that the point?)

Wingrider bike clips – Just a couple of straps for your pants for those bike riders looking to protect their denim. Oh, yeah, and for those looking to bring out their inner Greek god.

Google Will Eat Itself – An experimental artwork (?) that serves Google text advertisements, and then uses the money made from the ads to buy Google stock. Genius! (In theory, at least.)

Encrypted Mobipocket books on Kindle – Although the Amazon Kindle’s proprietary AZW file format is a DRM-protected version of the Mobipocket file format (“one of the 3 main eBook formats based on the Open eBook specifications”), and it supports unprotected Mobipocket files, the Kindle does not support any Mobipocket books protected by any DRM besides Amazon’s. This is obviously horseshit, so a little Russian ingenuity later and voilà! Two Python scripts to trick the Kindle into accepting non-AZW Mobi files.

Windows 7 and Touch Technology – Microsoft test engineer Hilton Locke writes on his blog, “I will say that if you are impressed by the “touch features” in the iPhone, you’ll be blown away by what’s coming in Windows 7.” More than how jaded consumers are by now concerning any of Microsoft’s claims is, as John Gruber said, “the fact that they’re bragging that the next version of their full PC OS is going to compare favorably to Apple’s handheld OS is a little embarrassing.” (via df)

Culture and population growth increased evolution – “By dating the time that each of the genes came under selection, they have found that the rate of human evolution was fairly steady until about 50,000 years ago and then accelerated up until 10,000 years ago. The high rate of selection has probably continued to the present day, Dr. Moyzis said, but current data are not adequate to pick up recent selection.” (via kottke)

CD ripping still illegal – In a recent RIAA lawsuit, the recording industry revealed it still considers CD ripping illegal. Yes, that’s right: you bought it, but in no no no no way can you back it up. Ars Technica reports.

Google Chart Generator – Google’s list of completely uneconomical services has just grown a little longer. With a bit of fairly straightforward syntax, you can now display charts (from bars to pies) dynamically created by Google. This seems like too big of a bandwidth hog to last long, but maybe Google has some revenue stream up their sleeves.

Preview of HTML 5 – As HTML 4 nears its tenth birthday, perhaps an update is in order. HTML 5 is still in development, but the work so far looks nice. The snazziest addition to me is definitely the built-in separation of content and design. And the forced tree structure could go far in making code easier to read.

Edit your photos on Flickr! – This one is ancient news by now, but a partnership between Flickr and Picnik means you can now do some basic editing on you photos right in Flickr. Combine that with an Eye-Fi wireless memory card and you really have online-only workflow.

CommandShift3 – It’s like Hot or Not. Except, instead of clicking on hot babes, you click on hot websites.

Immanuel Kant – Wrong on metaphysics. Wrong on ethics. Wrong on aesthetics. Wrong for America.

The Blue Ribbon Glee Club is Chicago’s self-professed “(first?, only?) finest punk rock choir!” Their website has some live recordings from a May 3rd show, including Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World” (thrust into the mainstream by a certain movie). Mp3 luddites can also head over to YouTube for a video of the Pixies’ Where Is My Mind?

Erin McKean is “Chief Consulting Editor for American Dictionaries at Oxford University Press”, which basically means she’s one of the bastards who are keeping inartful out of dictionaries. (I kid; she’s no traffic cop, and seems very nice.) Her “official biography” categorizes her as a dictionary evangelist, and this certainly seems appropriate. Over the past few years she has given many cool talks at many cool places (TED, Pop!Tech, Authors@Google), all with the hopes of redefining our view of the dictionary. With great wit and insight, she implores us to cast away our Elizabethan tomes and embrace a restructured language.

RAINBOW IN YOUR HAND – A flip book with 36 black pages. On each page is are small, colored boxes, and when you flip through the book, a rainbow appears. See it in action on YouTube.

A Brief Message is a weekly updated site presenting design opinions in 200 words or less. Recent contributors have included Erin McKean (yeah I have a crush, deal with it) on neologisms and Alissa Walker on Thinking Outside the “Dick in a Box”. Besides providing some large ideas in a small package, A Brief Message is also noteworthy for its own design. As Hans verschooten points out, the site (conservatively) eschews the cookie cutter design practices that have become law in this so-called Web 2.0 age. I know I am as guilty as the next, but it is nice to see each piece of content being given some unique attention.

And not to end on too serious a note, I leave you with some sage advice from The Aggrolites. If ever there’s a mess, when in doubt, pickitup pickitup pickitup