This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
At a recent conference, a group of physicists talked about the biggest answered (and perhaps unanswerable) questions in physics. Three of the questions are:
What is everything made of?
Will string theory ever be proved correct?
How far can physics take us?
Antville has a list of the 100 best music videos of the decade, the first 50 or so are embedded right on the page. (via fimoculous)
From the Guardian, a list of species that became extinct or critically endangered during the 2000s. (via @ettagirl)
A pair of McSweeney’s lists to brighten this sleepy Monday morning. 1. YouTube Comment or e.e. cummings?
1. loog a his lirow nose
2. there is some shit I will not eat
3. LISN bud LISN
2. What to Expect: The Third Decade
Your thirty-year-old adult may be able to…
Make a martini (vodka)
Refrain from discussing college
Get married
File his taxes (EZ form)
Remember 5-10 friends’ birthdays
Acknowledge other viewpoints (political)
Life has a list of 30 dumb inventions, including the Hubbard Electrometer (invented by L Ron Hubbard to measure pain in tomatoes), the fast-draw robot, TV glasses, and the rainy day cigarette holder.
Michael Pollan asked his readers for suggestions for food rules, and condensed all the answers down to 20. Here are my three favorites:
Never eat something that is pretending to be something else.
Don’t yuck someone else’s yum.
If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you are not hungry.
If you haven’t had occasion to dip into the Worldchanging site, they’ve compiled a list of their favorite/best/most popular articles from the past on the occasion of their sixth anniversary.
I’m not exactly sure what I expected from such a list, but this wasn’t quite it. Kobe at #3 and Shaq is #6? Hrm.
Too soon for that title? Anyway, Hitfix takes an early look at the Oscar contenders for 2010. Among them, Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, Star Trek, Where the Wild Things Are, Malick’s The Tree of Life, The Road, Amelia, and The Lovely Bones.
The Guardian lists the best 50 foods to eat and where to get them. I’ve had a few of these (ravioli at Babbo, pork at Gramercy, pho at Pho 24, pastrami at Katz’s, etc.) but, sucker that I am for such things, I particularly enjoyed reading about the Turkish olive oil available at an electrical supply shop in London:
At his electrical supply shop in London’s Clerkenwell, Mehmet Murat sells wonderful, intensely fruity oil from his family’s olive groves in Cyprus and south-west Turkey. Now he imports more than a 1,000 litres per year. His lemon-flavoured oil is good enough to drink on its own.
Vanity Fair has released their 2009 list of the “top 100 Information Age powers”…Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and the Google triumvirate make up the top five. Only 12 women made the list, most of them coupled with a man. A similar list from Business Insider has a better name: The 25 Who Won the Recession. I thought this recession business was supposed to kill the influence of the financial sector…funny how that never happens.
Related to yesterday’s post about the evolution of the modern blockbuster movie, a list of the most popular movies from 1984 (according to IMDB). Among them:
Beverly Hills Cop
Ghostbusters
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Gremlins
The Karate Kid
Police Academy
Footloose
Purple Rain
Amadeus
Revenge of the Nerds
Red Dawn
The Terminator
The Killing Fields
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Sixteen Candles
Once Upon a Time in America
This Is Spinal Tap
Top Secret!
That’s a pretty good year. My God, the pop culture references.
In response to a hyperbolic statement from a friend about the goodness of New York City hot dogs, Matthew Diffee compiles an extensive list of stuff that’s better. A sampling:
Nice fluffy towels
Believing in yourself
Finding a lost twenty in your coat pocket
Prince Edward Island
Coming home after being away for a while
Submarines
Supermodels
A kiss in the rain
Among this list of 20 fascinating ancient maps, you’ll find the island of California, a would-be beautification of Paris circa-1789, and the Modern and Completely Correct Map of the Entire World, which turned out to be nothing of the sort. (thx, john)
As part of their review of the music of the 2000s, Pitchfork listed the top 500 tracks of the past decade. Here are the top 10:
10. Arcade Fire, “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”
9. Animal Collective, “My Girls”
8. Radiohead, “Idioteque”
7. Missy Elliott, “Get Ur Freak On”
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps”
5. Daft Punk, “One More Time”
4. Beyonce [ft. Jay-Z], “Crazy in Love”
3. M.I.A. [ft. Bun B and Rich Boy], “Paper Planes (Diplo Remix)”
2. LCD Soundsystem, “All My Friends”
1. OutKast, “B.O.B.”
Be sure to click through for the extensive explanations. It would easy to nitpick specific selections, but that’s a pretty good top 10.
Gorilla vs. Bear also shared their top songs and albums of the decade.
Some plot summaries of movies and TV shows that might make you feel uncomfortable. Among my favorites:
THE GOONIES: Physically abused, retarded man finds love with overweight preteen.
THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST: Mel Gibson fulfills fantasy of showing a Jew beaten to a bloody pulp and killed on-screen.
TITANIC: Crazy old widow disregards lifelong memories of husband, children, and grandchildren in favor of that one time she fucked a bum.
STAR WARS: Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.
LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.
DOCTOR WHO: Elderly man serially abducts young women.
BOOGIE NIGHTS: Deformed boy goaded into life of crime.
