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kottke.org posts about lists

A list of 22 film remakes that are

A list of 22 film remakes that are dramatically different than the originals.


A list of ten things that won’t

A list of ten things that won’t Change no matter who get elected President.

10. The primary system: Sure, the early primaries give a handful of white, rural voters disproportionate influence over the election and state caucuses make Tammany Hall look like a golden age of democratic participation, but they’re an entrenched part of party politics at this point and it’s not wise to mess with them. Just ask the Democrats in Michigan or Florida.


Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules. Saw

Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules. Saw this on FFFFOUND! the other day and was too lazy to type it up…I’m glad Mike is less so.

6. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.

7. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.

There is only make. Love that.

Update: The list above is likely not by Sister Corita Kent but John Cage or a variety of folks connected with the Whole Earth Catalog. (thx, zach & richard)


The Curly Tail Grub holds the top

The Curly Tail Grub holds the top slot in the list of the 50 greatest fishing lures of all time.


Ten quirky baseball rules and oddities, including

Ten quirky baseball rules and oddities, including a list of the 23 ways to get a man on first base. (via subtraction)


Resolutions 2008, a found list. Reminds me of

Resolutions 2008, a found list. Reminds me of Hemingway’s six word story (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”) in that so few words can tell a big story.


Over at Slice (the pizza blog!), Adam

Over at Slice (the pizza blog!), Adam Kuban has compiled a list of all the different pizza styles found in the US.

Once the Italian immigrants brought their Naples-style pies to the States, it evolved a bit in the Italian neighborhoods of New York to something I’ve seen referred to as “New York-Neapolitan.” This is basically what all the coal-oven pizzerias of New York serve. It follows the tenets of Neapolitan style in that it’s thin-crusted, cooked in an ultra-hot oven, and uses a judicious amount of cheese and sauce (sauce which is typically fresh San Marzano tomatoes, as in Naples). It deviates from Naples-style in that it’s typically larger, a tad thinner, and more crisp.

There’s a surprising number of styles.


List of 19 awfully good advertisements.

List of 19 awfully good advertisements.


A list of the 100 books every child

A list of the 100 books every child should read. No Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and probably a little Brit-heavy for those in other countries but otherwise solid. Plenty of Roald Dahl (I still occasionally reread Danny, the Champion of the World).


Ten recurring economic fallacies, 1774-2004.

Ten recurring economic fallacies, 1774-2004.

One of the most persistent is that of the broken window โ€” one breaks and this is celebrated as a boon to the economy: the window manufacturer gets an order; the hardware store sells a window; a carpenter is hired to install it; money circulates; jobs are created; the GDP goes up. In truth, of course, the economy is no better off at all.


On the occasion of Tom Brady’s incredible

On the occasion of Tom Brady’s incredible season, ESPN compiles a list of the 25 greatest individual seasons in sports history.


If you were still on vacation last

If you were still on vacation last week, you might want to check out my list of the best links of 2007. I guarantee you’ll find something to get your mind off of that looming deadline.


The 2007 installment of the BBC’s list of 100

The 2007 installment of the BBC’s list of 100 things we didn’t know last year.

31. There is mobile phone reception from the summit of Mount Everest.

Here’s the lists for 2006, 2005, and 2004.


The Best Links 2007

For the fourth year running, here are some of my favorite articles, videos, games, photography, discussions, and design pieces that I linked to in 2007. After you’re done with these, try the lists from 2004, 2005, and 2006.

The streets of Portland are an ice skating rink for cars in this video.

Reconsidering the original three Star Wars movies in light of the prequels. R2D2 = top rebel spy.

Adam Gadahn’s journey from rural California teen and death metal fan to a trusted member of Osama bin Laden’s team of operatives.

Chris Jordan’s photo series, Running the Numbers.

Michael Poliza’s aerial photos of Africa. More here.

Malcolm Gladwell on Enron and the difference between puzzles and mysteries, investigationally speaking.

Smashing Telly, a collection of TV on the web, with an emphasis on documentaries and factual programs. I liked David’s post on Zeitgeist and FEBLs.

Video of an autistic person describing the language she uses to communicate with her surroundings.

Good People, a short story by David Foster Wallace.

Nicholas Felton’s personal annual report for 2006.

A pair of posts from Neatorama on photography: 13 Photographs That Changed the World and The Wonderful World of Early Photography.

The 51 Smartest, Prettiest, Coolest, Funniest, Most Influential, Most Necessary, Most Important, Most Essential Magazines Ever.

Susan Orlean on Robert Lang, former physicist and current world-class origami master. Here’s my post on Lang.

A Line Rider masterpiece. (Line Rider?)

