Sometimes, seeing is believing, and several images from the blogosphere caught our eye today, including this giant Windows error message projected on one of those giant Times Square screens (today's No 6 top blog post). Check out the blog posts that link to the NetWork World image, and you'll note that Windows error messages are definitely an international phenomenon. The other image is just for fun...a Cat Piano( honest!) featured at Gizmodo (today's No. 17 top blog post). I wonder if they can do that with puppies? asks Instapundit. Finally, says Beggars All, a use for cats! (My cat, Squeak, is safe from the contraption...he got his name because he can't meow. He just makes a squeaky, scratchy noise that passes for a meow.)

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:23 PM

If you're still trying to convince your elders that listening to a music player while surfing the Internet while playing a video game is NOT causing cerebral cells to flake away like dandruff, here's your proof: multi-tasking of the young and the wireless (today's eighth most-popular blog link) can help keep young minds young, especially if the owners of the brains that run those minds are bilingual. That's the gist of a recent study of University of Toronto multi-taskers. Seems that quick-thinking and sharp reflexes -- the very skills demanded by gaming and electronic gadgetry -- make Jack (and Jill) a smarter boy (and girl), not duller. "I am bilingual. I play video games. Fear me!" boasts one blogger. "Games are good for you!" crows Sonic Nonsense. Engadget's Social Software blog calls it what it is: "advantages of ADD in the tech world." Wait, what'd he say? I was paying attention to the invading aliens...

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 05:48 PM

Many people thought that Joss Whedeon's "Serenity/Firefly" franchise had finally gone to that great cemetery in the sky, to join "Star Trek: Voyager" and "Dark Skies" and all the other sci-fi properties nobody loves anymore. But people apparently do love "Serenity" — as if you couldn't tell by the frothing, reaver-like devotion of its fans — and they love it so much they could shell out to bring it back. Yes, that's what they tell us in today's no. 6 top link; they want to raise $24 million to give to Fox or the Sci-Fi network to pay for another season of "Firefly," which could explore storylines about gunslinger Frank Miller, sheriff Rooster Cogburn, or the myth of Curly's gold. Bloggers all love "Serenity"/"Firefly," and this Web site has inflamed their deep, personal feelings about this television show. This blogger hopes the fund-raiser works, as does this one: "I believe it deserves funding as much as any work of art needs funding to be developed." Can the legions of "Serenity" fans raise $24 million to buy themselves more fantasy time with their favorite drawling space cowpokes? We reckon not, but then again, you can't take the sky from them.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:08 AM

When it comes to burninating, few on the Internet are better — or better-known — than Trogdor, the s-shaped dragon with the beefy human arm coming out of his neck for good measure. As revealed by our no. 26 top link, today is Trogdor's third birthday , and the burninating is still goin' strong. The third-birthday celebration has pictures of the beast sent in by fans and a snippet from the original Strong Bad cartoon where he first appeared. Strong Bad is another character who's managed to achieve as much currency as Trogdor, although if you watch the cartoon where he creates Trogdor, you'll wonder how he can hold a pencil with his boxing-glove hands. Bloggers, of course, are responding to Baddie and Troggie. He's "one of the great viral entities of the Internet," says this blogger. Are there cooler animated characters out on the Web? Maybe, but their burninating is insufficient by comparison.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:05 PM

Ever since the National Security Agency's infamous "Echelon" system was publicly revealed a few years ago — it's the ultra-secret surveillance system that literally monitors every electronic transmission — many people have been justifiably worried that the US government is sending secret mind-control radio signals directly into their brains. Some, in response, have taken to wearing makeshift helmets made of aluminum foil, in hopes of deflecting the mind-control signals. But a new experiment, documented with scientific precision in our No. 5 top link today, reveals that aluminum foil probably is a poor choice to protect against mind-control rays. Using the standard-grade Reynolds aluminum foil in three distinct configurations ( our favorite is the "fez" design) researchers at America's top engineering university determined that, in fact, not only do aluminum foil helmets not disrupt radio signals, they can, in fact, amplify them. Meaning that, if you're one of those people out there who think They haven't gotten to you yet, THEY ALREADY HAVE. We're through the looking glass, here, people. Black is white. White is black. These findings aren't without controversy, however, and there is a rebutting counter-study worth your careful consideration. That is, if you have any capacity left for independent thought.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:08 PM

