Urban Legends

Sometimes friends send me stories they have received via e-mail to see if I can check the veracity of the information. My first stop is the Snopes website. These people do a great job of collecting Urban Legends, some of which have been floating the Internet for years-- e.g. a bogus Andy Rooney essay, or the Life is Beautiful computer virus hoax. To get an idea of the range of these stories check Snopes.com's 25 Hottest Urban Legends.

On the Road Again...

Those in the market for an automobile, especially a used vehicle, will find NADA Guides from the National Automobile Dealers Association and the Kelly Blue Book, two websites filled with useful price data. Happy motoring!

Pretty Good Jokes

How many doctoral students does it take to change a lightbulb?

One, but it takes ten years.

Ok, that may be a bit too academic, but if you need a joke to brighten your day, try Pretty Good Jokes, part of the Prairie Home Companion radio program's website.

You can select the type of joke you are looking for, including bawdy, blonde, religious, lightbulb, knock knock, and admittedly bad jokes. This site also contains links to PHC's past joke shows, during which host Garrison Keillor and his crew spend most of their two hour program telling one joke after another.

Gas Prices

As gas prices begin to rise again with the advent of warmer weather, savvy consumers might want to check Local Gas Prices. This site gathers information about the cost of fuel from over 90,000 gas stations across the United States. Enter a zip code and view a list of local stations with current prices for gasoline. The site also supplies a map showing station locations.

Daniel Gilbert and the Psychology of Happiness

Last week St. John’s University hosted a lecture by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, who has gained some fame recently with his book Stumbling on Happiness.

The talk dealt with how the choices we make affect our happiness. It is not only the choices themselves, Gilbert said, but also our expectations about our choices that affect happiness. In exploring life events that might influence happiness, the speaker compared a person who won a large amount of money in a lottery drawing with another person whose leg was amputated. Almost everyone would guess that the lottery winner would be happier, but Gilbert said studies show that in about three years both the lottery winner and the amputee would be about as happy as before their supposedly “life changing” experiences.

Gilbert gave a similar talk at a TED Conference. He is a lively speaker who presents some fascinating arguments. Just to forewarn you, Gilbert does not provide any magic prescription for achieving happiness. The first PowerPoint slide for his talk at St. John’s read “The secret of happiness isn’t.” He completed this thought by telling the audience that it “isn’t a secret.”

In sum, Gilbert asserted, happiness is a function of the likelihood that we will get what we want combined with our expectations about how happy this will make us.

Dihydrogen Monoxide

Here’s a site W. C. Fields would cherish, as it presents the dangers of that widespread chemical compound Dihydrogen Monoxide (better known as water). Fields preferred drinking more potent liquids.

The DHMO webpage is a prime example of believing everything one finds on the Internet.

A Test and a Game

Human Metrics: A Jung Typology Test
Jungian Typology tests have gained popularity, notably with businesses and large organizations. Based on answers given to a series of questions, the test taker is assigned a to personality grouping. Some people tend to be introverted; others thrive on social contact. Some people my try to base their decisions on rational deliberation; others tend to be more emotional. Some people crave responsibility; others shun it like poison. When managers create work teams for their organizations, they might draw on information from typology tests to blend the best combination of personalities.

Web Sudoku
For a long while, I have enjoyed (not too difficult) logic games and puzzles. Sudoku fits very well into this category. This site provides puzzles at various skill levels and allows the player to see how well he/she has done compared to other people. This game can give the old noggin a workout.

Andy Mckee - Guitar - Drifting

I'm guessing that Andy McKee, the guitar player here, uses an open tuning to get some of the sounds on this video, but this is still a nice piece of musicianship. Enjoy!

The Internet Acronym Server

Not old enough to remember what L.S./M.F.T. meant on packages of Lucky Strikes? Never learned what HTML or URL stand for? Find out at the Internet Acronym Server.

Wayback Machine

No, we're not talking about the time machine that the incredibly smart dog Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman used to transport themselves back through history on Rocky and His Friends and the Bullwinkle Show in the 1960s.

This Wayback Machine is something quite different.

Did you perhaps like an earlier version of a favorite website? Are you writing a history of the Internet? Or are you one of those stalwarts who hark back to the days when Bill Clinton was in the White House? Then the Wayback Machine is for you. Just type in a url, press Take Me Back, and you will be able to explore how your website appeared in previous years. You're thinking that some people have too much time on their hands? Maybe.

Jean Shepherd-- Excelsior, you fathead!

People today may know Jean Shepherd as the narrator and writer of the movie, A Christmas Story. Some may have even visited the house in Cleveland, Ohio used in the movie. However, people who lived in New York in the 1950s and 60s will remember Jean Shepherd best as a nightly late night raconteur on WOR radio.

