Friday, July 13, 2007

Friday Links!

Many enjoyable time-wasters for you coming up, but first, a request for a quick favor.

Mike Crassweller, long-suffering reader since 2003, has created a web page titled "Top Six Best Sites for Windows Skinning." This is useful information, since Mike is active in the skinning community, but there is another reason to ask you to click on the link and view the page: this is part of a contest over at "OnMyList," and Mike's in the lead to win an iPhone. The contest ends Saturday at midnight, and if you'd like to either get informations on Windows skins or just help Mike out, then go here and thank you in advance.

Please note that this does not mean I'll be doing this on a regular basis, so being in a contest to win a priceless My Little Pony or a signed copy of Paul McCartney's Someone's Knocking At the Door is highly unlikely to be mentioned.

Seriously, I have this section of my CD collection that I labeled "Shitty Paul McCartney Solo Albums," and it's almost a foot long. Every few years, I read "his best solo work in nearly two decades!", forget the height of that bar, and buy another one (I did just a few weeks ago).

But I digress. On to the links.

Here's one of the most fascinating articles I've read in a long time. Here's an excerpt:
For male sparrows looking for a mate or trying to defend their turf, it pays to keep up with the times and latest musical hits.

A new study finds that female white-crowned sparrows pay more attention to new bird songs than vintage tunes, and that other males find the oldies much less threatening.

That just blows my mind. Here's the link (thanks Sirius): bird songs.

John Willcocks sent me a link to an article at The Escapist titled "Legally Insane: A History of Jack Thompson's Antics." For Jack, crazy is the new black, and it has been for decades. Read it here.

From Keith Ganey, a terrific link to the prehistory of Monopoly, focusing on "The Landlord Game," which was originally invented in 1904 by a Quaker named Lizzie Maggie. It's a fascinating read, and you can find it here.

From Cliff Eyler, a link to a story about the mapinguary, a beast of the Amazon that may or may not be real. Great article, and you can read it here.

From Grifin Cheng, a link to a story announcing the discovery of water vapor--in a planet outside our solar system. This is only the second time for such a planet has been found, and you can read about it here.

From Jessie Leimkuehler, a link to a picture of the surface of Mars. What makes this picture so stunning, though are the tracks--the tracks of the rover Opportunity. So Mars is (at at its absolute closest) 35 million miles from earth, and we can see tire tracks (the picture isn't being taken from Earth, but still). Freaking unbelievable. See it here.

From Jeff Pinard, a long (but worthwhile) link to an article over at The Consumerist about Geek Squad, the "specialty" Best Buy tech guys. It discusses in detail what's apparently happening when you take your computer in for repair, and believe me, it's not pretty. Read it here.

From David Gloier, a link to a creature called the "octosquid" that was pulled up from 3,000 feet below the sea this week. The picture is amazing, and you can see it all here, and another story (thanks Sirius) is here.

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