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Modern Life

December 20 to 31, 2005

Once again, modern kids give their opinions on classic video games. Star Wars: "There's no depth perception". Defender: "You wasted quarters in this?"

iPod Stuff

"Cyber crime booms in 2004"

April 25 to May 1, 2005

How smart mobs are fueling revolution around the world...

My Future China

"The Wal-Mart 'Foundation' is nothing more than a front group for Wal-Mart Stores Incorporated, and should not be confused for a real charitable non-profit"...

An update on Iraq's ravaged cultural artifacts - not good...

Did you know the keys on your GM van may open the doors on "a half-dozen other GM vans and pickups"?

An "alarming number" of young American girls are taking steroids to emulate the look of "models and movie stars"...

Hey ladies! Here's why geeks and nerds are worth it!

April 18 to 24, 2005

Wal-Mart Watch launched this week. Check it out...

The EU last year fined Microsoft $700 million for abusing its near-monopoly in the software industry. Meanwhile, an EU Commissioner who could affect the amount of these fines was invited to a lavish, elite party thrown by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen...

Did you know that half of all schoolchildren in France are bloggers (bloguers)? Score one for "vocal civic discourse"...

Consumating, the new dating site for hipsters...

Another case of copyright law going too far - in Ghana, folk artists could be imprisoned, fined, or both...

April 11 to 17, 2005

How and why Asian countries are keeping the U.S. dollar from collapsing...

Stats on how many forms of mainstream media are doing in terms of popularity...

It's official - all the greatest new technology will be here in five years...

The addictive ADD drug Adderall is becoming popular among college students, who use it to concentrate and stay awake for long periods at a time...

"Confessions of an EBay opium addict"

Homes of the billionaires...

April 4 to 10, 2005

This was very popular this week - I think there's a pent-up need to avoid Starbucks! The delocator will show you local alternatives to Starbucks...

Entire city blocks are being purchased as malls and made up to look exactly like - city blocks. Corporate community centers, parks, and villages are the new development trend in America...

The market for dead celebrities has become quite lucrative. Bill Gates bought a lot of them recently...

The original article is gone, but traditional librarians are wondering what do to about the new "millenial" generation that is impatient with the slowness of research via paper...

The book "Shadow Cities" describes squatter cities - they end up being cleaner and safer than low-income housing developments...

Outsourcing is giving rise to overworked employees in call centers in India. Rigid English linguistic training is making employees question their cultural identity...

Interviews with over 300 people who live in mountainous regions around the world, with their perspectives on change and development...

A profile on one of the first real 21st century superstars, journalist, blogger, polyglot, and hot babe Xeni Jardin...

The life of a Verizon wireless test man, who drives over 3,000 miles a month...

An interview with the CEO of the last pinball machine manufacturer on Earth...

March 28 to April 3, 2005

What kind of dog are you?

A small fake survey led 94% of respondents to give enough information to allow a thief to empty their bank accounts...

Most streets in the U.S. named after Martin Luther King have turned out to be dead-end low-income crack alleys...

In 2001 Poland hired a marketing firm to rebrand themselves. Focus groups said Poland made them think of the words gray, cold, vodka, poor, white, unsmiling, sad, and car-stealing...

Today's college students are getting used to downloading high-speed movies and music on demand from their computers...

All the great hackers are switching to Macs, again mirroring the early growth of the Web (which was developed on an ancestor of today's Mac, the NeXT). We'll just see what happens...

March 21 to 27, 2005

Viral marketing is huge these days. In this article are a few dos and don'ts of viral marketing...

Here's a cool new food trend - food balls! They can be very healthy, can be dipped, they're easy to pack and store, make good snacks, and require no utensils to eat...

Another great historical overview from Mobile PC magazine. This time, they examine the evolution of the notebook computer...

Macs are starting to make under-the-radar inroads into companies. This is exactly how the Web got started in the corporate world, and CTOs and IT staff are beginning to think about what it means...

I was not aware of the secret of bananas before going here...

A blogged picture of a procession in Spain demonstrates the rising use of cell phone cameras to capture major events...

March 14 to 20, 2005

Towards tolerance - "Under armed guard, a woman broke with more than a thousand years of Islamic tradition to lead men and women in a prayer service yesterday in Manhattan"...

For the first time, people can visualize the characters in most of the written languages of the world at once...

More and more young kids want cell phones these days...

TV shows for modern kids - this children's show features music by a hip roster of post-punk acts.

