Paleontologist Battles One group of scientists digs up the bones; another group takes credit by naming the animal. The first group cries foul, over and over.

Thriller Of A Tube Ride A group of people get up without warning and perform Thriller on the London Tube.

Joel Likes TripIt.com Joel Spolsky gives the love to TripIt.com, a service that organizes your various itineraries from online travel companies and gives you a single itinerary.

Vienna And Wine: A Quick Guide Someone on a mutual mailing list sent this link to information about Viennese wine. I liked the string of terms at the end.

Marin Sun Farms' Flickr Feed See photos of the animals at Marin Sun Farms, before and after the slaughter.

Will You Spend Your Rebate? An op-ed piece in the New York Times says that people don't spend rebates because that makes the money seem like money they already spent. So will our "tax rebate" actually kick off spending? Probably not.

Spotting Craigslist Apartment Scams Grant Barrett, who seems to read the whole Internet every day, departs from his normal language posts to dissect a Craigslist apartment scam.

Persai Folks Dis Big Bloggers Persai, whose founders are best known for the recently-closed, super-snarky blog Uncov, decided "out of spite" to not invite certain A-List bloggers to their beta.

Bacon Vodka In the ever-more-ludicrous universe of adding bacon to unexpected elements, bacon vodka has got to be some sort of bright star.

LA Times On Slovenian Wines The LA Times takes a look at Slovenian wines.

What Happens When You Press Publish Wired provides a tough-to-navigate but still interesting look at the life of a blog post between pressing the Publish button and a reader seeing it.

Bay Area Luthiers The Bay Area has a thriving population of instrument makers. One of those quirky little professions that no one outside the field thinks about, while everyone in the field considers them crucial.

Play This Thing Reviews Fluxx Greg Costikyan reviews the fantastic Looney Labs game Fluxx.

Wine Vocabulary Dr. Debs writes a post that classifies the three types of wine vocabulary: jargon, dialect, and idiolect.

Trailer For African-American Lives 2 A new show that helps famous black celebrities learn about the accomplishments of their ancestors. Or, as Melissa calls it, "The Make-You-Cry Show."

Kadon's Hexacube Kadon Enterprises now produces a collector's set of all 166 hexacubes. Wow.

Who's Responsible For A Misordered Expensive Wine? Frank Bruni discusses a situation where a diner ordered a $2,000 bottle of wine by mistake. Whose fault is that?

The Great Molasses Flood Always a surreal read, the story of the tidal wave of molasses that swept through Boston in 1919, killing 21 and injuring 150.

An Aversion To "Moist" "Panties" Lanuage Log collects a wide range of commentary about people who cringe when they hear the word "moist." Some also dislike the word "panties," and others chime in with their shudder-inducing words.

What Are Griefers Like? Wired takes a look at the griefers who create havoc in virtual worlds.

WSJ Style and Substance 21.1 The latest issue of the Wall Street Journal's monthly newsletter about style and grammar.

MyTypewriter.com: For Typewriter Fetishists A site devoted to typewriters and the authors who still love them.

Scala: Functional Programming For Java For functional-programming fans like me, a Java-compliant functional language is an intriguing idea. Scala purports to deliver just that.

Project Wombat: Difficult Questions And Their Answers Project Wombat is a mailing list (3, actually) that tries to answer difficult questions

Clocky: An Alarm Clock That Runs And Hides One of last year's Ig Nobel prizes went to an alarm clock that rings and then runs and hides when you hit it, ensuring that you have to get up and find it.

Chat With Girl Genius's Foglios An upcoming interview with Phil and Kaja Foglio, perhaps best known for their Girl Genius comic.

WBW 42: Italian Reds In 7 Words. Can you describe an Italian red in just 7 words? Try it on February 13.

The Atlantic Is Free One of America's top magazines takes down its paywall and makes its content freely available.

Happy 35th, Roe v. Wade Thirty-five years ago today, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Roe v. Wade case.

WBW 41 Round-Up Posted Jack and Joanne post the round-up of WBW 41: Friuli Whites (which perhaps should have been titled "Friuli Plus Movia," given the number of entries from that producer).

Schneier On SmartWater Security expert Bruce Schneier (whose last name is very tough for me to type without error) discusses a study of SmartWater, a liquid imbued with a unique fingerprint that you can use to identify your belongings.

MLK Day: The Speech Lyndon Johnson's speech announcing the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fighting Content Scrapers Problogger offers a rare useful article. The subject: dealing with content scrapers.

The Anti Wine Snob Tim Hanni is a Master of Wine passionate about food and wine pairing. But he doesn't drink, and only rarely tastes. The Wall Street Journal profiles him.

Cow Sitting: When Farmers Go On Vacation What do dairy farmers do when they want to go on vacation? Hire a cow sitter.

Metaplace: Virtual Worlds Made Easy An article in Technology Review describes Metaplace, a product that allows users to create virtual worlds that act like home pages.

The MIT Mystery Hunt An article about the MIT Mystery Hunt, the ultimate puzzle challenge, which is running right now.

The Benefits Of Text-Editor Programming A JavaWorld article that explains that working outside of IDEs can be a liberating experience. As an emacs user, I certainly think so. The author raises great points beyond my standard "they make programmers stupid and lazy" defense.

