Plurib.us

For Kierkegaard nerds, a wonderful new resource has appeared, with commentary on most works and English translations of some.  Seriously, my man S.K. punches lesser philosopher-theologians in the face:

Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. Adam was bored because he was alone; therefore Eve was created. Since that moment, boredom entered the world and grew in great quantity in exact proportion to the growth of population....

sorenkierkegaard.org/comment.htm

Bill Gates announces he's leaving his day-to-day role at Microsoft, and practically simultaneously MS releases an Office plug-in that lets you easily label documents with Creative Commons liscenses (supposedly).
tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=10...

Now it seems they're doing an about-face on Open Document compatibility, because of pressures from governments.  Holy cow!  This is something MS explicitly stated it would never do.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technolog...
theregister.co.uk/2006/07/06/mic...

Whatever you used to fear, start fearing this more.
plurib.us/1shot/2006-06-...

Thank you, Google images & The GIMP.

Neato infrared outdoor photos
pbase.com/jeffreyk/infra...

This is obviously popular enough that everyone has already seen it the day it came out, but just in case, everyone has to look at the [very new] Transformers movie trailer.

transformersmovie.com/
(via unicron.com/news/view.php?... tee hee!)

Put your camera down and experience the moment, for one day.  2006-07-17.  (Interesting, but there are a lot of days that I do this.  Perhaps the effect would be more potent when traveling?)
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technolog...

Unrelated things:

Scammer scam artist scams scammers to do ridiculous things:
419eater.com/html/john_boko...
419eater.com/html/okorie.ht...

Double vortex on Venus's southern pole is clearly imaged:
spaceref.com/news/viewpr.ht...

Sleater-Kinney is breaking up!?
portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2006/...

Do you enjoy old-skool rock-n-roll music videos?

What if all the music were replaced by awful MIDI simulacra?

And what if all the video were replaced by green ASCII text?

If your answers to these three questions were "Yes!" "Huh?" and "Ohmigod," then you're ready to look at this webpage.
projects.c505.com/projects/ascii...
(You'll need to have Quicktime installed.)
-----
Another similar project by the same group involves digitizing Pres. Bush's State of the Union addresses--his voice is recognizably his, but it's roboticized in an odd way.
turbulence.org/spotlight/ASCI...
(The first several minutes of each are digitized applause--wait it out.  It's worth it.)

Files Are Not for Sharing, an illustrated instructional story for kids.

themorningnews.org/archives/spoof...

"That's what file sharing is like: taking a kitty away from a kitty."

Visit the North Pole from the comfort of your own home, with North Pole webcam.
arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.htm...

The dark side of Neptune, from 1989.
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060618....

This is beautiful.  (Piano-notes as bouncing shapes, via metafilter.)

grotrian.de/spiel/e/info.h...

Regular readers of the Weekly World News are not well-informed.  However, they are simultaneously poorly- and awesomely-informed:
weeklyworldnews.com/

Sample articles:
weeklyworldnews.com/features/relig...
weeklyworldnews.com/features/scien...

This has probably been all over by now, but here's a 5yo kid playing Dance Dance Revolution like he was calling the shots.  It occurs to me that in a lot of games, it's only possible to win if you're not too worried about winning.  This kid barely seems to notice how well he is playing.

youtube.com/watch?v=oetVlh...

As elementary-school science students know, two potatoes can be used to make a wussy battery.

This man took 500 pounds of potatoes and powered a stereo in the back of a truck:
latteier.com/potato/

Also, he built a weird walking-robot which attaches to the user and carries heavy loads:
latteier.com/prostheticass/

Spirit finds another meteorite hanging around on Mars.
spaceref.com/news/viewsr.ht...

"God fails to save idiot in lion enclosure", and other atrocities of nature, not suitable for print:
theregister.co.uk/2006/06/11/rzs...

Keep up on the latest computer jargon in this article.  (I don't get a lot of these, but the rest are funny enough to make up for it.)

regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/06/07/new...

June 9, 2006: The World Cup begins today!

fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/w/schedu...

The Dutch team deserves your support.  Check out their logo:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Net...

(Compare it to France's:)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fra...

Here's a brief bit of Dutch team history:
jadransport.org/articles/2433....

A team of dreamers, playing the Beautiful Game.  If you don't support the Dutch, you have no soul.

Let's play "find the page content amidst the ads."
physorg.com/news68388293.h...

Surprisingly customizable animated charts of world development.  I'm a sucker for data, and there is a lot of data here.  (Also, still trying to figure out what part Google plays in this.)
tools.google.com/gapminder/

Familiar, but important words on economics, and the Common Good.  Also, publicknowledge redesigned their site.  Let's see if its for the better.

publicknowledge.org/node/407
publicknowledge.org/

So, this site has been around forever:
thebestpageintheuniverse.net/
(warning: language)

The guy hates everything except himself, including kids' art:
thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=irule

Now, he has a book out, "The Alphabet of Manliness":
amazon.com/gp/product/080...

All I know is that someday, I will own this T-shirt:
theworstpageintheuniverse.com/images/civil_b...

This is brilliant.  Teens are using a ring tone that's out of the hearing frequency of adults, leaving their phones on in class so that everyone can hear but the teacher.  (It's going to be a kids vs. adults arms race!)

24dash.com/content/news/v...
(Warning: awkward paragraph structure)

Cool critique of simple user interface, namely Google's simple user interface.  I'm not sure what this means to me, but I think I identify with it.
blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-0...

Al Gore is promoting a new documentary about Global Warming, _An Inconvenient Truth_
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertain...

Oat Bran lowers cholesterol, in studies.  And so I lost a bet for $0 that no one actually accepted.  However, many bran muffins "actually contain very little bran."
americanheart.org/presenter.jhtm...
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h...

Furthermore, it is my pleasure to report that the Blueberry Muffin is the official muffin of the state of Minnesota.
leg.state.mn.us/leg/symbols.as...

NASA & company released 2 startlingly cool movies based on all the data sent back by the Huygen probe that landed on Titan last year.
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-rel...

More recently, Cassini took a large radar image of the landing site and surrounding area, revealing a surface covered with dunes.
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/ima...

Google Trends is a fun new toy: search for a term, and it gives you a graph of that term's popularity over the past 2 years. It also gives you a listing of the top geographical origins for that search. 

You can also combine several terms to see how they compare.  To demonstrate, here's a visualization of the ongoing battle between "Rock" and "Music".

google.com/trends?q=rock%...

You'll notice that Rock crushes Music as easily as it crushes scissors.  Also, this combination ranks Minneapolis in the top 10 cities worldwide, a result for which plurib.us readers are no doubt responsible.

[EDIT] As Brian points out, the graph demonstrates Rock getting thoroughly walloped by Music.  Not only that, but Minneapolis has been knocked off the Top-10 list.  Something here is not my strong suit: accuracy? timeliness?  In any case, I'm led to believe that Google Trends exists only to mock me.

The entire contents of the Superman #1 from 1938 -- a fun read.

dixi.blogter.com/?post_id=45670