Here's the story of Simlish, the fictional language of the very popular video game "The Sims", and the people behind it...

So far over 10 million creations are under the Creative Commons license, the sensible alternative to traditional copyright restrictions...

Here's a nice summary of how your hard drive works...

"India vs America: Let the battle begin!"

March 7 to 13, 2005

Power to the people? For the first time a blogger is given access to a White House press briefing...

Here's twenty ways to say "no". Sadly, there are probably fewer ways to say "yes"...

"More schools are saying 'No' to logos"...

One of my pet topics - what happens to your data and online personality after you die? This article uses the case of Aaron Huth, who still has an online presence (and bank account) a year after his death. In this day and age, people should get digital birth and death certificates to make transitions easier...

Andrew Sullivan observes how the iPod is isolating society. Well, how about allowing others to listen to your iPod wirelessly, Apple? Unite the world with music!

20% of kids 8 to 18 can surf the Web from their bedrooms. 26% say they can "multitask" different media streams at once...

An interview with cartoonist Robert Crumb, from his house in France...

The jet engine is one of civilization's greatest achievements. This animation provides some insights into its workings...

Some of the U.K.'s worst shop names...

February 28 to March 6, 2005

There are now at least 50 million Web sites on the net...

From Miami to Oakland, kids are putting 150-decibel train horns on their cars and stunning bystanders...

More on T-Mobile's security - an undocumented backdoor in their systems allowed a hacker to gain access to extremely confidential customer information, including people's data from their Sidekicks, since it's all kept centrally. Security through obscurity never works...

Flirt with iTunes - boy meets girl via music sharing and manages to swipe 700MB of her songs as well...

Here's a helpful list of resources to use for when your iPod battery dies...

Telcos are using legislation to prevent large-scale free public wireless networks...

The industrial chicken catcher. Watch the video...

Uh-oh - 6,200 Wells Fargo ATMs are now running Windows...

The inspiring story of Pakistani woman Mukhtaran Bibi. Gang-raped by her neighbors, she started two successful schools in the midst of her now-free attackers...

February 21 to 27, 2005

The late Hunter S. Thompson often visited Hawaii and wrote many infamous things there. Here's the best take on him, by Honolulu-based writer William Moake...

In a panel at a Web conference in 1995 I talked about the inevitable rise of instant stardom and its perils, once the Web got popular. Here are some of the latest subjects - a very funny online video of 19 year-old Gary Brolsma showed him lip-synching to a Romanian pop song. Now after CNN and VH1 broadcasts, he's hiding at home, refusing calls from the New York Times and an appearance on the "Today" show...

Here's a brilliant business and innovative social practice - I haven't heard of any historical precedents for this social role. The business is "Wingwomen", where shy bachelors pay $50 an hour for attractive women to introduce them to potential dates in social settings. With over 300 clients in New York, business is booming, they have a 65% success rate, and there are offers to open franchises in Brazil and Japan...

Tommy Chong is the star of "The Marijuana-Logues", a very funny and critically acclaimed pot-centric parody of the "The Vagina Monologues", which started this month. Because of parole restrictions he's had to recuse himself because so many are toking in the audience...

A great article about NASA's programmers and the culture and systems that encourage software development as if engineering mattered. Their code is 99.9% bug-free. Their lessons can be applied to nearly any team effort...

Top tennis stars Andre Agassi and Roger Federer play on the world's highest tennis court in Dubai, about 1,000 feet up...

February 14 to 20, 2005

Online creative guy zefrank made a nice movie of his Valentine's Day thoughts...

Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal ponders the state and future of blogging...

You can now order pizza directly from the online multiplayer game Everquest, which has over 400,000 global subscribers...

A review of the latest homemade flight simulators from the last few years...

February 7 to 13, 2005

An Ikea store opening in London turns into a riot, leaving 20 with heat exhaustion and five in the hospital...

Monkeys are willing to "pay" more to see pictures of alpha males and females, and to ignore subordinates...

Alongside the Super Bowl, the Discovery Channel ran the "Puppy Bowl", twelve hours of puppies playing on a football mat. It was a huge hit with viewers, who found it strangely addicting. You can buy the DVD...

More on the copyrighting of public space. Note that the city of Chicago is enforcing this...

Podcasting is getting more media attention, along with front page space in USA Today. Here's a good overview of the state of podcasting right now...

Careful, identity thieves can masquerade as legitimate wireless hotspots...

