Curious George: Proctology. Why does a doctor decide to specialize in proctology? Is there professional interest in rectums, anuses, and colons? Are graduate classes for it cheap? Or are they paid better than other specialties? I want to put on my gloves and get to the bottom of this!

Curious George: Ping. Why does ping work on some sites but not others? For example I tried "ping www.nytimes.com" and always get "request timed out". But it works fine for google.com and other servers. Do some web servers block pings?

Curious George: Cell long distance (U.S.) Just a dumb question but do most people signed up with major cell providers in the U.S. get free long distance? I'm setting up a temporary number for cell phone clients and am not sure if a 1-800 number would be redundant.

Man walks into police station and asks for a complaint form. The officers demand ID and respond with intimidation and harassment. Turns out the visitor was from the Police Complaint Center working with a major Miami television station, and it was all caught on tape. The organization's video gallery of police misconduct is well worth a look. (via consumerist)

Before there were dashboard CD players there was 16 rpm. You may know it as that setting on old record players that made Peter Frampton sound like Satan. But in 1956 Chevrolet teamed with inventor Peter Goldmark to create the granddaddy of modern car stereos. Unfortunately customers weren't interested in funking it up on the new Interstates, and the gadget was dropped. Except for the government's talking books program, 16 rpm quickly faded into obscurity.

Curious George: Song pairs. The link below (We Will Rock You) got me wondering. Which songs are usually played in pairs? The only ones I can think of are We Will Rock You/Champions (Queen) and Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go (Soft Cell). There's gotta be others. Google isn't helping on this one.

Curious George: Hospital bill confusion. Awhile back I visited the ER for what I thought was chest pain, but it was nothing serious. Now I have the bill. I have what looks like duplicate charges from the hospital and from the pathology service. Are these really duplicates? more inside

Curious George: Firewire problem. What's the deal with a Firewire hard drive that disconnects every few hours? I have to unplug and plug it back in to get it to work again. more inside

Curious George: Domain suggestion service. Are there any good registrars that can make suggestions for available domains? I tried registering (blah)forum.com on Dotster, which is taken, but instead of suggesting (blah)groups.com, (blah)community.com, it keys in on "forum" and suggests nonrelevant nouns like dogforum.com, boogerforum.com, etc. Do any other engines work better?

Curious George: Amazon wish lists. I filled parts of someone's Amazon's wish list someplace else. There appears to be no way to mark the item as purchased. Is that correct? Or am I missing an option on Amazon's cluttered pages?

Curious George: WiFi software. I have a Linksys WiFi card on my Win 2K laptop. Since I installed drivers only, I seem to have no way of seeing what networks are out there. What "front end" software should I try? I heard Boingo was popular a couple of years ago, but it now looks like an interface for the "Boingo network".

As if HDTV isn't enough, NHK is working on an ultra HD video format, with a resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels, equivalent to 16 HDTVs. Your 100 GB hard drive can hold 4.2 seconds of uncompressed UHDV footage. The first closed-circuit test transmissions took place last month. Check back in 2025 for more news!

Curious George: Favorite programs. What are your favorite programs/apps/utilities that would go on your system right away if you reinstalled your OS? For brevity I'll assume Firefox is one of them unless you say otherwise. more inside

Curious George: Collecting video clips I like to collect video clips, such as the one petebest posted below. If I want to collect a hodgepodge of different .avi/.mpg/.qt/.wmv and later write them all to DVD (regular VOB format) for TV viewing, what format should I transcode them all into? And what authoring program is best for burning all these transcodes?

Curious George: Temperature. Does anyone have access to the AP Stylebook? I'm curious what it says about whether to write 23 °C, 23°C, 23° C, or 23C. There seems to be a lot of dispute about it. I prefer the NIST rule but would like to learn more.

Hurricane Wilma is now the strongest in history, clocking in at 882 millibars, though it would have to dip below 870 to beat the strongest typhoon [PDF]. Also we've run out of storm names for 2005, and are to start on the Greek alphabet. What a bizarre season.

Curious George: Fonts! I'm a small-potatoes publisher and once again I am faced with picking fonts for a new nonfiction title. Any fontaholics here? What are your favorite body text typefaces? more inside

Kirk-Spock romance website. Tons of fan art and stories. (first pages SFW). If Kirk & Spock aren't your thing, there's a whole smorgasbord on Usenet (NSFW). via

Curious George: MetaFilter crappage. Whether it's a JRun error or "document contains no data", MetaFilter seems to be down 25% of the time I go there. I'm not a regular over there but I am curious about the technical side of this. more inside

Curious George: Katrina & mass media. My favorite blogs paint an exceedingly dismal picture of the Katrina relief efforts. I'm curious whether (1) the mass media is running with these negative angles or has fumbled; (2) whether indy media is right on the mark or might be adding hype; and (3) what Joe "Support The Troops" Sixpack feels about our government's response. Thoughts? What's the prevailing sentiment down at the office or bar?