Goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City Here I Come: A lazy man's tour of The Toy and Miniature Museum, located in Kansas City, offers two floors of childhood relics for the curious to investigate. more inside

Women in Afghanistan are still widely oppressed, opium production is flourishing, and Kabul is running out of money. Afghanistan is still a mess.

More gripping than CSI. But also a lot more dangerous. Fredy Peccerelli's family have been forced to flee from Guatemala to the United Kingdom by his work - unearthing the forensic evidence associated with the mass killings of previous murderous regimes.

Harvard Dialect Maps Do you swim in a creek or crik? Do you like carr-a-mel or car-mel in your candy? Harvard Computing Society has done a neat survey where American dialect variations are mapped out. The geographical bias in the maps are not normalized, and some results are rather homogenous, so use at your own risk!

Curious, George: Which of these kung fu movies must I see? more inside

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