Generation X now spends more on travel than baby boomers do...

Dubai is building the world's biggest waterfront development - it's 2.5 times the size of D.C....

GPS technology is killing lighthouses. What will happen if GPS fails?

January 31 to February 6, 2005

Microsoft is mad about all the Apple iPods that employees are buying and using at work...

Wal-Mart gets slammed again on "The Daily Show". Hawaii's Wal-Mart is mentioned as well...

Intellectual property lawyers are destroying the military model industry. Aren't defense contractors making enough money these days?

Information on the effort to free the seminal civil rights documentary "Eyes On The Prize" from intellectual property limbo...

Everybody learned that you no longer have the right to publish photos of the Eiffel Tower at night...

The music industry sued an 83-year-old dead woman for file sharing...

The Rich Get Richer

Here's a great guide to traveling light...

Blogs! Need more blogs? Here's a blog about blogs...

Cell phones are making area codes obsolete...

Wacky uses for things...

January 24 to 30, 2005

This was the week of world-wide coincidences that could only happen thanks to the wonder of the Internet. Now that so many are sharing photos online, people are beginning to find interesting "correspondences"...

Using Skype (voice over the Internet), John Perry Barlow was called at random by two young women, one in Vietnam and one in Korea, wanting to learn how to speak English. Here's his reflections on "the intimate planet"...

A man sold his forehead as advertising space for $37,375...

McDonald's is outsourcing drive-through ordering, which means that people ordering food in Oregon actually are talking to people in Michigan...

The first feature film to be delivered via wireless internet technology was shown at the Sundance Film Festival...

This was understandably popular - people are worrying about hybrid human/animal experiments, including human/rabbit egg combinations and mice with human brain cells...

The 101 dumbest moments in business. Number three: the chairman of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson was forced to resign after it was discovered that he spent 15 years in prison for a string of armed robberies...

Ever been taken by one of these? Here's the 25 hottest urban legends, with "tsunami photos" at number one...

January 17 to 23, 2005

"Villagers furious with Christian Missionaries"

The dollar is so weak internationally that drug dealers are now doing business in Euros...

A prototype car by Ford is described as a "rolling urban command center", with bullet-resistant windows, protective shutters, and a mini-home theater...

"Study: Watching Fewer Than Four Hours Of TV A Day Impairs Ability To Ridicule Pop Culture"

January 10 to 16, 2005

Here's a great collection of census trend charts, maps, and rankings, viewable by category and location...

Life is pretty hardy. Already there are signs of it around the tsunami-devastated areas...

A new book, "Collapse", explores the reasons behind the fall of once-great civilizations. It outlines five causes: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, loss of trade partners, and stupidity. "Any one or two plus stupidity will do"...

Some avid video game players are having difficulty separating reality from the game, thanks to the increasing quality of such technology...

Companies are now selling "exergames", or video games that incorporate physical exercise...

In the same way that the MPAA is cracking down on movie pirates, Monsanto is cracking down on farmers that save their patented GM seeds from year to year...

January 1 to 9, 2005

Here's what "Auld Lang Syne" really means. The song has a long, fascinating history...

"Meritocracy in America - Whatever happened to the belief that any American could get to the top?"

The recently opened Tropical Island Resort in Germany, a manmade environment in a massive modified hanger that could fit the Statue of Liberty...

Want to know where your package goes? This student mailed a disposable camera, encouraging all who handled it to take a photo. An insightful look into the U.S. Postal Service...

Nothing lasts - Buddhist monks who have meditated on corpses find themselves well-suited to help with cremating thousands of tsunami victims. "We just sort of live in denial of the fact that we have all these organs and bones and liquids and fluids," says monk Siripanyo Bhikkhu...

The story of 21 year-old Matt Leto, possibly the greatest video-game player ever. He likely holds over 800 world records and is set to make six digits in competitions this year...

Interactive charts of the International Phonetic Alphabet. You can listen to every sound that humans use to communicate...

Tricks of the Trade - professional secrets from those in the know...

December 13 to 19, 2004

"When dot-com patents go bad"

There are so many brands now, they're ignored. Although I design logos, I'm allergic to brands myself...

A nice-looking homemade iPod ad is the first true homebrew ad on the net...

Play twenty questions against this program. You may be surprised at how often it wins...

Technology that helps fight "griefers", or people in online multiplayer games that do nothing but kill and loot, frustrating everyone else. Implications for social systems...

