Friday Links!
Goodbye to work and hello to your weekend. I'll have a gaming links post on Monday, because there were just too many good things to fit into one post today.First off, a fascinating and detailed article about Black Monday, which refers to October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 22%. I asked my boss about his reaction to this day (he was a broker in 1987), and he said that everyone thought the country was going to head straight into a depression. And he said not many brokers slept that night.
Read the article here.
From the New York Times, an article about "Mrs. Watanabe," the large number of Japanese housewives who day-trade currency. No, I'm not kidding, and you can read about them here:
here.
From Sirius comes a link to a remarkable article about the "Fighting Quaker," General Smedley Darlington Butler. Here's an excerpt to a story that I can only classify as mind-blowing:
In the early 1930s, a secret collection of prosperous men are said to have assembled in New York City to discuss the dissolution of America's democracy. As a consequence of the Great Depression, the countryside was littered with unemployed, and the world's wealthy were watching as their fortunes deflated and their investments evaporated. As men of action, the well-financed New York group sought to eliminate what they reasoned to be the crux of the catastrophe: the United States government.
Butler stopped them almost singlehandedly, and you can read about it here.
This might be one of the funniest things I've ever linked to. It's part of a long running prank war between two friends, and this one involves Yankee Stadium and a fifth inning marriage proposal on stadium scoreboard. It's both hilarious and cringeworthy (as all great pranks are), and you can watch it here.
If you're a soccer fan and you've never heard of the "seal dribble," then this video will be a real treat. It's of a Brazilian soccer player named Kerlon, who occasionally dribbles the ball downfield--off his head. He's also emerging as quite a star, apparently, and you'll see some goal scoring highlights in this video as well. Plus the clip has some great music. See and hear it all here.
An abandoned baby macacque has found a best friend--a pigeon. Warning: one of the cutest pictures you'll ever see in your life goes with this story, and you can read it here.
From Randy, a link to a time-lapse sequence of the creation of a line drawing. It's wonderful to watch (seriously--it's fascinating), and you can see it here.
Everything you've read about Vista's DRM is wrong, at least according to this article, which is quite a good read. See it here.
Jesse Leimkuehler sent in a story to a link about a parasitic star. Amazing, and you can read about it here.
Another link from Sirius, this one to a story about the first U.S. pedestrian killed by a car. Read it here.McSweeney's "discovery" of an internal Sony memo (from Andy Sellick and many more):
Sony's plan.
Here's a story about a couple who has been Living in a Travelodge--for 22 years (thanks Taylor Materna). Read it here.
Apparently, 1/3 of the men in the U.S. don't wash their hands after using the restroom. I'll skip the joke about knowing who they all voted for. It's a good reason to keep a gallon of anti-bacterial liquid handy, and it's here.
I've written about Chernobyl several times, and the "new new" plan is to cover the reactor with a steel dome. Read about it here.
If you remember the story about the giant spider web being found in Texas (the web was almost two hundred yards long), scientists have apparently figured out what's going on. Read about it here.
I've linked to storied about the "world's leading micro-artist" before, but Andrew Brown sent me two links and the guy is so amazing that I think he's worth mentioning again. Read about him here and here.
Finally, a link from Randy to a story about an armless man who got into a fight over a woman, head-butted the other guy, and killed him (heart attack). It sounds like something out of a Jackass movie, but it's all too real, and you can read about it here: Armless but not Harmless.
Yes, I believe I should write headlines for a living. Have a great weekend.
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