Optical Illusions in Flash

It may only take three licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, but have you ever wondered How Much Is Inside a Sharpie? Conversation Hearts? Easy Cheese or my personal favorite, a Keg?

Wil Wheaton is a Dick. Link points to an Alternet article which is more about Orkut than about Wesley Crusher. Find Wil's response here.

"XXX Church.com is the #1 Christian Porn Site" "I caught my kid looking at porn, what do I do?" "How do I talk to my husband about this?" "Can I ever stop?" "Your situation probably cannot wait and requires immediate attention. That is why we have created the X3 Help Line. This toll free number 1-888-309-4218 is available 7 days a week from 6pm-9pm (PST) and it is a place where you can find answers, help, encouragement and prayer for your situation."

Highly recommended tales: Author James Branch Cabell's work has been hard to find, and is difficult to classify -- was he primarily a humorist, a satirist ("For some occult reason ideas become far more revolting when they are very."), a writer of 'cult classics', or a fantasist? more inside

Old dinosaur books.

Deli Food Porn. For All Your Fake Meat Needs....

The media in Iraq. (Supposedly) an US 1st lieutenant Public Affairs Officer's perspective.

Grow (shockwave, via blort)

Bush Administration Censoring Hearing-Impaired The Bush administraion has decided to not pay for "200 television programs inappropriate for closed-captioning and denying federal grant requests to make them accessible to the hearing-impaired." more inside

I know you've seen the Political Compass, but what the heck. Where do you score? more inside

Vanishing species acts? Punch and Judy performances, once common scenes of marital/social disfunction, can still be found, but you may have to hunt harder for them nowadays. more inside

Road sign, WTF files. "Her gift for Valentines? Stop looking at porn," proclaim billboards put up by NetAccountability, a nonprofit software company that aims to help Christians confront the "secret sin" of pornography. more inside

The Annals of Obscurity Meet the author who was told "You are illiterate. You must learn to use nouns and verbs properly before you ever attempt to compose a story. Trust me." Or "Poor" Rich Henry, a forgotten folksinger. (A new blog with a lot of promise, but I can't promise that it's all true)

The day the earth screamed. "It was important to get the sound between the two towers going down ... It's kind of eerie." So says Mark Bain, a 37-year-old Seattle-born "vibrations artist" who has recently completed a CD project using seismological data from New York during the September 11 2001 terror attacks. A small section of the piece. (Real Audio, sorry) more inside

I waited forever to watch American Splendor and now I come to sing its virtues. more inside

Curious George: a stupid webhosting question I need a cheap web hosting service with < 500MB of storage, PHP/CGI support, a few mailboxes, and MySQL - not much to ask for. My current host is charging $15 bucks extra a month for MySQL and I'm sure there must be something cheaper. I know nothing about this, but I figure some of you will. Thanks.

Molecular Expressions Michael W. Davidson, director of the Optical Microscopy Division of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, has put together some galleries of photos taken with ridiculously high-powered microscopes. Some of the better galleries: The Silicon Zoo (which has nothing to do with Janet Jackson and "Nipplegate;" it's a collection of photos of microchips, and the bizarre designs occasionally etched into them), and Beershots, which features "digital images and photomicrographs (photographs taken through an optical microscope) of the World's most famous beers." Arranged by country, no less.

Possibly the funniest food related commercial ever.

Original Star Wars Trilogy on DVD: yea or nay? The trilogy currently holds the top three positions on the Amazon.com Most Requested DVD List, and fans are now hearing the good news that episodes IV, V, and VI are finally in the pipeline. Some, however, are irate about the lack of extras and, more significantly, Lucas's decision to only release the snazzed-up special editions but not the originals. "One extra disc and a couple of hours of supplementary material isn't going to cut it. Hundreds of millions of people saw these movies in the '70s and not to make it available...it's as though history has disappeared." Is Lucas really doing the fans a long-awaited favor, or is it a disservice?