A gamer buys a piece of virtual land for $26,500. I should enter the virtual holy cheese sandwich business...

A dialect map of American English. I had a suspicion that "San Francisco Urban" was a dialect, but didn't know it was official...

A nice series of photos on current life in China...

Construction on the world's tallest tower begins in Dubai, United Arab Emirates...

December 6 to 12, 2004

The Supreme Court will hear the case on whether P2P service providers are liable for content on their systems! This popular item is worth repeating and may change how you experience, purchase, and sell content online...

In an area of SUV-dominated San Francisco, a car gets ticketed for being too small...

"Santa's seen it all"

Restaurants are installing fake phone booths for use by cell phone users to minimize noise pollution...

A pioneering global study shows that U.S. kids don't rank so well in math skills...

"One billion children affected by poverty"...

Thanks to overcrowding and stress over Muslim immigrants, more are leaving Holland than entering...

"Film use fading like an old photo"

A slew of cell phone tour guide companies are taking off...

A nice introduction to randomness and why it's so important to science...

See how popular your name is...

November 29 to December 5, 2004

Mexican labor is getting too expensive for the U.S. - jobs are now moving to China. You can now buy Mexican trinkets in the U.S. that were made in China...

What do you want to do with your life? More popular answers are larger...

In South Korea, email is "for old people"...

The philosophy of "The Incredibles" via Ayn Rand. Should we live in a society in which mediocrity is encouraged?

A more in-depth mind-boggling article on how Google works - two PCs are expected to fail daily...

The price of a gallon - how expensive is that liquid?

Arm wrestling over the Internet! Why can't we settle wars this way? It's basically the same thing...

The ten most persistent design bugs, from UI expert Bruce Tognazzini...

Here's an overview of the current tech jobs in demand...

Amazon.com is selling more electronics than books...

November 22 to 28, 2004

Only 1/3 of Americans believe that evolution is well supported by evidence. 45% say God created humans, and 1/3 say the Bible should be taken literally word for word...

A ten-year-old toasted cheese sandwich said to bear the image of Virgin Mary sold for $28,000 on eBay...

The chief economist at MorganStanley predicts that America has a 90% chance of an economic "armageddon", citing a number of "alarming facts"...

The worldwide effects of the sinking dollar, now at a nine-year low...

Gold teeth, freaking, and baggy pants - teenagers these days are driving school principals nuts!

The story of Mr. Wu, a farmer in Tongzhou, China, who invents robots made with metal, duct tape, and second-hand batteries...

November 15 to 21, 2004

The Library of Congress is putting 30 million pages of copyright-free newspapers from 1836 through 1922 online!

The former Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica offers his thoughts on the Wikipedia, the free community- based online encyclopedia that passed 401,000 articles recently...

Some think RSS is just a fad, but I think it's a long-term enabling technology - "RSS Edges Into the Bureaucracy"...

Tyranny of the few: A $1.2 million indecency fine levied against Fox by the FCC was brought on by only three people, of the millions that watched one show...

The number of corporations that control U.S. media, 1983-2000...

Remember, every public Web page you make in your life is admissible as historical legal evidence...

The story of one of the world's largest spammers, who made $750,000 a month from jamming your emailbox...

Make money with ad tattoos - are you brandable?...

SoHo's Apple Store is New York's hottest singles spot. Add a few barstools and I'd be there all day...

Young tech workers can't afford to live in Silicon Valley anymore, a concern for years...

An inspirational account of a three-year backpacking trip around the world. With lots of photos...

November 8 to 14, 2004

Can't We All Just Get Along?

"Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers" - the film "Tarnation" may have cost $200 to make, but it cost $500,000 to clear the rights for it. Strict enforcement of intellectual property laws will lead to a more restrictive, less expressive culture...

"I want to tell you how much Japanese business man is tired."

The life of Chinese toy factory workers, in pictures...

"White collar slavery" in the video game industry...

The story behind the five-year development of Half-Life 2, which could be one of the greatest PC videogames of all time and make over $700 million in revenues worldwide...

Unemployment among IT workers is higher than the overall jobless rate for the first time in over 30 years...

The FCC further deregulates Internet phone services...

A good counterproposal to Creationists that want warning stickers on biology textbooks: put warning stickers on the Bible!

Yes, you can filter cheap vodka to make it taste better than expensive vodka, all with a Brita water filter pitcher and one hour...

November 1 to 7, 2004

The New Journalism

"10 things the Chinese do far better than we do"

Students in Kolkata, India made a jacket that gives a shock to potential molesters. 99% of Kolkata women surveyed want one...

