I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams...

This music video pushes a lot of the right buttons for me: black and white animation, mesh graphics, and a Steve Reich inspired remix of David Bowie's Love is Lost. (Oh, and the kissy kissy.) Plus, Trey Gunn's Security Project performs Peter Gabriel's music.

Just One Book - great people choose one book for you to read.

Know Thyself

• Do you know which side of your brain is more dominant? Here's a quick quiz to find out. My halves were virtually equal, 47-53. 
• Throw your brain out the window and take Dr. Phil's test. I scored the same as Oprah. (Draw your own conclusions.)
• Don't fear alone time and 12 other things mentally strong people don't do.

Interactive state to state migration

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Map the U.S. by income down to the zip code.

Virtual drum set.

Let's Take a Tour

• Take 10 minutes and learn the history of English (language, not the people).
• Tour interactively 100 years of rock and roll.
• Explore the evolution of the web.

The winners of the 2013 Information is Beautiful Awards have been announced and there's plenty of good stuff to lose yourself in. This graphic in particular showing found meteorites I thought was particularly attractive.

Da Gubmint

• Just say HELL NO to cell phone calls on airplanes. I once had to listen to a young woman talk on her phone from landing to the gate and I felt like Robert Hays' seatmates from Airplane! (watch beginning at 0:38).
• Daylight savings time needs to end. Now.
• A Texas A&M law professor wants to repeal the 2nd amendment and leave gun control up to the states. First, it's surprising to hear this from TAMU faculty. Second, if we're really interested in saving lives and overall societal cost we should repeal the 21st amendment (look it up). Third, I wonder what other pesky constitutional rights need to be gerrymandered into submission?

Monty Python to reunite for a stage show?

A whole bunch of maps. You don't know Africa. (And neither do I. 20 countries found in slightly under 4 minutes.)

Better late than never: take this WKRP Thanksgiving quiz.

Nice photo of downtown Fort Worth by Greg Brown.

It's programming time!

• SciPy: scientific computing tools for Python
• J: The evolved APL language. (Thank god they don't use the original, non-standard characters.)
• Program a donut.
• It never works the first time and other things you wish someone had told you when you started programming.
• A tutorial on pointers and arrays in C
• No project is ever simple and 20 lessons learned in 20 years of programming.
• Source code is for the programmer not the computer and 6 other secrets of successful programmers.

The bourbon family tree

Moving Pictures

• Take time for this 5-minute interview with Benoit Mandelbrot, filmed 19 days before his death.
• Some sort of video magic was used to created this stabilized, panoramic, HD, multi-input version of  the Zapruder film.
• Nearly 13,000 hand-painted aquarelles make up this 35 minute fan tribute to Blade Runner.

How many originals of the Gettysburg Address still exist? Five.

Engineering schools fail to teach empathy? That's because they're too busy teaching ethics. Both of which are things the students should've learned at home before their parents shipped them off to become everyone else's problem.
 

Extruding "paste" for toilet testing.

Sometimes this is the only good thing that happens all day.

What has science been up to lately?

• Science invented urine powered robots.
• Science has devised a voluntary testing programming for toilets called Maximum Performance.

What has art been up to? Not much.

• How to draw butts.

Set phasers to stunning. I LOLd way too long over this.

This is why I'm confused:

• cache monet
• what does your name say about your penis?
• exploding sperm whale
• Twinkle Twinkle

...to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. ~Rene Descartes