Life In Lambda MOO A 1998 book about life in Lambda MOO, one of the first virtual worlds (and the brainchild of our friend Pavel), is now available for free download.

How Much Land Do You Need? A Cornell study measures diets and their "food prints," the amount of land required to sustain them. A low-meat (not non-meat) diet gives the best bang for the buck.

Is Chez Panisse Overrated? Michael Bauer defends Chez Panisse against those who claim that it's lost its top-tier status.

Okami For Wii: March 25 The much-ballyhooed PS2 game will see its Wii port arrive on March 25.

LOC Crowdsourcing Photo Tagging The Library of Congress is using Flickr to post old photos from its archive, enlisting Internet users to tag and discuss the pics.

Uncov Fails Amy Über-snarky Ted at uncov says that an AJAX-based collaborative text editor is one of the worst possible ideas.

Soda Bottle = Crib Sheet [video] This video shows a clever technique for bringing a crib sheet into a test: On a bottle of Coke.

Beautiful Lyon...In Dubai Those crazy kids in Dubai are replicating the city of Lyon on a 700-acre plot of land. Will they set up a clone of Burgundy nearby for authenticity?

XML Basics A good reminder about XML fundamentals

What Cell Phone Bars Mean An explanation of what cell phone signal bars mean, and how 4 bars doesn't necessarily mean you'll have a great call.

The Origins Of "Restaurant" An explanation of the origins of the word "restaurant."

Threesome: A Puzzle Game My friend Oskar, one of the world's best puzzle designers has a new "maze-with-rules" Flash game. Get your three dots to the three X's on the other side of the board.

Curt The Skier One of our favorite East Bay chefs talks about skiing, one of his other favorite pursuits.

10 Caramel Tips David Lebovitz offers 10 caramel tips

Wireless Wii Nunchuk CNET's CES gaming award goes to a wireless Wii nunchuk. I totally want one.

Port At The Airport Mark Morford forgets that he's packed a 16-year-old bottle of Port in his carry-on, and has to drink it before his flight.

Randomness And Menu For Hope Pim and I were surprised to see lots of "more than one prize" winners in the Menu For Hope raffles, so I wrote a post, backed up by data I generated from a simple program, to show how clustering is completely expected.

The Future Of Local Advertising User-generated content -- i.e., reviews -- will drive more local advertising, say some analysts. Expect more interaction between business and reviewers and more blurriness between ads and editorials.

3D Printing For Candy Cross a 3D Printer with a candy machine, and you get the next evolution in yummy impossible objects.

Menu For Hope 4 Results The winners of this year's Menu For Hope raffle, at last!

Running As A Videogame Using the Nike+ system as a videogame.

Security Experts With Open Wireless? Bruce Schneier, the famous security expert, maintains an open wireless network at his house.

GTD And Cooking LifeHacker looks at ways to make cooking more efficient. Some will be obvious, some less so.

How The iPhone Happened Wired provides a lightweight look at the story of the iPhone.

Happy Anniversary, Meriko Today marks the anniversary of the iPhone's announcement, so a big hurrah to our friend meriko, a key person on the team that got it to MacWorld.

Darth Vader And Yoda In Soul Calibur IV Could it be? Fight as Darth Vader or Yoda in Soul Calibur IV. Too bad it's not for the Wii.

Simulating Robots In Java IBM DeveloperWorks article about using Simbad, a robot-simulation library for Java

LEGO Of Gadgets Plug-and-play gadget modules you can snap together to build anything you want (so says the marketing copy).

The Origin Of Buzzwords Oxford University Press looks at the origins of buzzwords.

VG Publishers Punish Pubs With Bad Reviews EGM's editor-in-chief Dan Hsu reveals that some video game publishers will punish sites and magazines that give bad reviews. And do you think other publisher/reviewer industries are far behind?

SideSwipe Kitchen-Aid Paddle A paddle for Kitchen-Aids that scrapes down the side of the bowl as it turns.

$50 Trashcan Smoker Build an electric smoker from a trashcan for about $50.

Sean Makes Hot Chocolate My friend Sean puts his full-steam gourmet sensibility to use with a cup of hot chocolate.

Veteran Journalist On Media Changes Wall Street Journalist Paul Steiger gives a veteran's view of the state of Old Media.

Elizabeth David's Cookbook Picks What cookbooks did Elizabeth David like? Cooked Books has the answer.

What J-School Should Teach Steve Borriss suggests curricula for journalism school, in the face of media changes.

100 Things We Didn't Know In 2007 The BBC's annual list of facts that they learned this year. Curiously, we were just wondering about the origins of jaywalking.

Banish These Words! A bunch of word nuts nominate 2008's words to banish from the English language. (And I imagine the language will continue to ignore them.)

Harold McGee On Heat Food scientist extraordinaire Harold McGee explains heat.

Volunteering = Path To Self-Respect Violent Acres says stop whining about finding yourself and start volunteering for causes you care about.

Best Of Bootie 2007 The year's best song mashups.

Ad-Free Blogs A movement to declare your blog an ad-free zone.