As a Public Service . . .

I present what I consider to be a treasure trove of information that almost anybody can find something in that's useful.


What are the most productive ways to spend time on the Internet?

• Documentary Heaven- Literally hundreds of streaming documentaries, all arranged by topic. All free. (/u/drake_diablo)
• Foreign Service Institute - language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute. These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain. (/u/SourMilk)
• Free Section of Craigslist - You can find a lot of cool stuff if you go to the free section of craigslist. The original poster's friend recently got a fully functional dentist's chair for his room that automatically adjusts to any position. (/u/tornato7)
• Any Song You Want Not In A Torrent- I'll just link the comment, I'm not sure how to summarize this. (/u/pizzarox2)
• Project Gutenberg- Project Gutenberg's books are often taught in all shorts of literature classes, get em for free when you can (/u/atomicheartmother)
• Google Drive - you'd be surprised how many people don't know what it is (/u/ryantyrant)
• Retail Me Not - Search for coupon codes before buying anything online. (/u/etak1980 and/u/BigBad_BigBad)
• Duolingo - a great site that teaches you foreign languages for free. No idea how they make a profit, but there yah go. If Duolingo can't satisfy that need. LiveMocha looks like a promising site, though I haven't had a chance to try it out. (/u/iKickComputers)
• Project Free TV - Pretty much a project for free TV, I believe. 1channel is also pretty darn excellent. (/u/Boob_Inspector and /u/Giblet_McGravy) EDIT: DO NOT USE 1CHANNEL, USE LetMeWatchThis - Watch Movies Online Free - Just Added
• SNES Box or NES Box, two great emulators to play games from Super Nintendo and Classic Nintendo respectively online. (/u/shifty1032231)

All the below is by /u/Fletch71011-

• No Excuse List - Includes sources for everything you can want. I included some more popular ones with brief write-ups below. Credit to /u/lix2333.
• Reddit Resources - Reddit's List of the best online education sources
• Khan Academy - Educational organization and a website created by Bangladeshi-American educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. The website supplies a free online collection of micro lectures stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics, microeconomics, and computer science.
• Ted Talks - Talks that address a wide range of topics ("ideas worth spreading") within the research and practice of science and culture, often through storytelling. Many famous academics have given talks, and they are usually short and easy to digest.
• Coursera - Coursera partners with various universities and makes a few of their courses available online free for a large audience. Founded by computer science professors, so again a heavy CS emphasis.
• Wolfram Alpha - Online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might. Unbelievable what this thing can compute; you can ask it near anything and find an answer.
• Udacity - Outgrowth of free computer science classes offered in 2011 through Stanford University. Plans to offer more, but concentrated on computer science for now.
• MIT OpenCourseWare - Initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere.
• Open Yale Courses - Provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University.
• Codecademy - Online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in programming languages like Python, JavaScript, and Ruby, as well as markup languages including HTML and CSS. Gives your points and "level ups" like a video game, which is why I enjoyed doing classes here. Not lecture-oriented either; usually just jump right into coding, which works best for those that have trouble paying attention.
• Team Treehouse - Alternative to Codecademy which has video tutorials. EDIT: Been brought to my attention that Team Treehouse is not free, but I included it due to many comments. Nick Pettit, teaching team lead at Treehouse, created a 50% off discount code for redditors. Simply use 'REDDIT50'. Karma goes to Mr. Pettit if you enjoyed or used this.
• Think Tutorial - Database of simple, easy to follow tutorials covering all aspects of popular computing. Includes lots of easier, basic tasks for your every day questions or new users.
• Memrise - Online learning tool that uses flashcards augmented with mnemonics—partly gathered through crowdsourcing—and the spacing effect to boost the speed and ease of learning. Several languages available to learn.
• Livemocha - Commercial online language learning community boasting 12 million members which provides instructional materials in 38 languages and a platform for speakers to interact with and help each other learn new languages.
• edX - Massive open online course platform founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University to offer online university-level courses in a wide range of disciplines to a worldwide audience at no charge. Many other universities now take part in it, including Cal Berkeley. Differs from most of these by including "due dates" with assignments and grades.
• Education portal - Free courses which allow you to pass exams to earn real college credit.
• uReddit - Made by Redditors for other Redditors. Tons of different topics, varying from things like science and art to Starcraft strategy.
• iTunes U - Podcasts from a variety of places including universities and colleges on various subjects.
• Stack Exchange - Group of question and answer websites on topics in many different fields, each website covering a specific topic, where questions, answers, and users are subject to a reputation award process. Stack Overflow is used for programming, probably their most famous topic. Self-moderated with reputation similar to Reddit.
• Wikipedia - Collaboratively edited, multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia. Much better source than most people give it credit for, and great for random learning whenever you need it. For those looking for more legit sources for papers and such, it is usually easy to jump to a Wikipedia page and grab some sources at the bottom.

Back to sane mode.

