More links

These are good websites, too, but I just don’t have room on the entry page for everything.

Earth’s Children fans homepage

The series of Earth’s Children novels by Jean Marie Auel (that’s pronounced jeen marie owl, not zhon marie awl, as many of us think).

My alma mater

Glory, glory to Old Georgia!

Every mathematician ever

Biographies of every mathematician who ever lived—some famous, some obscure, some you’ve never heard of, and some that I swear they made up. (There are obviously going to be lots of scientists in here too, like Darwin, for some reason, Heisenberg, Einstein, etc.) From the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

Last Exit to Springfield

My favorite Simpsons website. It has boucoup pictures, AIM icons, episode summaries, and quotes, quotes, quotes!

Baseball Almanac

The “official” baseball history site. You ask, What kind of website would claim it is the official history site of all baseball? This one. If you can think of it, it has it.

What to do in a terrorist attack

The federal government has a new website, www.ready.gov. The thing is that the pictures from the site are so ambiguous, they could mean anything! These interpretations of the pictures are hilarious. This can also be found at about 200 other sites, like this one, which has many more, contributed by a lot of people.

The Hugo Award winners

The best science-fiction and fantasy novels, short fiction, TV and movies, and more from 1951 to 2004.

The Nebula Award winners

Awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 1965 to 2004.

Engrish.com

I found this link in some random person’s Facebook profile. It is hilarious. It basically has pictures of all kinds of things from Asia, mainly Japan, that have funny misuses of the English language.

Butler Shaffer columns at LRC

Butler Shaffer is really more of a philosopher than a political columnist. He writes about the human spririt, what makes it thrive and what makes it die, what the State does to society. These are the most inspirational of his columns to me:
Are there limits to liberty?
Property and order
The unintended consequences of good intentions
A cost/benefit analysis of the human spirit
The insanity of the state
Do you own yourself?
On reclaiming self-ownership
A passion for life
What is anarchy?

Hili’s baby

Hili was a postdoc in our lab, but recently she had to take another job, in an Israeli hospital, I think. She and her husband Itamar had their first child last October, Ayelet. Apparently that is a Hebrew name. That child is so cute. You cannot help but smile at nealy every picture of her.

Buttafly.com

This is a very entertaining and random website, veeerrrrry conducive to serious time-wasting. Run by Jennifer Bishop, I think its one original common theme is kind of conservative politics, but that is honestly a small part of it. The hundreds of links are all entertaining and are the main source of its prodigious time-wasting capabilities.

Jay Leno’s headlines

This is one of my very favorite things on TV, so you’d think I would make a point to watch it more often. They are almost as funny on the internet as on TV.

Dave’s Top Ten list archive

Oh, yeah. These go back to 1993. Every single one of them.

Audacity digital audio editor

I put this link here because it is the best audio editor I’ve found. I wanted to cut off the ends of some songs and fade them out so they would fit on an 80-minute CD, and none of the popular free software I had did it, especially that worthless piece of trash MusicMatch Jukebox. (“Free” should not mean “worthless,” guys. But at least it does volume-leveling...FIVE times, and that’s it.) Anyway, Audacity does not burn CD’s, but it can modify sound files in every way you’d want: fade in and out, combine tracks, change tempo without changing pitch, increase volume, and lots of other things I think I’d never need. It can apply those effects to any part(s) of the file, too! (You just have to click-and-drag to select the desired part of the song, which was less intuitive for me than it should have been...)

Beautiful Durham Township, PA

These are beautiful pictures of Durham Township, Pennsylvania, near the Delaware River, taken by one person. There are hundreds of pictures, and almost all of them are just gorgeous.

Bazoomer.com

Go, you Huskies!

Kirk Gibson’s one-handed homer

If not the greatest, if not the most important, then easily the most magical moment in the history of American professional sports. It is the bonus video down on the right. (I'd put a link directly to the video, but that doesn’t work.) I could watch this every day for the rest of my life and not get tired of it. In fact I’m coming pretty close to doing that... If you want to hear an actually good, exciting, memorable call of the home run, instead of that boring, droning hack, Vin Scully, then click here and find Jack Buck's call of it on the right side.

Freedom’s Nest

This is where I got about half of my political and religious quotes from. They have over 1,600 of them and you can even sign up for a 3-quotes-of-the-day email list.