One of the things about this blog gig is that you get to see things you probably never imagined you would see — and not, "oh, gosh, Dick Cheney's chief of staff wrote a smutty roman a clef" — but, rather: "have you seen those Japanese girls who strap meat to their foreheads and then stick their heads through holes onto a table where a carnivorous lizard is prowling about?" Well, have you seen anything like that? Now you can: our no. 21 top link is a Google Video file of exactly that happening. There are cultural things at work here, too, including Japanese cultural misogyny, traditional Japanese reverence for lizards and the modern Japanese penchant for combining the two. Bloggers are all over the place on this one; we'll start with Japundit, which writes: "Well, never underestimate the ability of Japanese TV to tap new lows." Noted. Other responses include this Metafilter response list, where one wit has asked: "Man. Why can't we get American pop stars to participate in such tomfoolery?" For our part, we would pay admission to see Hillary Duff take part in this exact same program. Still other posters expressed sympathy for one of the humiliating things about this game show: "Oh no! How embarrassing for those girls! They all showed up to the show wearing the same meat hat! That fashion faux pas would make me scream, too."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:01 AM

Our no. 29 link today is a movie that spells out, in hilarious and clear terms, the backlash out there building against the spyware and grainy video depot eBaum's World, the site that brought you videos of guys catching fire, guys crashing their cars, guys slipping on ice, etc., etc. A message after the "eBaum sucks" movie claims that eBaum hosts copyrighted video and other content and puts its own logo on the stuff, and that if you're the rightful owner and you e-mail asking them to take it down, nothing happens. eBaum's World, for its part, has proud pages full of the various hate messages and cease-and-desist letters it's gotten, so reform is unlikely. But in the court of blog opinion, there is a very detectable groundswell of resentment. Writes DoubleViking: "Finally, someone else out there who agrees with what I’ve been saying over the last couple of years: 'Ebaum’s World is a sham and should be removed from the Internet.'" They're more fatalistic on this metafilter page, and this blogger may sum it all up with this closing sentence: "It's all petty, but there is money and much attention at stake." And the Internet wars rage on.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:51 AM

Just so nobody tries to link our government's response to one natural disaster with its potential response to another, be sure you click on today's no. 26 top news story, which details NASA's plan for destroying an Earth-bound asteroid. As many people know, the asteroid 99942 Apophis, which has an orbit that will twice swing it precariously close to our planet over the next 40 or so years, is the second such threat our people have faced since 1998 — for details check out the Jerry Bruckheimer documentary "Armageddon", in which a squad of roughnecks-with-hearts-of-gold, led by Bruce Willis, flew on a daring suicide misison to an asteroid hurtling towards earth, drilled a nuclear bomb deep into its core, and destroyed the thing. 99942 Apophis is not nearly as big as the asteroid from "Armageddon," so NASA's plan for destroying it isn't nearly as cool (it would involve striking it with a gigantic copper slug to break it apart) but that's not enough for some bloggers: "I'd just like to know how one deflects a giant rock?" RandomLinkage replies: "Do not panic, Bruce Willis is on standby." Good. He's got experience with this sort of thing.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:20 AM

For an eerie but fascinating venture into American history, click on our no. 28 link today — it's a hilarious imagining of how FOX News would've reported various salient events — and scroll down about three-quarters of the page. There you will see America's favorite bully, a Mr. William O'Reilly, doing one of his top-of-the-program "talking points memos." As you read it, see if you can't hear the man delivering that exact line, superciliously moralizing to a politician. Odds are you will hear his voice and precise inflection in your head. Other familiar faces pop up in the parody too, like the time Geraldo Rivera kneeled down in the sand and drew a diagram of Troy, showing where the Greeks would push their enormous horse and how they'd wait till nightfall before jumping out to sack the town. We predict this site will proliferate widely on the Web, because many bloggers tend to agree that FOX keeps its "lips to the buttocks of power."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:18 AM