(via the browser)
Foreign Policy has a list of the worst healthcare reforms in the world…the list includes China, Russia, the United States, and Turkmenistan.
So, in a frankly insane healthcare reform effort, [Turkmenistan’s “President for Life” Saparmurat Niyazov] restricted the public’s access to care by replacing up to 15,000 doctors and nurses with unqualified military conscripts. The next year, he ordered hospitals and clinics outside of the capital, Ashgabat, to close — even though the vast proportion of Turkmenistan’s population lives in rural areas. The BBC quoted him as saying, “Why do we need such hospitals? If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat.” He also implemented fees and created an “unofficial” ban on the diagnosis of certain communicable diseases, like hepatitis.
(via mr)
Quentin Tarantino talks about his 20 favorite movies that have been made since he became a director.
Here’s the full list in handy text form:
Battle Royale
Anything Else
Audition
Blade
Boogie Nights
Dazed & Confused
Dogville
Fight Club
Fridays
The Host
The Insider
Joint Security Area
Lost In Translation
The Matrix
Memories of Murder
Police Story 3
Shaun of the Dead
Speed
Team America
Unbreakable
Claudia Goes to Class Wearing Sweatpants With Words On the Backside
Kristy’s Softball Friends Don’t Buy it That She’s Dating a Dude
Mary Anne Narcs On Her Roommate
When I was a kid, there were never enough books around the house that I hadn’t read (and I was apparently too lazy to go to the library) so when my younger sister started reading the Baby-Sitters Club series, I did too; she would finish a book and I’d pick it up right after her. At one point, I even got ahead of her and read the first six or seven in the series. This also explains why I’ve read all of the Anne of Green Gables series (yes, even Rilla of Ingleside), many of the Little House books, and quite a few Nancy Drew books. Anyway, great to see that Claudia, Kristy, Mary Anne, and Stacey made it to college!
New Scientist has a series of articles about aspects of humanity that scientists don’t quite have a handle on…like pubic hair, art, dreams, and teenagers.
Even our closest relatives, the great apes, move smoothly from their juvenile to adult life phases — so why do humans spend an agonising decade skulking around in hoodies?
Habits are fine, but do you have the imperfections necessary for true creativity?
VICE THREE: PUT GAMBLING FIRST
Gambling is at the heart of every worthwhile accomplishment in life. Consequently, vice three is essential for the success of your creativity. Instinctively, the highly creative person knows that nothing matters except the throw of the dice. As the French say, “There are two great pleasures in gambling: that of winning and that of losing.” Or, in the words of Mark Twain, “There are two times in a man’s life when he should [gamble]: when he can’t afford it and when he can.” These are vital lessons.
The Week asked me to choose a selection of my favorite books for this week’s issue. I’ll take any opportunity to recommend Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet.
Even though it’s a history of the telegraph, this book is always relevant. The rise of the 1830s communication device continues to be a fantastic metaphor for each new Internet technology that comes along, from e-mail to IM to Facebook to Twitter.
Roger Ebert annotates the top 10 from The Spectator’s list of 50 Essential Films.
1. The Night of the Hunter, Laughton
2. Apocalypse Now, Coppola
3. Sunrise, Murnau
4. Black Narcissus, Powell & Pressburger
5. L’avventura, Antonioni
6. The Searchers, Ford
7. The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles
8. The Seventh Seal , Bergman
9. L’atalante, Vigo
10. Rio Bravo, Hawks
Lots of notable titles missing…and only a couple post-1980s films make the list.
Riffing on Robert Heinlein’s ode to generalization:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Josh Kaufman offers a list of twelve skills that you should focus on developing to improve “the quality of your life and work”.
Information-Assimilation - how to find, consume, and comprehend information and identify what’s most important in the face of a problem or challenge. A person who is highly skilled in Information-Assimilation is able to process information quickly and apply it to the situation at hand, with consistently high levels of comprehension and retention.
(via lone gunman)
John Emerson has collected a number of design manifestos dating back to 1909.
Since the days of radical printer-pamphleteers, design and designers have a long history of fighting for what’s right and working to transform society. The rise of the literary form of the manifesto also parallels the rise of modernity and the spread of letterpress printing.
Perhaps someday I’ll get tired of posting links to lists of good movie title sequences, but today is not that day. (via quipsologies)
Sounds like an interesting list, right? I like lists and since 95% of the news coverage out there is about bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people, I enjoy reading stuff that swims against that tide, so when this came up in my newsreader just now, I got a bit excited to see if this particular effort was worth a damn. But if you actually click through, it’s just 50 women in bikinis. Don’t get me wrong, I like women in bikinis, but as G.O.B. would say, “Come on!”
The 10 oldest cities which are still inhabited. Includes a few you’ve probably heard of (Damascus, Jericho, Jerusalem) and a couple of surprises. (via that’s how it happened)
An annotated list of 61 essential postmodern reads. I’ve read only five — Heartbreaking Work…, House of Leaves, Infinite Jest, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Hamlet (??) — and started (but didn’t finish) another — 2666.
Fired from the Canon is a collection of well-regarded books that perhaps shouldn’t be so revered. Includes White Noise, One Hundred Years of Solitude, On the Road, and A Tale of Two Cities.
Socials & More