Author: gulley

The December issue of The Atlantic Monthly is just terrific. I’ll buy a magazine if it has one interesting paragraph in it, and this issue has two big meaty articles worth savoring in detail: a report on wine critic Robert Parker Jr. and an article on people who deliberately amputate healthy limbs by Carl Elliot. Weird but compelling.

I love Books on Tape. I used to be embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve given up. Now the only question is whether to say, in idle conversation, that I “read” such and such a book, or to say that I listened to it, but hey that’s just as good. I have a half hour commute, and listening to good books has become one of the high points of my day. Recently “reads”: The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain and I, Claudius by Robert Graves.

Charts from Hell. Someone has gone to the trouble of collecting gruesome stock price charts of dot-com failures. It’s voyeuristic but riveting to click through them. You can practically hear the sound of a lot of money being lost.

The Joe Cartoon Co. has been around for a while, and if the humor is pretty adolescent, the artwork and animation are inspired. Check out The Boss, a recent Flash animation at the site. The voice characterization on the brown-nosing gerbil is just brilliant.

Fun blog: dack.com.

Traffic waves: physics for bored commuters is a serious treatment of a topic that many of us have speculated about: cars are like particles.

Feed Magazine has a good special edition on drugs. Psychoactive chemicals are at the intersection of psychology, chemistry, pop culture, and religion. It’s a fascinating place to be, and it’s only going to get more so.

Jibjab presents the rapping forefathers of our country.

At the Florence museum of science, you can pay your respects to Galileo’s finger. Read about it on this week’s Star Chamber.