We cracked wise the last time a similar story came within view of our blogstruments, but here it is again: tomorrow's world will be lived inside of computers, and we will all be powerful elves or something. The latest evidence? Some dude paid 100,000 real dollars for a virtual space station in the game Project Entropia, one of those online multiplayer dealies for people whose real lives are pathetic but who virtually are princesses and wizards and isn't that what matters and yadda yadda yadda. (It's our no. 40 news story today.) Forgive us for not buying into the utopian geekoid groupthink about these online multiplayer games... we'll take a nice first-person shooter anytime and thanks so much. Others are skeptical, too: "There's a whole world out there... that I don't understand... $100,000... why?" asks this blogger. Others, however, understand the decision: "Why spend so much on a piece of virtual property? Because it's just like owning the Mall of America -- it's a place to conduct business and make real-world cash," writes Collision Detection. Oh, you can make money in these games? Well that ain't so bad after all.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:45 AM

This Honorable Court has historically taken an absolutist stand on the question of free speech and the doctrine of fair use, poking fun at a certain Minnesota humorist for not getting a joke, marveling at the prescience of a certain satirical newspaper, and now standing by said newspaper as it takes on the Bush Administration. (This was our no. 5 link today.) When The Onion uses the Presidential Seal of the United States it does so inappropriately, claims the White House, because of all the people who view The Onion as a legitimate news source and who might be confused, y'know, by seeing the Seal on a story about President Bush telling 8.2 million Americans to go out and get a job. Bloggers aren't happy about this. That Libertarian Sandmonkey wrote: "You don't mess with the Onion and stay on my good side. Just ain't happening." UneasySilence sarcastically asks: " I can’t decide what’s money well spent… Tax dollars on the war, or tax dollars to foot the lawyer fees regarding The Onion’s use of the Seal." This court renders a verdict of: neither.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:01 AM

Last year toymaker Mattel was widely and rightly criticized when it broke up the one celebrity couple everyone could count on staying together: Barbie and Ken. Seems America's favorite impossibly-proportioned doll had a new boyfriend, a metrosexual Australian boogieboarder named Blaine, with his blond locks and hemp necklace and expensive Hollister cologne. Now Mattel has inflamed outrage again by introducing a new line of Barbie-themed clothes for adult women, on the thinking that bright-pink plastic dresses will be just the thing this fall. (It's our no. 10 news story today, and the feminist indignation is here.) This blogger, who blames the patriarchy, describes Barbie as "vile," while on this blog, sarcasm is the order of the day: "Well, what a refreshing thought; feminists have purchased Mattel and are marketing clothing actually made for women who don't have eating disorders or frequent flyer miles at the liposuction clinic. Oh, wait. That's not what they're doing." Meanwhile, this blogger cynically asks "Do the accessories include inflexible plastic, pink shoes as well? With impossibly high arches?" No word on that, nor is there any indication if there'll a giant pink Corvette, a Dream House (with elevator!), or the opportunity to marry a prince or be a corporate CEO.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:59 AM

Garrison Keillor, with his NPR shows, syndicated newspaper columns, book deals, etc., is a peculiar but nonetheless influential sort of media potentate — a lucrative brand composed of himself, some musical guests and breathing very heavily into microphones. He has been breathing heavily on the radio for 31 years, which you might think would make him a little more confident of his brand than he's being now: Our no. 19 link is to a Twin Cities community blog that Garrison is suing because it produced a hilarious parody T-shirt that says "A Prarie Ho Companion." Now, c'mon. That's pretty funny. We'd wear one, and we listen to The Writer's Almanac every morning, even though we think its piano theme is awfully precious. But there's more than his paradoxical humorlessness here: He's a big, stinkin' lib, which means righties are ticked that he uses his partially taxpayer-financed NPR pulpit to criticize conservatives: to wit, Powerline is calling him "a royal noodge." Similarly, Shot in the Dark is "expressing solidarity" with T-shirt creator, after all these years of Garrison using NPR for politicking. So that's the news from Lake Frivolous Litigation, where all the women are lawyers, the men are good-looking lawyers and the children are above-average lawyers.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:20 PM

Not since the subway bombings in London has the web been such a dour, depressing place — today BlogPulse is almost completely full of wrenching stories and photos about the bayou crisis. To be sure, they're important, as are frequent, generous visits to our no. 1 link today, but if you've been following the stories as closely as we have, you may be feeling a bit drained. So consider taking a mental respite from disaster and checking out The Onion, which has a newly redesigned site and newly opened archives, meaning now everybody can access stories as hysterical as this one. (America's Finest News Source also is represented a few times in our top news stories today.) We're reminded that even in trying times important social research continues, and that people still enjoy movies, and that few things can be more reliable and more understanding than an adorable pet. So, yes, things do look pretty rough, but in following the recovery efforts, try not to loose sight of all that's delicious in the world.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:23 AM

