Your April Fools' Joke Sucks A classic post from Anil Dash argues that no matter how funny you think your April Fools' joke is, it's probably not.

Shuna's Butterscotch Pastry chef and blogger Shuna Lydon finally reveals the secret to her stunning butterscotch.

GraphJam Gives Humor To Charts The I Can Has Cheezburger? team responsible for the LOLcats phenomenon unveils their next project: the world around rendered in charts.

Brown Butter Puree Alex and Aki at Ideas In Food find an intriguing use for the solids left in the pot of brown butter: Make it into a puree that itself becomes an ingredient.

Words To Avoid In Book Reviews Or writing in general.

ReadyMech: Cute Papercraft Figures An arty collection of figures designed to be printed on and made from an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper.

Penny Arcade On Organizing Social Events The Penny Arcade duo shows the world the effective way to coordinate complicated schedules for a night of social board-gaming.

Software That Does Nothing Wins 16 Awards If you were to take a text file with one sentence in it, make it an EXE, and submit it to awards panels, how many awards do you think it would net? 16, in this case.

Bike Baskets For Market Bounty Bike-mounted baskets well suited for carrying farmers' market produce home.

Tagging Of Pacific Predators Want to watch how tagged marine predators make their way around the world? TOPP captures the data onto maps and into animations for your viewing pleasure.

2008 Wine Blog Awards Finalists

Magnetic: Slick Andrea Gilbert Puzzle Tilt the board and try to get all the colors glommed together. Andrea Gilbert's a great puzzle designer, and this is a nice example of her work.

Deaf Bilingual Coalition The blog of an organization focusing on deaf rights and deaf culture.

Absurd Entries In The OED Ammon Shea takes a look at absurd entries in the OED.

Burst: Cool Schweppes Ad This slick ad from Schweppes makes one wonder why everyone can't produce ads I want to watch.

Words That Mean Their Opposites The Grammarphobia blog collects a few words that have two opposing meanings, cleave being the most famous example.

Penguin Tells Stories With Google Maps Penguin Books has created a scrolling story that uses Google Maps as a delivery mechanism. (The Perplex City team did the application, so keep an eye out for ARG elements.)

WBW 44: French Francs Gary Vaynerchuk is hosting WBW 44, but rather than link to his video, I'm linking to Alder's description.

BSG Season 4 Is Coming! Wired covers a press event about BSG Season 4. Big news: Watch it live on SciFi.com on April 4.

Guess The Song From Alphabetized Lyrics The Morning News posts a quiz that asks you to identify the classic rock songs from their lyrics. The catch: the lyrics' words are alphabetized and written just once.

The Online Encyclopedia Of Integer Sequences A useful database of established integer sequences.

Which Industrial Companies Own Which Small Organics? A handy chart showing all the ways that small, organic producers are connected to large, industrial producers.

Sci-Fi Story In Forum Form What would the conversation look like if time travelers used a forum for communication?

A Zork In The Road Jennifer Hess finds a Zork closure on her wine bottle.

RIP Arthur C. Clarke Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke has passed away.

Ode To Gary Gygax Is there a better ode to the late Gary Gygax than this one? I don't think so.

Pandemic Review Play This Thing reviews a new cooperative board game called Pandemic, where players struggle to save the world from four ravaging diseases.

The Case For Copy Editing Bill Walsh looks at the value that copy editors add to a newspaper.

Sonoma Wine Library Tom Wark describes the Sonoma Wine Library, a specialized resource for wine researchers.

One Deer In Google Earth A bit of techno-hackery transforms the radio transmissions from a tagged deer into a Google Earth file, so you can see him wander around.

Annie Taylor: First Person To Survive A Niagara Barrel Ride The Wikipedia page for Annie Edson Taylor, who in 1901 became the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Spy Hunter Pontiac Ad Pontiac invokes the classic arcade game Spy Hunter for its latest ad campaign.

Make Your Backyard A Nature Sanctuary You can set up your backyard as an official wildlife sanctuary.

Puzzles Meet MMOs The inventors of hit game Puzzle Quest have created an MMO where you solve puzzles to get gold.

WBW 43 Round-Up Joel has posted the round-up of "comfort wines" covered for WBW 43.

The Case For Full Disclosure Time's James Poniewozik argues that journalists should be clear about their political preferences.

The Lost Ring ARG The 2008 Olympics has its own ARG.

National Grape Registry The definitive database for grape types.

