So many links.... so little time....

When I created TYWKIWDBI ten months ago, I was monitoring a couple dozen websites each day, and I conceived of this blog as a convenient storage site for interesting material that I was encountering and emailing to friends. When I had more material than I could use for a day, I started to store bookmarked links in folders - "Images," "Politics," "Humor," "Gloomy," "New but nor urgent," and the folder that shows how naive I was at the time: "Old things for a slow day."

There is, of course, no such thing as a slow day on the internet, and my saved links began to accumulate. Out of curiosity I counted them this weekend - over 600 in folders and over 400 not yet sorted. At my current rate of blogging about 10 items a day, I could clear that backlog in 3-4 months - if I didn't keep finding new material. And now my list of sites that I visit each day has risen from the original couple dozen to over 50 (plus the sites that those sites send me to), with another 60 or so in the "weekly check" folder.

I can't add any more hours to my blogging time, which is already interfering with other activities, and I am nothing if not a pragmatist, so it's clear that there is no way that backlog of links will ever get attention unless I adopt a new strategy - the linkdump. Many blogs use this technique to post a lot of material in a short time; some blogs are little more than a set of blue links. By consigning material to the linkdump rather than to a separate blog entry, I don't mean to imply that it's less interesting or less important; it must be good, or I wouldn't have saved the link for months. I don't want to just throw the links out. I'll list them, you can sort through for things that interest you, and ignore the rest. Here goes, in no particular order...

An article in the LA times about the ridiculous ease with which medical marijuana can be acquired in California. Tips on how to do so.

Monte Verde is an archaeological site in southern Chile that has been under investigation for years, because it is one of the oldest sites inhabited by man in the Americas. Seaweed at the site has been dated to 14,000 years ago. This would be pre-Clovis and put to rest the "ice-free corridor" theory.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a neuroanatomist who experienced a stroke at age 37. With her training and expertise she was able to analyze it while it was going on. Her story is written up in a NYT article at the link, but is even better when she tells the story in a TED talk called "My Stroke of Insight." (Let me add that I have not yet encountered a TED talk that wasn't excellent - that site is definitely worth exploring when you have time). The TED site lists what they consider their "top ten" talks; Jill Taylor's talk is rated #1.

Try this TED talk: "Why People Believe Strange Things." Thirteen minutes long, by a "professional skeptic." The first item is a "dowsing" rod being sold to school administrators to detect marijuana in student lockers (!!)

The Spectator (U.K.) has a long interview with Gore Vidal. The man is relentlessly outspoken and probably a bit of an S.O.B. He hates Bobby Kennedy. And George Bush.

A good article in the New Yorker about the problem of light pollution.

Everything you could ever want to know about the exclamation mark.

A Scribal Terror entry from this summer about toxic honey, citing Pliny the Elder advising his readers that honey produced from the pollen of rhododendrons, mountain laurel etc can contain grayanotoxin. From there a link to an article on this subject in The Atlantic, entitled "Infectious Terrorism." The Atlantic is one of my two favorite magazines (the other is Harper's), because of their mix of interesting content with outstanding cryptic puzzles.

Neocon Daniel Pipes opining this summer that if Barack Obama wins the election, President Bush will need to launch a military attack on Iran (if McCain wins, he would let him do it). Madness, in my view, but there it is.

Who killed Marilyn Monroe? A book released this summer suggested it was Bobby Kennedy. Monroe's death has been the subject of much speculation. If you want to get started in the rich field of "conspiracy theory," this topic is a good entry point.

Germany is once again producing Zeppelins, and with modern technology they are formidable aircraft. More of course at Wiki. You've probably seen the "Oh the hugh manatee" image; if not, it's on Google images.

Student arrested and jailed on charge of trying to pass bogus Wal-Mart money orders. They were real, and had been obtained at Wal-Mart.

The largest solar farm in the world is in ... Portugal! And they're now setting up the world's biggest wind farm.

A WSJ article on counter-surveillance technology available to consumers.

Six baby ducklings fall into a storm sewer and are swept away. Mother duck follows along above ground, listening to their plaintive cries, until...

Bumper stickers on a car may be indicative of a more aggressive driver.

The top ten silliest hats in England.

Inflation in Hawaii. $8 for a jar of peanut butter or a gallon of ice cream.

Photo gallery of body modification. The first one looks to me like urticaria or dermatographia, but the others range from tattoos to piercings to implants to the totally bizarre. Some may be 'shopped, but there really are a lot of very strange people in the world. Ten pages of photos (click on "nastepna" to move to the next page). Perhaps someone can clue me in as to why a tattoo of "C15 H25 N39 O46 S" is cool...