You see, when the spiders start figuring out how to work together you know we're in trouble. Big trouble. Here's the giant giant giant web.

"There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."

Well sure -- today it's mosquitoes. Tomorrow -- it could be you!

Via Boing Boing.

Clowns!

It was at this point that several observers reported seeing several Klan members heads exploding in rage and they stopped trying to explain to the clowns what they wanted.

Apparently the clowns fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the rally, they believed it was a clown rally and came in force to support their pointy hated brethren. To their dismay, despite their best jokes and stunts and pratfalls the Nazis and Klan refused to laugh, and indeed became enraged at the clowns misunderstanding and constant attempts to interpret the clowns instruction.

The clowns on the other hand had a great time and thought the Nazis were the funniest thing they had ever seen and the loud laughter of over 100 counter protesters greeted every attempt of the Nazis and Klan to get their message out, whatever that was.

Proving again that laughter is the best antidote to hate.

Yes, I just got to play with one of the One Laptop Per Child laptops (a Thai version). They are pretty sweet.

Use baby talk instead. Of course, this will result in Americans sounding even stupider when they talk to foreigners. Now it wont just be slow and loud English, it'll be slow loud baby talk English ...

Hours after the announcement, The Onion already has the street's opinion on Gonzalez's resignation. Do you think they have been going out everyday and asking people "What do you think of the AG's resignation today?" secure in the knowledge that one day they would be right?

I just finished reading Death By Chick Lit -- very much recommended! And I would totally say that even if it weren't written by Lynn Harris, she of Breakup Girl. I don't know how she does it, but DBCL is both LOL funny and a good mystery, a send-up of chick-lit publishing and a sort-of chick-lit book.

Lola Somerville has a husband and a new apartment in Brooklyn, but what she really wants is for her novel to make a splash. Unfortunately it hasn't even made a ripple. Then at a book party, Lola finds her author friend Mimi McKee with her throat slashed. When the bodies of It-Girl writers begin to pile up, Lola starts asking dangerous questions: Are the murders connected? Am I next? If not, um, why not? If I solve the mystery, then will my agent remember my name? As Lola digs deeper, the stakes grow higher. Will getting her hands on the killer -- and the book deal bound to follow -- mean losing the people she loves most?

Lola lives in a fictionalized Brooklyn, and part of the fun of this book are the barely-disguised barbs thrown at various trends, authors, events, even neighborhoods. (She and her husband live in the run-down nabe that the real estaters have dubbed "North Wayside" or "NoWay").

Anyway, if you happen to live in Lynn's actual Brooklyn (or even Queens or Manhattan or the Bronx or Staten Island!) you should come by an event this Wednesday at Cocoa Bar ('round the corner from La Casa Everett-Lane) at 8 p.m. where Lynn will be reading and distributing cake to book-buyers. Yum! Details in the flyer posted after the jump.

There's me, sharing a "jovial beer" with some music bloggers: Merry Swankster: After the Jump Fest: Spotlight on Donor's Choose

LA Times Op-Ed writer Michael Skube writes anti-blog opinion piece. Of course, bloggers react. Then Jay Rosen totallly p0wns him.

Debbie and I have at last finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows out loud, so you can now talk about it in our presence without us sticking our fingers in the ears and singing "Oh Mickey" at the top of our lungs.

Somehow, we managed to make it all the way through without hearing any spoilers -- you know, that it's Dudley who finally defeats Voldemort, that Ron is really a girl, that Voldemort is actually Harry's father, that the seventh Horcrux is a sled, etc.

The Conversation : Dirty Mind :: The Godfather : Purple Rain

Mess With Your Mind: Prince Spends The '80s Confounding Rock Critics, Tipper Gore - Idolator

You know that you can microwave sponges to kill bacteria, right? (Note: the actual Hints from Heloise does not recommend this, saying a good soak in diluted bleach or running through the dishwasher will suffice. Cooks Illustrated says that boiling them for 3 minutes is the best method, followed by bleach solution.)

We got home from visiting my mom this weekend and our sponges smelled a little funky, so I threw them into the microwave.

Several minutes later, the whole kitchen smelled like hot burnt nastiness. The sponges had caught on fire.

"How long did you put those in for?" Debbie asked as I opened windows, put on fans, and lit a scented candle that did nothing to mask the scent of burning sponge.

"Seven minutes." Because, you know, I wanted to be thorough.

"Seven? You're supposed to nuke them for three." (This article says that you only need one minute to properly kill off the wee beasties.)

So your Ishtip of the day: You can microwave your sponges, but not for too long!

FWIW there's now an Ishbadiddle group on Facebook. For authors, readers, and fans. Let me know if you want to join.

• Kerim on the social nature of Wikipedia
• How to get a 5-Star rating for your shareware that does nothing
• How to shut your 14-year-old up when he can't stop joking about condoms. File under "read again in eight years."

Why FireFox is Blocked

The Mozilla Foundation and its Commercial arm, the Mozilla Corporation, has allowed and endorsed Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites and also prevents site owners from blocking people using it. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing.

Via Gadgetopia via Metafilter where the usual discussion is taking place.

I just got back from Philadelphia and I noticed an ad for Ishkabibbles’s, home of the original chicken cheesesteak. I rembered there being some discussion of this blogs name (but an internal search showed no mention of “iskabibble”. A yahoo search had many hits, including this one:

ISHKABIBBLE A dismissive statement. This slang expression came into existence in the USA quite suddenly around 1913 with the ostensible meaning “I should worry!”, which means, of course, “Don’t worry!” or “Who cares?”. It had quite a vogue for a decade or two and was the name of a character played by Merwyn Bogue on a 1930s radio show called Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge (they don’t make titles like that any more).