The incomparable smart-aleck review McSweeny's has given the Internet what it most loves in BlogPulse's no. 12 top link today — geek mockery that geeks themselves can enjoy. "Klingon Fairy Tales" are the sorts of instructional stories that the wrinkle-headed warriors of the Homeworld can impart to their wrinkle-headed children as they sit around the glowing fire-like warmth-emitting hearth emulator, polishing their bat'leths. One shows the importance of good interstellar navigation, for example: "Little Red Riding Hood Strays Into the Neutral Zone and Is Never Heard From Again, Although There Are Rumors ... Awful, Awful Rumors." Ohio blogger JJ remembers a line from "Star Trek VI" in his take on the tales: "The Grimm Fairy Tales are best read in the original Klingon." Neuralgraffiti gives in to the unifying power of Trek: "Irredeemably geeky, but funny nonethless." And that is a dish best served cold.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:00 AM

Women have always been some of nature's most mysterious animals, what with their fondness for "Dawson's Creek" and how they're nice to each other and and how they don't like to play air guitar for some reason, and more strangeness has been made manifest in BlogPulse's no. 22 link today. It's a 1966 board game called What Shall I Be and it progressively suggests that young girls consider careers as flight attendants, teachers, fashion models or nurses. You draw cards that tell you what skills will best serve each profession, such as "passed English" for teacher or "physical fitness" for ballet dancer, but also can encounter obstacles, such as "overweight," which can hurt your modeling career, or "slow thinker," — you're just a girl, after all — meaning you can't be a nurse. Bradley, the blogger who posted this game, writes: "And girls, don't even think about medical school or joining the track team. There are rules to every game, right?" So, wait, women don't like being misogynistically typecast into stereotypical gender roles? Weird. The fairer bloggers certainly don't like this game: "So I'm overweight, clumsy, I get too excited, AND I have poor posture and sloppy make-up. By the standards of this game, I should have starved to death by now," writes Berg. Another blogger doesn't see any reason she is disqualified for one job the game doesn't include: "Maybe we'll settle for being a blogger, instead," she writes. That's not "settling" — that's much cooler than any job on there.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:14 AM

During our college years, we used to wake up at 9 a.m. Saturday mornings and find our roommate playing the fantasy MMO "Everquest" on his computer, and then come home that night at 2 or 3 a.m. from a box social (ahem) and find him still there, casting imaginary spells and whatnot, surrounded by a pile of empty Combos bags and little plastic tubs of Hormel chili. That's the future for all of us as envisioned by BlogPulse's no. 11 top link, which foresees an impending era when the imaginary game world of buxom elves and stout but kind-hearted dwarves melds with the "old" world, the one of accountants and soul-killing banality. So many people are playing "Everquest," "World of Warcraft," and other games that let them be perpetually online, create new personas, make friends, fall in love, etc, that they'll prefer their exciting, pretend lives to their boring, actual ones. You'd think the people who'll be most enthused by this are those who have the weakest grip on reality right now: bloggers. But the world's ugly, angry, pajama-clad elite is cautious about The New Era. "The trouble is the amount of time and effort (not to mention money) that you put into just building your character to survive the melee, let alone be competitive in it," writes denning. "Both scary and thought provoking," says the hyperslug. All the predictions in the story about MMOs may not come true -- there's never going to be a "branch of government" for nerds whining about stupid stuff in some game -- but such virtual worlds are probably only going to grow bigger. And in our current climate, where every individual has her or his own reality anyway (Sheehan good; Sheehan bad) what difference does it make if new ones involve trolls and goblins?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 01:12 PM

You know what, let's take a break here a minute and think this thing through: BlogPulse's no. 32 link today is about a man on a Quixotic mission to buy a cup of coffee at every corporate-owned Starbucks in the world. That's almost 6,000 stores; he's been at it for about 10 years. We've been thinking about this awhile and we're torn by contrary impulses to lambaste the guy, who calls himself Winter (and only that, as he testily explains on his site) and to profess a sort of admiration for him. Con: His quest seems stupid because the whole purpose of a chain coffeeshop is that they're all effectively identical -- corporate food-service exists to homogenize and streamline products, customers' experiences, etc. Not only that, all that coffee will scour out his insides. Pro: He is on the road all the time, a shiftless, rootless wanderer who, as this blogger points out, can never succeed because new stores are opening faster than he can visit the existing ones. There's something appealingly American about that, isn't there? People don't seem to agree that this guy's worth Whitmanizing, though: "Seeing that many different Starbucks would have to be interesting-- I just have no idea why anyone would want to go out of their way to do it." Caffine-induced madness?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 01:26 PM