The Rules of Acquisition

Oh, God, I’m such a nerd...

The Oracle of Bacon

Yes, this is exactly what you think: A computer database that does the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in about two seconds for any actor who’s been in a movie. (You can also scroll down and do the game for any two actors!) Also check out the Oracle of Baseball. Brought to you by the University of Virginia Computer Science Department.

Dr. Michio Kaku

Dr. Kaku is my idol. I want to be like him when I grow up (which I guess would give me about 10 years…). He has written several great books about physics for the layman, he has his own radio show, he teaches physics, of course, and this website is pretty nifty, too. Especially read the first article on his articles page, “The physics of advanced civilizations”, about the successive levels of technological advancement civilizations can achieve.

Saturday-Night-Live.com

Some guy’s completely unofficial SNL site, it is extraordinarily well done, with current cast member biographies, list of cast members in each season, list of Weekend Update anchors and their years, a few Weekend Update transcripts, list of all the hosts, and more.

Read the reviews of this CD

They’re funny. I promise you, it’s worthwhile.

Formula 1 Race Car Insanity Test

Ha!

The Awful German Language

A chapter from Mark Twain’s 1880 book A Tramp Abroad, this is an absolutely hilarious account of his misadventures with the German language and all the idiotic, confusing problems with it.

Worst album covers of all time

Oh, god, the horror.

Bob Wallace columns at LRC

Bob Wallace is one of my favorite columnists because he, like me, has a keen interest in the root psychological reasons people believe and do what they do. He is sort of an amateur scholar on myths, legends, fairy-tales, and the ancient Greeks’ theories on human flaws (hubris, mainly). He has written numerous columns about cartoons, childrens’ stories, the Garden of Eden story, Satan, and the path from Koros to Hubris to Ate to Nemesis (stability–excessive pride–madness–destruction). These are my favorite Bob Wallace columns, many of which are about these themes:
Hubris to madness to destruction
The worst sin of all
In the year 3501
The AMA will kill you
The satanic lust for power
The US as a Third-World nation
Read this or be assimilated
This is 2002?
The Garden of Eden and the WTC
The irresponsibility of Nerf World
The Evil Queen wannabe
Fairy tale of pure good and pure evil
‘Tomorrow, Pinky, we conquer the world!’
The free market is the best weapon against terrorism
Homer America
Heroes and Villains
Modern-day Molochs

Unit vs. Kruk

In the middle of this page is a video of the 1993 All-Star Game at-bat with John Kruk facing Randy Johnson. Those of you who know why I put this here should have already clicked on the link; those who don’t know absolutely have to. (It doesn’t work right now, but I’m leaving it up here in case it does in the future.)

Style sheet properties

This is a complete list of all the properties and possible values for those properties in cascading style sheets. This is very helpful! There are lots of properties I didn’t know about, some of which are useful!

Ol’ Yellow Eyes is Back

Ha! I can’t believe this! You have to click on this! This is great! In a very bad way.

Bastiat’s candlestick makers’ petiton

A very famous, clever 1845 satirical piece ridiculing protectionism. Very short and worth the read.

You Have Bad Taste in Music!

This guy stands outside of concert venues before concerts of current pop and rock artists and shouts into a megaphone that everyone there has bad taste in music and they need to help themselves and get rid of this problem, etc. Classic.

The Windows-sound song

An amazing song, with flash video, created out of Windows-event sounds. From eBaum’s world.

References to Star Trek

A very precise and exhaustive list of references made to all things Star Trek by movies, TV shows, and songs. See especially the separate pages of references in Futurama, Simpsons, and South Park episodes. It’s fascinating. There are many I never knew about.

Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly

So, Back to the Future is my favorite movie, and I bet very few people know that Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty, and many scenes were shot with him in them. Zemeckis decided that he was being too dramatic and serious and that the character needed a little bit of light-heartedness and comicality to him, so they fired him and hired Michael J. Fox, and the universe has been better off ever since. Stoltz is a great actor whom I like, but let’s face it: my life, many other people’s lives, and the world as a whole would be disastrously worse if not for Michael J. Fox in those three movies. But it’s interesting to peruse these screen shots of Eric Stoltz portraying Marty McFly, and smile inwardly at how the universe really does right itself sometimes for the benefit of all posterity.