On that show, Shep would tell stories that might later appear in one of his books. I remember hearing versions of a number of stories that later ended up as scenes in A Christmas Story. In those humorously bittersweet tales Shepherd would often poke fun at himself. He told stories about growing up in Indiana with his family and his friends Flick and Schwartz, but would also talk about his years in the army, and a brief stint working in a steel mill, along with making comments about politics and society. Other nights listeners would hear Shepherd reading the verse of Robert W. Service. Shep could make almost anything sound interesting and vaguely zany. I once heard him spend a show reading names of people who had written in to get a few seconds of fame by having Shep mention their names on radio. And then there was his kazoo playing...

If you missed Jean Shepherd the first time or perhaps are a loyal fan who would like to revisit these legendary broadcasts, visit Max Schmidt Presents for links to a handful of shows.

Cultural Literacy

This morning, I happened upon a list of Billboard’s top ten albums for this week. When I saw recordings by Akon, Daughtry, Joss Stone, etc., I asked myself who are these people, and what happened to the Kingston Trio?

Sometimes, I couldn’t tell right off which was the performer and which was the name of the recording (e.g Good Charlotte connected with Good Morning Revival). It was only when I saw that old stand-by Elton John with his album Rocket Man: Number Ones that I found a sure guide to the listings.

On another front, I understand there has been buzz recently about something called American Idol, a television show of some sort. Does anyone actually watch this program? Then, I visited Entertainment Weekly and couldn't find a familar face. Doesn't that up-and-coming young actor Harrison Ford make movies anymore?

Across the Internet’s digital waves, I hear you saying this guy needs to get out more. So, what if most of my favorite movies came out more than 40 years ago? I also freely admit to not listening to much popular music after 1972— the Eagles are a new group, aren’t they?

What I am leading up to here is that we all need to brush up on our knowledge of culture. To remedy the gaps in our educations, I recommend daily visits to the

New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, where one should begin to commit the contents to memory-- I know memorization is considered passe’. Readers will thus be enlightened about such terms as positivism, tabula rasa, cytoplasm, and the domino theory. I'll give you a hint--the last one has nothing to do with pizza.

As for Justin Timberlake, just Google him if you must.

Livible Cities Survey

The Economist (Apr. 7-13 issue) mentions the Mercer Human Resources Consulting company’s 2007 World-wide Quality of Living Survey, which rates 215 cities throughout the world on their livibility.

The report’s top five cities are Zurich and Geneva (both in Switzerland), Vancouver (Canada), Vienna (Austria), and Aukland (New Zealand). The top United States city is Honolulu (tied for 27th), followed by San Francisco (in 29th place). It is not surprising that the lowest scoring city (with a rating of 14.5) is Baghdad in Iraq. I guess that place is off my vacation list for this year.

New Yorkers, who take a certain pride about the toughness needed to live in their city (as the song says “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. It’s up to you…”) will find Gotham at number 48. Perhaps more interesting to denizens of the Big Apple, the Mercer survey uses New York (given an index score of 100) as the city on which to base the ratings of other cities, with more livable cities garnering scores above 100 and less livable cities falling below that rating. New Yorkers, given their view of the outside world, will find this as appropriate and just.

On the Somber Side

OK, OK, with the Official Seal Generator and all the recent YouTube links, this site has taken on a tone of silliness. So, I thought I'd bring my gentle readers back down to earth by mentioning the Virtual Autopsy. This site presents 18 medical cases, giving their histories, and allowing visitors to click on various parts of the body and see pictures of bodily organs, along with descriptions of their conditions. Those with some medical astuteness can even try to guess the cause of death for each case.

Show Your Approval

Official Seal Generator
Everyone needs an official seal. Create your own at this site.

I’d recommend you give your seal some class by adding a motto in Latin.

The Writer's Almanac

Garrison Keillor hosts The Writer’s Almanac -- a 5 minute program broadcast daily on more than 300 radio stations. It can also be heard on XM Satellite radio. Each day Keillor talks about literary and historical events and birth days of writers. On today’s program, for instance, he tells about the marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas on April 5, 1614 and notes the birthdays of philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1558) and the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837).

The program always ends with the host reading a poem by a noted writer. The Writer's Almanac's website contains an archive of the broadcasts going back to February 2001, so listeners can re-hear favorite poems such as R. S. Gwynn's “My Agent Says”, broadcast December 30, 2002. Internet users can also sign up to have a link to the program sent daily via e-mail.

College Pranks

Take a look at an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education listing some of the best YouTube videos of college pranks. The author Thomas Bartlett reports that if you type college prank into YouTube, you'll finds hundreds of items (810 when I did the search). Most of these, he says, are pretty poor, but some, like the ones listed, stand out for their wittiness. Full disclosure requires me to add that I saw this article noted in the Arts and Letter Daily.

Two from YouTube

Angry Professor
This teacher is a cultural hero.

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Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age
I have some trouble with some of the claims for the speed of the obsolescence of information, but this is still a remarkable presentation.