Kremlin Inc., a story of Vladimir Putin’s de facto dictatorship of Russia.

2007 was the year of book art: Thomas Allen’s pulp cutouts, Cara Barer’s water-crumpled books, Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books whose spines tell small stories, and Brian Dettmer’s book sculptures.

Joel Johnson’s great post on Gizmodo scolding the site’s writers, gadget makers, and the site’s readers “for supporting the disgusting cycle of gadget whoring”.

Denis Darzacq’s photographs of people seemingly floating above the pavement.

Panoramic photos from the Apollo missions. These are stunning.

Michael Pollan on the rise of nutritionism. His advice for healthy eating: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Desktop Tower Defense. This would top my Ten Best Games of the Year list if I’d done one.

On Conscientious, several photographers answer the question “What makes a great photo?”

Shorpy, a photoblog of old photographs, and FFFFOUND!, an image bookmarking site. Neither is probably legal in the strict sense, but they’re both great online curated galleries.

Alberto Forero has collected a staggering amount of photography and design imagery and posted it to his Flickr account.

Social Explorer, interactive demographic maps.

Hypermilers try to wring as many miles per gallon out of their cars as they can. (My post.)

Darwin’s God. Are humans biologically wired to believe in God?

Dan Hill reviews Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, a film that follows soccer star Zinedine Zidane through a single game.

Minority Kart, possibly the GAGOAT (greatest animated gif of all time).

Miranda July’s wonderful handcrafted web site for her book No One Belongs Here More Than You.

An article on commuting, this crazy thing that most Americans do too much of.

The graph of US home prices from 1890 to the present as a rollercoaster.

As a social experiment, the Washington Post arranged for internationally acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell to play outside a DC subway station. Would anyone notice?

The New Yorker on David Belle and parkour, the sport he invented.

Maciej Ceglowski reports on the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.

NB: Studio’s map of London constructed entirely out of type.

Trulia Hindsight, a map of property development through time.

Movies showing a closeup view of the Sun’s surface.

Video footage of Joseph Kittenger’s record jump from 102,800 feet up. Photo from Life magazine and a Boards of Canada music video that uses the footage.

Alex Reisner’s site, especially the baseball section. (My post.)

Interview with journalist Jonathan Rauch.

The greatest long tracking shots in cinema, including those in Touch of Evil and Children of Men.

Meg Hourihan took a bunch of different chocolate chip recipes, averaged the ingredients, and made cookies from the resulting meta-recipe.

The infamous four guys humping an ottoman video.

Does the Piraha language upend the theory of universal grammar?

Vimeo’s sign in page is lovely.

Tim Knowles’ drawings by trees. (My post. And more.)

How a woman randomly bumped into the person that stole her identity and chased her around until the police showed up to apprehend her.

Portraits of breaking sculpture by Martin Klimas.

Photo gallery that shows families from around the world and the amount of food they eat in the course of a week.

Errol Morris’ investigation of a pair of Roger Fenton photographs in three wonderful parts.

Roger Federer’s conservation of energy and attention helps him perform when it counts.

Jay Parkinson M.D. makes house calls, visits with patients via IM, and is generally trying to find new ways of doctoring.

Anthony Lane’s appreciation of the Leica.

Kohei Yoshiyuki’s photos of voyeurs watching lovers in a Japanese park. (My post.)

A restaurant review from the NY Times, circa 1859. My post about the review and lots more from the archives of the Times.

The story of Oscar the Cat, who comforts the dying at a Rhode Island nursing home.

Portraits of bears by Jill Greenberg. More photos at Greenberg’s site.

Long New Yorker profile of David Simon and The Wire.

Elizabeth Kolbert on bees and colony collapse disorder. And bee space.

Photoshopped pictures of people’s faces combined.

A video round (turn on the sound).

Optical illusion: is the woman rotating clockwise or counterclockwise?

From the excellent xkcd web comic: Little Bobby Tables.

Aicuรฑa is a small secluded town in Argentina with an extremely high percentage of albino residents.

David Foster Wallace’s wonderful introduction to The Best American Essays 2007.

Video depicting several ways to melt a chocolate bunny.

Tyler Cowen on some of the opportunity costs of the war in Iraq.

Beautifully terrifying photos of nuclear tests in French Polynesia.

Standing witness to a Guitar Hero wunderkind playing the game’s most difficult song on expert level.

How America Lost the War on Drugs.

God’s Eye View is an art project by The Glue Society depicting four Biblical scenes as they would have been captured by Google Earth.

The best way to deflect an asteroid turns out to be reflecting sunlight on it with a swarm of mirror bees.

