When asked about their favorite shampoo...

Are you afraid to relax? Yes, afraid of relaxation. If so, you're not alone. Seems psychologists at the University of Cincinnati have developed something called the Relaxation Sensitivity Index that explains why relaxation can make some people anxious including physical, cognitive, and social components. Imagine not liking a massage. Imagine relaxation being equated to loss of control. Imagine fearing that relaxation is a sign of laziness. Believe it or not, there is also something called fear of arousal which may be related.

Last week it was the history of popular music infographic/poster. This week it's the history of film: 2,000 films, 20 genres, 100 years. The earliest (first) sci-fi film mentioned is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Mark Rothko's No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue) was sold at auction for $75 million, the second highest amount ever paid for one of his paintings at auction. The painting had local ties, having been consigned by Fort Worth oil heiress Anne Marion.

It's often curious how certain things come to pass. It was "avant-garde synthpop" band Art of Noise's 1999 album The Seduction of Claude Debussy that asked what it was like musically to be on the verge of a new century and what we might learn from Debussy who radically changed the course of music at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then I've become quite a fan of Debussy's work. In this WSJ article about Debussy, we read about how he was able to mix gorgeous harmonies and intricate, almost mathematical, form.

You can't be too careful. Before you go swimming use the global shark tracker to find out whether any of these nasty critters are in the water near you.

Not exactly craft beer, but fine examples of craft beer labels.

The Onion's DEHUMANIZER is just a fun tool for turning any image into old-school ASCII art. But to double your fun, check out this particular image. (It's hard not to stare at the animation of the original image, isn't it? Also, in addition to being sophomoric this image may also be categorized as misogynistic in a phallic, Fellini-esque sort of way. But, trust me, I'm not neurotic enough to get past sophomoric.)

At first, when I read that I could control Romo with my smartphone I thought "Great, I can keep him from throwing those stupid chuck-and-duck interceptions." As it turns out, however, Romo is a robot for your smartphone. (Unfortunately, it doesn't appear it'll ship in time for Xmas.)

Please enjoy this 2D, hand drawn, black and white, abstract music animation: Hide.

Musician Peter Gabriel shares this list of TED Talks that he believes will stand the test of time and Brian Eno talks about economics and other stuff. (You can listen to Terry Riley's In C here.)

Finally. Teh interwebs are dominated by cats. Now there's puppy text.

The new Chinese stealth fighter, the J-21, had its first flight.

Piss. Powered. Advertising.

All planets do not orbit stars. Some are just zipping through space. Like rogue planet CFBDSIR2149-0403. Regarding those stars, check out 100,000 Stars, an interactive way to browse the cosmos.

Photographer Tristan Hoare shows us physicists' blackboards in his series Momentum and proves to me that whiteboards will never have this level of depth and richness and humanity. Makes me want to put a blackboard in my office tomorrow. (Too bad I don't have anything nearly as intelligent as quantum mechanics to write on it.)

If you enjoy Clients from Hell or Not Always Right (which is a bit of masochism because I'm looking to find things I've said), you'll get a kick out of this creative team who posterized their clients' most boneheaded suggestion. Sharp Suits creates art from things like "Irish people can't read italics" and "Can you make the logo bigger."

Here's a great blog post from former Space Shuttle flight director and program manager Wayne Hale about the perils of risk management.

A fully illustrated how-to guide for creating an H.R. Giger (i.e. Alien) inspired mouse.

Yet another essay lamenting the rise of e-books. [Note: TL;DR] Suffice it to say, reading an e-book is to reading a real book as viewing online pr0n is to having le sexy time with a real live woman.

The main problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred (unattributed and improperly quoted). Here are 10 air disasters caused by poor communication. On a less depressing note, here are 11 things you might not know about the USAF beginning with the fact that their weathermen are tough guys.

Maps, maps, and election maps. Forget that blue state, red state brain dead visualization. (Acreage doesn't vote.) Check out this purplish map or this one distorted by population.Or just say screw it all and use NUKEMAP to drop a bomb somewhere. (Interestingly, I'm outside the radiation radius for a 1 MT explosion over Fort Worth.)

NFL team logos reimagined by Matt McInerney. Can you guess which team this is? He hasn't done all the teams yet so keep on eye on his page.

Now more NFL design goodness, but this time with real data. The NFL Spider is a way to visualize any team's rushing offense.

How good are you with colors? No, I'm not talking about being able to identify fuchsia. Just try the color matching game. 

I would've included this higher in the post but it's so genius that you never would've gotten past it (if you're like me). Enter this portal to The Useless Web.

And I leave you with something that's hard to unsee - The Salmon of Capistrano.

...the top response from women was "How the hell did you get in here?"