"How a CPU is Built"

October 25 to 31, 2004

Wow! The Honolulu Wal-Mart issue actually got some air time on "The Daily Show" (video clip)...

The First Networked Open Source Community?

Spyware is on 80% of PCs, viruses on 20%. But 77% of people think they're safe. Is this the same 80% that think evoting is secure, despite expert evidence?

Will the Internet give birth to the "creative generation"?

An article on cell-phone video dating...

LCD sales are expected to rise by a factor of 10 before 2010...

A cool way to visualize ZIP code regions...

Best Buy opens online photo processing labs...

October 18 to 24, 2004

A pro-evoting industry group blames humans for errors. Along these lines, it's your fault every time your PC crashes, too...

"KEEP YOUR F**KIN' LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION"

The median net worth of white households: $88,651. That of African-Americans: $5,988.

R.I.P. shirts are popular in high-homicide areas, where rappers wear shirts with the names and photos of victims they don't even know...

Like Woody Guthrie, here's the ugly story of the exploitation of Rosa Park's image and legacy...

According to a survey of 81 countries, Russians are the most miserable people in the world. The U.S. ranks 15th...

"Microsoft's Worst Nightmare"

"The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates"

The Air Force traces a distress signal to a faulty TV...

October 11 to 17, 2004

"Center for the Digital Future Identifies the 10 Major Trends Emerging in the Internet�s First Decade of Public Use" - TV down, net up, averaging 12.5 hrs/week...

"Alarming trend in spyware could undermine IT industry"

A great interview with Steve Jobs on true innovation...

On Columbus Day, history professors relate Columbus' cruel history...

Nice stats on the "state of the blogosphere", Oct 2004...

CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school... STEWART: You need to go to one. Jon Stewart blasts big media on "Crossfire"...

October 4 to 10, 2004

"The Long Tail"

A UK photo exhibit shows real people next to their online virtual 3D character...

Some recent 360-degree panoramas. Here's ground zero in NY...

Now steering wheel locks can be opened with Bic ballpoint pens... I have a feeling this entire class of lock is vulnerable...

September 27 to October 3, 2004

Surprise of the Week: having money doesn't make you happy (and it doesn't build strong societies either)...

The "Hello Kitty" debit card, targeted to 10 to 14 year-olds...

Health insurance rates are outpacing income...

A Microsoft server crash almost causes a 800-plane pile-up...

"Daily Show" viewers are more college-educated than "O'Reilly Factor" viewers...

The genuinely scary "Wacko Jacko" mask...

Digital print-on-demand bookmobiles are helping out kids in Third World countries...

September 20 to 26, 2004

Surprise of the week - the rich get richer...

Don't say "offshoring" anymore - the politically correct term is "global sourcing"...

The first half of 2004 saw 5,000 new Windows viruses...

Due to high-priced dorms, Berkeley students are finding it cheaper to rent mansions...

In response to online classifieds, newspapers are holding their own local auctions...

September 13 to 19, 2004

This is what Google ran on in 1999...

PCs are getting hotter and hotter as their complexity and power consumption increases...

Chinese net surfers are creating a new language, a mix of Chinese and English...

China's a new "hotbed of research" too...

The Oprah car giveaway made a lot of money for GM. It's a sign of new types of promotions to come!

Life in a Cambodian garbage dump...

Photographer Lisa Law's journey through the 60's...

Bill Moyers, three months away from retirement, reflects on a revolutionary life in journalism...

September 5 to 12, 2004

Regarding last week's item about fake tree-like cell phone masts...

Who's breeding in America?

Born to Buy

The Underground History of American Education

It's good to know that some people keep things secret (and sacred). Here's the popular article and its followup...

Has your PC been taken over by a spamming virus? Spammers are selling your "zombie PC" to others...

How high-tech "fab labs" are training kids in impoverished countries to make needed tools...

Levis closes its last American factories...

August 30 to September 5, 2004

Jewish groups are up in arms about the Christian cross-like podium at the Republican National Convention...

Outsourcing Greed

From May to July the U.S. produced 86% of the worldwide volume of spam...

32,000 cell phone towers in the U.S. are disguised as fake trees. Here's an amazing gallery of them...

The city of Philadelphia is considering providing free or cheap wireless Internet access to everybody...

Free, unedited, translated daily TV news programs from the Middle East...

