My favorite surplus catalogs are also online: American Science and Surplus and IMEX.

Instead of research on Peeps, Peeps do research.

Yahoo was all hacked this morning, so when you looked for the main US page, up came a page for a web security company. Unless it was a joke (hard to figure out when these things are, since I apparently have a very different sense of humor than your run-of-the-mill script kiddie or hackin’ geezer), why would this be a good way to promote your company? Sure, you get a lot of eyes on your page, but you also are immediately associated with the very jerks you’re looking to protect people from.

This is Adbuster’s TV Turnoff Week (no, I won’t link to them, find it yourself). I, as you might suspect, disapprove of TV Turnoff Week. I think that most people have the needed critical faculties to know that TV is pretend and have the digits needed to turn almost any appliance on and off at will. Forced Perspective now challenges you to watch a program that you wouldn’t normally watch and rent a stack of movies you’ve been meaning to see.

And if we start taking lifestyle direction from people in British Columbia, we will all be dead from sunblock poisoning and stupid car accidents within a month.

Have you ever wanted to be a hardy Canadian explorer/fur trader or just look like one? Me neither. But just in case…

A list of what Google employees are being served while they toil away. I don’t actually work 60+ hours a week, but could someone please cook me super-nice meals and deliver them to me at work? I think I really do deserve it.

Worth downloading if only to see what informative uses Flash can be put to, a diagram of retractable urinals. Or browse the Grauniad’s other informative and sometimes goofy Interactive Guides.

Harry Houdini not only hated spiritualists, he also had magnificent taste in stationery.

(Later note: I can’t make this stupid link work. Try searching here for “houdini letterhead” and see all of the ones he had- I had chosen to highlight the most colorful one.)

I really like the American Memory exhibit “Architecture and Interior Design for the 20th Century: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner“. Because the photographs, taken between 1935 and 1955, are intended only to illustrate architectural form and detail they are mostly empty of people. The result is a wonderful assortment of empty landscapes. I’ve just started reading a book on everyday life in 18th century Japan, the everyday life of the people who weren’t rulers, warriors or landlords. They didn’t leave behind any works of literature or even diaries (most couldn’t write), they just went about their lives, leaving behind broken pottery, worn tools, and empty buildings. What will you leave behind?

Welcome, all visitors from yoyology.com and howdy to fellow librarian Karl! Since the library world is small and incestuous, you must all promise not to get me fired for my various glib comments! If you break your promise, may you never again score free stuff from the vendor booths at library conferences. (Speaking of which, I got a little toy VW Beetle from BigChalk once, which has nothing at all to do with how impressed I am [very] with the insane variety of full text sources in their eLibrary product. I mean, Beef magazine? How cool!)