Rough Drafts

Is the Moon made of Swiss cheese? Google has the answer (just zoom in all the way).

James Howard Kunstler takes a sober, pessimistic look at what happens when cheap oil goes away — in Rolling Stone, of all places. America is in a special predicament due to a set of unfortunate choices we made as a society in the twentieth century. Perhaps the worst was to let our towns and cities [

I got a new cell phone today — the amazingly badass black Razr. Since Cingular follows the usual cell phone industry practice of offering the worst deals to their loyal customers, I didn’t renew my contract with them — we found a new-customer deal that was far, far better. As a result, I’ve got a […

How to make chai in a typical office. Short version: Put teabag and sugar in a mug, fill mug halfway with water, microwave on high for 45 seconds. Let it steep for a minute, then add milk until the cup is 3/4 full and microwave another 15 seconds. The author says spiced chai is for […]

WMMT in Whitesburg, Kentucky, broadcasts a good mix of country, bluegrass, and old-time banjo music from the heart of Appalachia. They’ve got a live Internet stream you can listen to right now. And they’re looking for money to replace decrepit transmitters and repeaters, so they can stay on the air.

Say you’re a Dadaist poet, but you’re tired of slicing up ribbons of newspaper to make your random poetry. You might stop by this web page where the computer can do the cut-ups for you, based on any text of your choosing. There are lots of variants on the cut- up machine, as well as […]

If you are vegetarian, can you eat muscle tissue that’s been grown in a laboratory? Burgers from a lab? US study says it’s possible

I read Thomas Friedman’s early book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, when I was trying to get a handle on what people meant by “globalization.” I’d been told it was one of the pithiest, easiest to understand introductions to the topic available. Although Friedman’s columns are occasionally insightful

Google SMS is a handy tool — just send your query as an SMS message to 46645 (“GOOGL” on the phone keypad), and within a few seconds you’ll get an SMS or two with the answer. I tested this a few months ago and found it worked pretty well for queries like “price 20GB ipod,” […]

Want to learn how to frail the old banjo? Patrick Costello wrote a couple of books on the topic last year, then gave away his books for free online. (You can still buy them on Amazon, though: just click on the book cover to the left.) Now he and his dad are giving away free […]

How quickly can you scan a grid of 20 seemingly unrelated images and guess the word used on Google’s image search that produced those pictures? Good fun! Guess the Google

This video game installation, currently playable only in Finland, is like Dance Dance Revolution — except it’s a kung fu fighting game, and you make kung-fu fighting moves on a mat to control your on-screen character.