Are you an inefficient hypertasker? Workplace pressures, inadequate tools cause stress. I say this is a technology problem, not a brain problem...

August 22 to 29, 2004

"We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore"

Thanks to automatic bill-paying, a man lay dead in his bed for two years before being discovered...

The plight of the minimum-wage dairy worker...

August 15 to 22, 2004

Me and my friends recently switched from T-Mobile due to lousy service. Here's another sad customer...

Bruce Sterling gives another great, funny speech about the future of products - Blobjects! Are you a Gizmo user, or a Spime Wrangler?

Unpatched PCs are compromised in 20 minutes. Someone should make a tiny USB-powered firewall device for upgrading PCs!

"Broadband users a majority in U.S."

People are buying more plasma TVs...

Cell phone users are using their cameras in store to copy textbooks...

The Olympics is selling a lot less tickets than desired...

Got an underperforming theater in your town? Make big bucks by using it for video gaming...

The search for the elusive blue rose...

August 8 to 14, 2004

"Modern-Day Slavery"

Facing competition from Wal-Mart, the #1 toy seller, Toys 'R' Us may go out of business...

Fans at the Olympics will be escorted off the premises if they eat or drink non-sponsored food...

"Fewer college students choose computer majors"

Fearful of viruses, hospitals running Windows-based medical systems are applying security patches, which themselves may lead to life-threatening situations...

The first mobile phone virus...

E-commerce turns 10. Don't believe the hype-the first secure online Web-based shopping transaction was done via Randy Adams' Internet Shopping Network, which I developed the interface for in 1994...

About the new online TV-show swapping culture...

August 2 to 8, 2004

Students in India and China commit suicide (and spark riots in the process) due to their inability to pay tuition/testing fees...

About 22 year-old Ryan Pitlak, a marketing student who may have made hundreds of thousands from spam, coming from hundreds of shell companies he set up...

"...the information superhighway... will collapse"

The FCC, by the way, would like to prohibit you from recording anything from the Internet...

The story behind the Internet Movie Database, one of the most popular, useful Web sites ever made...

July 26 to August 1, 2004

What the U.S. can learn from South Korea, where broadband is cheap, over 10 times faster, and is transforming government and society with telemedicine to the house, video on demand, and a lucrative games market (est. $4.3 billion in 2005)...

About Singapore's new world-class bioscience empire, including "Biopolis", a $300 million center for molecular biology, bioinformatics, genomics, and nanotech...

Kona Brewing Co. in Hawaii Kai is now a free wireless network hotspot! I'm spending more time there...

A great idea - putting city maps on traffic control boxes. Let's see these around town!

"How government protects big media - and shuts out upstarts like me." By Ted Turner...

28% of the time, people fall for fake email scams...

This is a picture of a hard drive from circa 1975. It only held "a few megabytes"...

July 19 to 25, 2004

"Nations Lite"

A reflection on the Walkman, which turned 25 last month...

An inside look at the birth of the iPod. Its manager quit because he had no confidence it would be popular. He works for Microsoft now...

"Worship My Radiant iPod"

July 12 to 18, 2004

Computer visionary Alan Kay "decries the state of computing". He's right...

One of my favorite sci-fi authors, Bruce Sterling, gives a hilarious, philosophical, and insightful talk about the "singularity", the point at which the pace of technology becomes too fast to comprehend and people become something entirely different...

Some personal stories of the 1.5 million women vs. Walmart, the largest class action suit ever...

The lucrative careers of crime-scene cleanup companies...

July 5 to 11, 2004

Of all people, William F. Buckley writes about the need for marijuana law reform...

Unusual Japanese ice cream flavors - horse flesh ice cream is only the beginning!

Ghulam Sediq Wardak, Afghanistan's most famous inventor. He's made a solar-powered VW and over 300 other inventions...

"I think he's a big jerk"

"Movie piracy on Internet called an epidemic"...

June 28 to July 4, 2004

A teen's heart stops while playing the video game Dance Dance Revolution...

20% of U.S. residents admit that they buy products advertised in email spam...

Car VIN (vehicle identification) numbers are running out. This is a much thornier problem than the Y2K issue. With fascinating information about how VIN numbers are encoded...

All about the latest Rainbow Gathering, which attracted 10,000 and caused the Forest Service to allocate nearly $1 million for management...

June 21 to 27, 2004

Will your iPod be illegal? An article on the "Induce Act"...