Mike, maybe your grandparents got Ishbadiddle from here. Maybe they really invented the chicken cheesesteak?

• The 6 Most Over-Hyped Threats to America (And What Should Scare You Instead)
• America's Top Seven Most Hated Substances
• I was trying to find an "eight" to round out this list but could only find The Eight Most Disturbing Criminal Justice Stories of 2003 and Eight of America's Most Outstanding Young Gastroenterologists Earn Recognition as 2006 American Gastroenterological Association Foundation Research Scholars.

Hey, there's a concert in Brooklyn next Saturday (the 25th) to benefit music projects at DonorsChoose! I haven't heard of any of the bands (except Golem) but then I'm, you know, old and stuff. The concert was organized by a posse of music bloggers, and is hence monikered After The Jump. Anyone up for it?

Oh, and here's their DonorsChoose Challenge Page.

Beyond batteries: Storing power in a sheet of paper.

Now I just need to hook one of these up to a quantum computer that will guide my Stirling-engine-powered flying car...

Those of you who've read Getting Things Done will be familiar with the prefixes of @Action and @Waiting On. Putting these at the front of your to-do items will let you quickly determine what stuff needs to get done right away, and what stuff you're waiting on other people to do for you, respectively.

Lately I've been using a to-do prefix of my own, @Bottleneck. Essentially it is the inverse of @Waiting On, as it indicates an item that someone is waiting for me to work on. I find it's useful to draw attention to these items for two reasons:

1) It ensures that I'm responsive to my peers, superiors, customers, etc. who are waiting on my input.

2) Reducing bottlenecks makes my team more effective.

Libertarians ask why do taxpayers have to pay for the repair of the MN bridge when MN has enough money to spend hundreds of millions on non-essential services like baseball subsidies for wealthy business owners.

... you have to wonder what makes this a federal responsibility. The typical excuse is that the state can't afford such pricey projects, so it behooves the federal government to step in to help... Washington appears set to provide about $250 million to Minneapolis for a new bridge.

Whatever Minnesota's spending constraints, the state can apparently afford to spend hundreds of millions for corporate welfare to Carl Pohlad, the owner of the Minnesota Twins, for a new baseball stadium. Hennepin County, where the bridge is located, recently passed a new .15 percent sales tax solely to pay for Pohlad's new stadium.

A few things off today's del.icio.us/popular:

• Now that's one funky panorama.
• 50 Really Good Indie Games. I've played about five of these and they were indeed Really Good. Many free. Too bad I have no time to play no more.
• For Good Girls: 10 Ways To Release Your Inner Vixen. Probably NSFW. I approve of all except #6, but then I never went to Catholic school.

Thanks to everyone who voted in, blogged on, and emailed your friends about the American Express Members Project. In the end we came in 2nd Place, which isn't bad when you consider what we were up against.

Anyway, Amex bent its own rules, gave $2m to the UNICEF Clean Water Project, and $100,000 to each of the runner-ups. Beats the goose egg, I say. And as Ennis points out, now is a good time to be working on clean water given the 19 million people displaced by flooding in India...

Via Balls and Walnuts comes this mapping of Simpsons Characters to Presidential Candidates. I guess Cheney has the Burns character wrapped up, hence not on the list.

Speaking of the 2008 Election, here come the usual "candidate selectors": one at dehp.net (using data from 2decide) and one from Select Smart. Both give me different results: Dehp rates my top 5 as Kucinich, Gravel (who?), Obama, Edwards, Clinton, while Select Smart ranks them Kucinich, Obama, Biden, Edwards, Dodd. The dark horse Gravel is 2nd on the first list but 13th on the second. Full results after the jump, should you be interested.

My vote's for the "Bart" candidate, if you must know...

Hey! I'm back! Sorry for the long absence -- I've been traveling for work (Rochester, SF, Boston) and on vacation (Block Island). Flickr photos up later. Plus, trying to fight against a Fortune 100 company in an online contest. It's been a busy few weeks.

Anyhoo, since so many of you asked (OK, it was only Josh, but still), here's the list of albums played at this year's EFNY party. Usually I pack the iPod full, put in on shuffle, and hook it up to the stereo. This year I had a few flurbs which kept me from filling it all the way up to 4 gees, but I think having fewer albums actually works better:

1. Adventures in Afropea 3: Telling Stories to the Sea, Various Artists. Mellow? Check.

2. Alright, Still, Lily Allen. Attitude? Check.

3. Back to Black, Amy Winehouse. Retro? Check.

4. Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen.

5. Buzz Buzz, Laurie Berkner. For the kids. Actually its inclusion on the mix was a mistake, but did lead to some amusing song transitions.

6. Comfort Eagle, Cake.

7. Costello Music, The Fratellis.

8. Dimanche à Bamako, Amadou & Mariam. I think SF Liberal turned me on to this.

9. Discovery, Daft Punk. A CMOM addition.

10. Honey to the B, Billie Piper. Yes, Colin, she had a pre-Dr. Who career!

11. The Hook & Sling, Eddie Bo.

12. Introducting Joss Stone, Joss Stone.

13. Life In Cartoon Motion, Mika.

14. Remain in Light, Talking Heads.

15. Remixed and Reimagined, Nina Simone.

16. Speaking in Tongues, Talking Heads.

17. Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration, Various Artists. The eMusic version.

18. The Best of Bill Withers.

19. The Harder They Come, VA. You know, this is one of my favorite fall-back albums, but I've still never seen the movie?

20. Version, Mark Ronson.

21. Who Is This America?, Antibalas.

And there you have it!