Paul Otlet presages the web in 1934, calling it the “radiated library” or “televised book”. (More context.)

This was my favorite post of the year. I hope you’ll excuse the self-link.

Oh, and maybe the best thing I didn’t link to this year: Daft Hands.

Thanks for reading kottke.org for the past year. Happy new year to you and yours.


My Year in Cities, 2007

Here are all the places I visited last year…much less travel than in previous years. Having a baby will do that to your schedule. For a few months there, I don’t think I left a 20-block radius of Manhattan.

New York City, NY*
Rochester, VT
Anguilla
Boston, MA*
Orange, MA*
Waitsfield, VT*
San Francisco, CA
McMinnville, OR
Portland, OR

One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. Here are my lists from 2005 and 2006.


The year in buzzwords from the NY

The year in buzzwords from the NY Times. Written by Grant Barrett of the excellent Double-Tongued Dictionary.


Ed Levine shares his food trends for 2007.

Ed Levine shares his food trends for 2007.


A list of the 50 most loathsome people

A list of the 50 most loathsome people in America for 2007. #9 is “you” because:

You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism โ€” it’s nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over.


The top 10 archeological discoveries of 2007

The top 10 archeological discoveries of 2007 as determined by Archaeology Magazine. Among the discoveries are a cuneiform tablet naming someone who is also named in the Bible, more evidence that Polynesians visited the Americas before the Europeans “discovered” it, early agriculture in Peru, and early urbanization in Syria that followed a different model than other early cities.

Tell Brak seems to have grown from the outside in. In the south, cities began as a central settlement โ€” under a single authority โ€” that grew outward. But Ur’s field survey shows that Tell Brak started as a central community ringed by smaller satellite settlements that expanded inward. “There isn’t a very tight control over these surrounding villages, at least at this beginning period,” says Ur. “So the assumption that we’re making is that people were coming in under their own volition.”


Very few science and ideas books made

Very few science and ideas books made it on to the 2007 “best of” lists so Edge has provided a list of their picks for the year. I didn’t read any of the books on this list, although I’m currently 1/3 of the way through Jonah Lehrer’s Proust Was a Neuroscientist.


Roger Ebert’s list of the best films

Roger Ebert’s list of the best films of 2007. He gives Juno the top slot.


The International Herald Tribune’s Year in Pictures for 2007.

The International Herald Tribune’s Year in Pictures for 2007.


Long long list of the most overrated

Long long list of the most overrated and underrated books, movies, tv shows, etc. for 2007. (via mr)


Best blogs of 2007

Rex has released his list of the Best Blogs of 2007 That You’re (Maybe) Not Reading over at Fimoculous. Like last year, he’s focused his best-of-blogs list on lesser-known sites instead of the biggies, a strategy I applaud. In fact, he doesn’t even need to qualify the list as the best unknown blogs; many of the well-known blogs that usually make best-of lists, much of the Technorati Top 100, and most multi-author plastered-with-ads blogs are unremarkable…too much volume, too calculated, too focused on filling post and pageview quotas, and limited passion. If you look at the sites on Rex’s list, you’ll see a lot of blogs done by people who are passionate about something, not writing for a paycheck.

Rex’s #1 choice is an inspired one and absolutely right on…Twitter and Tumblr revitalized personal publishing in the eyes of many who had either tired of blogging or had never seen the point in it in the first place. My only complaint about the list is that there are too many one-hit wonders on it, sites that are worth a chuckle or squee! when you first see them but don’t hold up over time unless you really really like, say, snowclones. Oh, and Vulture…I really wanted to like it but really didn’t get it. (Oh oh, and and Jezebel? Being against a thing is not the same as standing for something.)


Foreign Policy has posted its annual list

Foreign Policy has posted its annual list of The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2007 (unless, presumably, you read Foreign Policy).


An annotated list of movies due out

An annotated list of movies due out in 2008. I didn’t know that Darren Aronofsky was working on a new movie…about a boxer and starring Brad Pitt and Mark Wahlberg, no less.


A list of the top 10 astronomy images

A list of the top 10 astronomy images of 2007, including entwined galaxies and a dying star.


I enjoyed reading the AV Club’s The

I enjoyed reading the AV Club’s The Year in Film 2007. Their hands-down best of the year was No Country For Old Men. (BTW, the term “hands-down” comes from horse racing.)


The 25 best rock posters of all time,

The 25 best rock posters of all time, according to Billboard. A hit-or-miss list at best. (via quipsologies)


Good Magazine is keeping track of Big

Good Magazine is keeping track of Big Ideas!, one a day until all the letters of the alphabet are done. Did you know that coin flipping isn’t exactly fair?