Two opinions about being a visionary in Hawaii: 1) don't rock the boat, and 2) be nice to the community. There's truth in each...

A teacher fed up with the high cost of (Cisco Academy's computer training) textbooks makes his own equivalent textbooks and puts them online for free...

Texas is putting wireless net access into rest stops to encourage breaks - a great idea!

June 14 to 20, 2004

Blogging goes mainstream with a big article in Time Magazine...

How to Argue Religion...

Photoshop challenge: depict "Americanization"...

Wal-Mart's RFID-using suppliers exceed 100...

BusinessWeek reports that privacy battles are being won over RFID...

Japanese balloons and the importance of uncensored wartime news...

Gunner Palace - a civilian's take on the war in Iraq...

June 7 to 13, 2004

Are you tired of answering stupid questions?

Here's some of the best conference goodies (schwag) given out these days...

Most email spam (80%) is now caused by Windows PCs hijacked by virii...

The ten best Internet fads...

Why the FCC should be abolished...

For the Euro 2004 soccer championships, English fans are encouraged to smoke dope instead of drink alcohol in order to minimize potential riots...

"Declining respect for American cultural values exacerbated by the crisis in Iraq is having a potentially disastrous effect on the image of US brands such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Nike and Microsoft"...

May 31 to June 6, 2004

"This is the most amazing, subversive piece of political webware I've ever seen. It scrapes the Parliamentary record and makes the entire thing commentable, searchable and permalinkable... We need one of these in every country in the world."

A former Microsoft technology manager bashes the company for its mediocre products and addiction to cash cows...

"Facing critical shortage of musicians for military funerals, the Pentagon has approved the use of a push-button bugle that plays taps by itself as the player holds it to his lips."

"For the second straight year, an Internet unknown won the famed World Series of Poker on Friday, ravaging a field of professional players on his way to glory and riches."

May 24 to 30, 2004

Ryan Wieber was hired by LucasArts at 19 for his homemade lightsaber special effects that rivalled that of Hollywood's...

"How to make friends by Telephone"

A legend in urban design, octogenarian Jane Jacobs has written a new book analyzing North American culture called "Dark Ages Ahead"...

A growing trend - Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)! I first saw this video game in a mall about eight months ago and was mesmerized by the dance moves of the teenager playing it. Basically, you have to put your feet on flashing pads for points, leading to nifty-looking dance moves. Now audiences and competitions are getting bigger. The story of Wayne Giles, who resulted to thievery to support his DDR habit...

May 17 to 23, 2004

The beautiful story of the last pure Hawaiian land, and William Kaihe'ekai Mai'oho, whose family has guarded King Kamehameha's bones for 185 years...

This is one of the best Web-based data visualization apps I've seen! You could mine this public database for all manner of interesting purposes. Fundrace - see which of your neighbors contributed to what campaign, and see how whole cities are funding...

Two teen poetry students give a public anti-Iraq/Bush reading. Their teacher is fired and the poetry club shut down...

"U.S. demands war crimes immunity"...

Spain clubgoers are implanted with RFID chips...

Attract tenants with wireless...

The story of a really, really bad neighbor...

A "talking toilet" gadget that scolds men if they put the toilet seat up sells over 1.6 million units...

Eight years ago my old startup bought from Peapod every week. Now online groceries are coming back!

May 10 to 16, 2004

Less Than 7 Degrees of Separation

Here's how to ask questions that actually produce information...

"Cold Turkey"

"E-filing nears 50 percent mark"

Another journalist tries an all- McDonald's diet, with surprising results...

A woman lives for almost four months without half her skull due to a "delay" in medical insurance processing...

A study finds that people who don't work for their money are less satisfied than those who do...

A high school prom committee falls under legal fire from the RIAA when it distributes a song played at the prom to students as a souvenir...

More about the RIAA fudging numbers to claim sales lost to file sharing...

May 3 to 9, 2004

Will all communities become Wal-Marted, SUVed, McMansioned deserts? McMansions are invading this suburb in Washington, D.C.. Warning: graphic architectural carnage!

The rise of suburban loft architecture...

"You surf just like a woman"

People see only what they what to see. "Scientists have gathered remarkable evidence which shows that it is possible to see something without observing it". Did you see the gorilla?

The "eBay economy" is growing. This is a great business idea - sell things on eBay for others. Mailbox places should take this up as an additional service...

A public library's success story in converting its public access systems to Linux...

Laser spectroscopy is now being used to detect suicide bombers in Israel. Why don't the lidar folks at UH get into this?