Grape Research Library UC Davis's Grape Registry, a useful tool for researchers.

An Old Profile Of Ed Behr I stumbled upon this profile of Ed Behr from 1990. It's a fun read, because even 20 years ago, he's very much the same.

Chefs' Blogs Regina Schrambling looks at the world of blogs written by chefs.

How To Be Blogger-Friendly Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing blogger, gives advice to companies and organizations about how to make their pages blogger-friendly and linkworthy.

Advice From Horace For Modern Writers John McIntyre gives some advice to writers from the wisdom of Horace.

Cooking Tripe The Chronicle's Janet Fletcher Dicusses The Lure Of Tripe

How To Deal With A Broken CFL Everyone touts the environmental advantages of compact fluorescent bulbs (twisty bulbs) but often fails to point out that they contain mercury. Not Martha provides a guide for cleaning up a broken bulb which, thankfully, does not include a hazmat team.

Candied Bacon Ice Cream David Lebovitz makes "bacon and eggs" as candied bacon ice cream.

Food Court Musical Improv Everywhere stages an impromptu musical in a food court, much to the surprise of the unsuspecting patrons.

Horseradish-Smell Smoke Alarm For Deaf People A new smoke alarm sprays horseradish scent around the room, waking up virtually every test subject, including deaf people.

Ritz Crackers Ice Cream Ideas In Food makes ice cream flavored with Ritz Crackers. If salted caramel is good, why not Ritz crackers?

The Return Of The Expert? Is expert knowledge making a comeback against the tides of amateurs? Newsweek thinks so.

You Be The Space Invaders A forthcoming game for the Wii will allow you to control the iconic aliens from Space Invaders, destroying cities and dodging the upward fire of ground-based cannons.

Hank Finds Morels Hank at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook has found the perfect morel hunting ground: his front yard.

Can Pro Publica Work? Scott Rosenberg wonders if Pro Publica, a non-profit set up to fund investigative journalism, can succeed.

Grammar Girl On Advanced Who/Whom Grammar Girl answers a question of mine about an advanced case of who/whom confusion.

Excel As A 3D Graphics Engine An Eastern European programmer figures out how to use Excel as a 3D modeling engine. Cute trick.

Scientists Catch A Failing Star Scientists managed to catch a star going supernova almost from the very start of the process, allowing them to monitor the entire explosion.

Crackery Tableware Got some cracked china? Don't toss it; use the crack in the design and re-sell it!

Airborne Grounded The company that makes cold-prevention medicine Airborne revealed that they never did the clinical trials they said they did, and they'll now reimburse you for Airborne purchases.

Whence Grammar Prescriptivism? John McIntyre, copy editor for the Baltimore Sun, examines the history of uptight grammar geeks who correct all those around them.

John And Dottie Dis NYC Tasting Menus Wall Street Journal wine couple John and Dottie try out a few NYC tasting menus and come away disappointed.

Search UN's Statistics The UN has collected extensive statistics from its members over the last 60 years and stored them in a variety of inaccessible databases. Now you can search across all those databases from your computer.

Its National Grammar Day Grammar prescriptivists have put forth March 4 as National Grammar Day, so go forth and place or remove apostrophes and commas as needed.

Kevin Reviews AoE Kevin Weeks writes a review of uber-food magazine The Art of Eating for the online magazine Spot-On

DST Wastes Energy An article in the Wall Street Journal points to a recent study that demonstrates conclusively that Daylight Savings Time wastes more energy than it saves.

Zebra Mussels Help Lake Ontario Salmon The zebra mussel is considered an invasive pest in most places, but this NPR report tells how the population in Lake Ontario actually helps produce fatter salmon.

Law And Politics In BSG Slashdot has a post that links to multiple sources for an interview with BattleStar Galactica's creators about law and politics in the critically acclaimed TV show.

Nicholson Baker About Wikipedia One of my favorite authors writes about the charms of Wikipedia.

Hachette Goes Paperless, Sort Of Want to submit a manuscript to publisher Hachette? Don't bother with nice paper; the company wants agents to submit manuscripts electronically so that editors can download them to their eBook readers.

The Math Of Credit Card Fraud A paper looking at how hotel keys were used to steal credit card info.

The Psychologist And The Netflix Prize A retired operations engineer has leaped ahead of hardcore math teams on the leaderboard for the Netflix Prize, a $1 million reward for the person or team who can improve recommendations by 10 percent.

ACPT Winners Announced The 2008 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is over, and the website lists the winners.