You read it right -- we bloggers, accustomed to dancing in obscurity on the very knife-edge of pop culture, are sending two emissaries to the msm. BlogPulse's no. 13 top link today is about a pair of identical blogging twins who are trying to marshall the blogosphere's support to get on "The Amazing Race" so they can make money to buy their disabled mother a wheelchair-equipped house. Naturally that's a good cause, but what's also going on here is that the world's enormous caste of unpaid chatterers wants to be represented on TV by somebody other than Jeff Jarvis. "Will it work?" asks the TV Squad, "I don't know, but I do think we need more geeks on TV... We blogger geeks have to stick together after all." ConsolationChamps concurs: "Reality TV needs more geeky bloggers!" And CBS already has had a taste of what happens when you cross the blogosphere. Surely they don't want the whole Internet angry at them again.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:30 PM

BlogPulse's third-most bursty person today is Amanda Griffiths, who many rock 'n roll listeners will thank someday for making an oft-dismissed art the subject of serious academic study: air guitar. In fact, she wants a PhD in it. But wait a moment: As Gadling sagely points out, nobody really knows why dudes are all about shredding, or pretending to, and girls are all, like whatever. Our BlogPulse audio-physiological research division suggests because female brains don't produce as much of a chemical called "Stratocastronin," women aren't seized by the intense need to pretend to play along with Jimmy Page's solo from the end of "Whole Lotta Love," or with Johnny Greenwood when "The Bends" comes on. (Our scientists blame a comparable deficiency of "Chicksolidaritrix" in male brains to explain why guys don't automatically belt out "Hollaback girl," as women do when they hear it.) Bloggers, especially professional academics, don't seem too amused: "The humanities: dead or just napping?" is the title of this post, and Rob and Linda seem to resent the ease with which Griffiths will become a doctor of philosophy: "Why did we all work our butts off to gain our degrees when all we had to do was play Stairway To Heaven on our right pants leg?" Because you were fooled into workin' for the man but she broke out and decided to ROCK!

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:07 AM

You're probably sick of the boss always coming in and giving you grief. Every day he stalks into your cubicle with an armload of folders and says "Hey-ya, champ, what say we get crackin' on this stuff, eh?" Then he waltzes out for his three-martini lunch date at the country club. (He'll probably just take the rest of the day off, anyway.) At BlogPulse, we know what you're thinking. Why not use those forms for a paper airplane! We've got just the one -- bloggers have made it today's 27th most popular link. This airplane is guaranteed to lighten your mood as it wafts effortlessly above the surly carpet walls below. Still not sure? Listen to this: "Building cool and functional paper airplanes was never my forte but this site makes it easy for anyone to make a great one," says one blogger. Others don't need a dour office environment as an excuse for paper-based aeronautical experimentation. "Just because it's cool when you make a paper airplane that can really fly," says iFractal. Ah, but if he comes back and catches you, you didn't get the idea from us. It was Walter in accounts receivable.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:54 AM

If George Lucas ever makes good on his pledge to do three more Star Wars sequels -- over the years he has said he originally envisioned a nine-movie cycle, then denied it -- he can help his screenplay by having a team translate it to Chinese and then back to English. That's what they did in this version of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, BlogPulse's undeniably hilarious no. 33 link. It's a series of screenshots from Episode III with the English subtitles of the Chinese version of the movie and it sounds like the classic Japanese stereo instructions we all remember from the '80s: At one point Obi-Wan turns to Yoda and says "He the my brothers in elephant is similar." If you've seen the movie, you know this Lewis Carrol free-form dialogue is infinitely better than what Lucas originally wrote. (Remember this? "Nooooooo!"). Bloggers agree, or at least are amused. "I do love [the] Chinese subs! Everything makes much more sense!" writes a poster on ladykarasu's blog. "Hysterical," writes this one. As for Lucas, he might quote the Chinese version of Anakin: "Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:47 AM