Will false teeth be a thing of the past? Successful experiments have regrown teeth from stem cells...

April 26 to May 2, 2004

The first criminal charges under the nation's "can-spam" laws have been filed...

When the island of Tuvalu sinks, it will be the only country to exist solely on the Internet...

As an experiment, every 5th- and 6th-grader at this Texas elementary school is getting a laptop with digital versions of textbooks and 2,000 works of literature...

April 19 to 25, 2004

Voting machines company Diebold may face criminal charges...

One third of email is now spam...

Due to a budget crisis in California, the U.C. college system is turning away eligible students for the first time in over 40 years...

Dissatisfied with the mainland, a lot of people are moving to New Zealand these days, leading to a housing boom and sketchy developments...

Like the razor and the toothbrush, the yo-yo is getting more and more seriously high-tech...

Gone are the days of the fix-it-yourselfer - new cars are getting too complicated to fix...

A fellow dot-com veteran invents a new "Clip-n-Seal" product in hopes that it will finally get him out of Web design...

April 12 to 18, 2004

An extensive 20-year study of a baboon troop found a permanent, unprecedented cultural shift occurred when the most violent, dominant males died out from a tuberculosis outbreak...

Noisy cell phones are becoming a problem in national parks...

An undercover report of sororities found plenty of the usual suspects - drinking, drugs, puking contests, racism, and rapes...

A study finds that the average (Windows) PC has 28 spyware programs on it, each of which may send your private information to other parties without your knowledge...

The youngest writer ever to win an Agatha Award for a mystery novel collaborated with his uncle using Apple's new videoconferencing technology - this may be the first award-winning book ever made using videoconferencing...

April 5 to 11, 2004

"The share of the economic pie going to wages and salaries has plummeted to just over 50%, its lowest level in at least the past 50 years, and perhaps longer."

"Americans are increasingly resorting to stomach-shrinking surgery so much so that health experts and insurance companies are becoming alarmed"...

"Dodgy Patents Rile Tech Industry"

"For the IRS There's No EZ Fix"

March 29 to April 5, 2004

Drug company GlaxoSmithKline used orphans as guinea pigs in potentially dangerous medical experiments...

"Falsifying workers' hours held to be common management trick to pare down expenses"

March 22 to 28, 2004

Is your identity safe? The story of how American medical records and credit histories are being exposed outside the U.S. with no privacy guarantees. One reporter's fascinating detective work through an international chain of subcontractors. Did you know that Canada and Russian have comprehensive data protection laws, but the U.S. has no such laws on the national level?

"Congress Moves to Criminalize P2P"

Trixie, the baby with the most comprehensive Web site in the world. With real-time sleep, bottle, and diaper telemetrics, a blog, gallery, forum, archives, and voting topic...

"U.S. students shun computer sciences"...

A list of current scandals in the government...

March 15 to 21, 2004

Three out of four Americans have access to the Internet!

Books on how having more choices makes you unhealthy and unhappy...

Office workers are exposed to more germs from phones and keyboards than toilet seats...

"Adult diabetes now destroying young lives"

"The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes"

March 8 to 14, 2004

Encyclopedias, whether printed or digital, are becoming less popular...

February 23 to 29, 2004

At a French cartoon festival kids draw pictures of obese Americans and Bush next to Hitler...

We don't support that "Ted, and those like him, have only one solution to their customers' problems. Erase everything on the computer's hard drive and start over from scratch." The latest in Salon's series of stories about jobs from hell. If you're a PC user and require phone support, beware!

A surreal report of Arayanfest 2004, the latest "international" gathering of white supremacists...

February 2 to 8, 2004

Neuromarketing

The market for luxury cars (which cost up to $1 million) is booming nationwide. "There are more rich people every day, and the spread between the people who have money and those who don't is getting greater," says Aaron Robinson, technical editor of "Car and Driver" magazine.

December 1 to 7, 2003

Disney Sucks

A great five-part essay on the homeless problem in San Francisco, which has the nation's worst problem with "hard-core homelessness". What to know what life is really like on the street?

Low-wage life is getting much worse for Americans: "Myths and Realities About Low-Wage Jobs"...

The "online citizen movement" MoveOn is getting stronger...

Money For The (Old) New World Order

A 7-year-old is punished in school for talking about his lesbian moms...

In an effort to thwart modern spam filters, spammers are now using excerpts of classic novels and poetry in their emails...