Michael Moore is planning his new film, Fahrenheit 911. Apparently Bowling for Columbine made wads of cash, so he’s had no problem continuing his mission of complaining for a better America.

An extremely cool view of a camel, from Japan, in 1862. Turns out they just love daikon!

“Life is a matter of passing the time enjoyably. There may be other things in life, but I’ve been too busy passing my time enjoyably to think very deeply about them.”

Peter Cook, The Guardian, January 1994

Samuel Pepys’s (pronounced “Marshmallow Peeps”) diary is online now, a day at a time. American Memory has the life stories of ordinary people available, too, drawn from the Federal Writer’s Project. The only drawback is that an effort to present them as they really are makes some of them harder to read (every crossed out word is written out and bracketed with the information that it was crossed out.) Here’s one that is pretty illegible that I’ve streamlined. Original transcription is here. Keeping in mind that retaining dialect in transcription wasn’t always out of style.

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A helpful guy from one of my satellite TV mailing lists has compiled a list of possible new shows that might be hitting your screen soon.

The Economist gives a level-headed (as always) look at the effect the current war will probably have on international relations. Another article gives some history of the Kurdish people and the political ramifications for them of the conflict. Yes, it helps to know about the Ottoman empire.

In today’s cynical bastard department, we have the sadly unsurprising “news” that many pro-war rallies around the country have been organized by ClearChannel radio stations. Paul Krugman outlines the Bush-ClearChannel history.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database is back, update your bookmarks!

University of Toronto researchers have constructed a “metamaterial” lens, with properties that appear to confound traditional physics. I read a couple years ago about somebody having constructed a material with a negative index of refraction, and this appears to be more of the same. Freaky shit.

After becoming irritated by the number of bloggers linking to New York Times and Washington Post articles, which require cookie configurations I’m unwilling to allow on my browser, I’ve found a workaround: Google News surfs those papers, and if you can figure out a good search string from the citation you have, you can get to the articles. The NYT Google results come back with a link you can use anywhere, but the WP apparently wants your “referrer” header to be from Google. Of course, once Google News becomes a subscription service I’m screwed again.