• Ninite - Something I myself can personally recommend, its a safe download site with no toolbars and malware. Any software you need will be there, and I have discovered a lot of software there. (DELETED)
• Free Electronic Component Samples from Texas Instruments - OP just had a $15 voltage regulator delivered for free. You need to create a free account, and then you get something like four free samples a month. This is incredibly useful for some harder to find parts. Plus they're good quality, as far as I know, and they ship fast using FedEx. (/u/LXL15)
• The First Row - semi ILLEGAL site to watch sports events, proceed at your own risk. Many sports events are available there. (DELETED)
• Pixlr Editor - Basic picture editor that will irritate people using Photoshop, but its easy and free, and if I'm using a crappy computer without any software (like I am now) I'd go there. (/u/xCry0x)
• Mint- get your finances firmly under control. Downloads and categorizes transactions from your Debit and Credit accounts, and even tracks Mortgages and Car Loans. It allows you to set budgets for expenditures of certain types and then tracks those on a month-to-month basis and will nag you when you're spending too much on something. (/u/icyliquid)

Life

This is one of those cutesy things people sometimes send you in the email. Why I'm not so sure. Don't most people know that virtually everybody gets too much email? I try to be sparing of such stuff mainly because I really get too much email. Way too much. But somehow for some unknown reason this one struck me today. Sorry if it doesn't do anything for you. I understand . . . but try thinking about it in terms of Hiroshima. Today is the 70th anniversary of the first time a nuclear weapon was used on a people, a country, an "enemy." Brought to you by the freedom-loving people of the United States. 80,000 people were killed outright, another 10-50,000 died later from radiation and wounds.

Life.

War is Boring

 OK. So I'm going to tell you about one of the web sites I found on the list I told you about yesterday--and I have to say that my initial explorations have not uncovered that much of interest, at least to me. But this site had a fetching title: "War is Boring." And as you will see from the entry, the news wasn't new. Fighting an killing in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza. And a lovely photo of rockets launching.

So I suppose war is boring because we just get tired of hearing about it? Or war is boring because it never stops?

DailyTekk Discovery

Regular readers know that I'm a lover of lists. I make them myself and always dispose of them, when they finally reach the point of uselessness, a very fluid notion. But I've always got lists around. I've got scraps of lists of web sites to check out, books to read, music to listen to, things to do, words I don't know the meaning of, etc. I could not live without lists, even though, if I'm truthful only the ones I take with me to the grocery ever have any real impact on my life.

And, like I suppose everybody else--though I know that's not so--I cherish "best of" lists. You know, best of at-the-end-of-the-year lists: books, movies, music, etc. So it goes without saying that I would find a list called "The 100 Best, Most Interesting Blogs and Websites of 2014"would be a real turn-on. Especially since I googled "best blogs out there ". I always google "the best of . . . " something. I know it's crazy, but I believe this does give some granularity to the process.  (Yeah, right. That search only turned up 761,000,000 results in .20 seconds.)

So this site was 4th down on the list. You should check it out. I'm not about to get to writing about the places I've found. I'd never get finished.

The Intercept

For those of you who share my interest in the secret and often nefarious doings of our security and defense apparatus, I would commend to your attention the establishment of a new online publication called "The Intercept." I've long been a reader of Glenn Greenwald, most lately (in)famous for being instrumental in breaking the Edward Snowden story that informed the world the extent to which the U.S. national security agency (NSA) is spying on just about everybody in the world including us millions of once-unsuspecting (but now fully aware) Americans. Who thought the laws protected them from domestic spying and also prevented the NSA and other arms of the government from snooping into their affairs. The amazing thing is that even after the revelations of widespread NSA misconduct, a great many Americans aren't upset by it. It's yet another measure of our ignorance.

Here's an edited discussion of The Intercept's goals and purpose from its website. The emphasis in the paragraphs is mine.

This looks like something all friends of civil liberties ought to be jumping on.

About The Intercept

The Intercept, a publication of First Look Media, was created by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill. It has a two-fold mission: one short-term, the other long-term.

Our short-term mission is to provide a platform to report on the documents previously provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. . . . Our NSA coverage will be comprehensive, innovative and multi-faceted. We have a team of experienced editors and journalists devoted to the story. We will use all forms of digital media for our reporting. In addition, we will publish primary source documents on which our reporting is based. We will also invite outside experts with area knowledge to contribute to our reporting, and provide a platform for commentary and reader engagement.

Our long-term mission is to produce fearless, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues. The editorial independence of our journalists will be guaranteed. They will be encouraged to pursue their passions, cultivate a unique voice, and publish stories without regard to whom they might anger or alienate. We believe the prime value of journalism is its power to impose transparency, and thus accountability, on the most powerful governmental and corporate bodies, and our journalists will be provided the full resources and support required to do this.

While our initial focus will be the critical work surrounding the NSA story, we are excited by the opportunity to grow with our readers into the broader and more comprehensive news outlet that the The Intercept will become.

Dan!

Don't ask me why, but I think this is hilarious. And don't ask me why I'm doing this to you, but it was one of the many discoveries I made at The Useless Website. Have fun.

Some Strays

Sorry to bore you with more websites. I left a couple out when I was pointing you to some in earlier posts this week. These are actually too useful not to tell you about.

• GetHuman - This site will get you the best, fastest customer service at more than 8,000 countries (at the moment) in 45+ countries. Everybody has had the maddening experience of going through endless layers of computer "assistance" when they are calling corporate America about a problem or with a question. I don't even mess with the printed "help" numbers anymore. I just go right to this site and type in the company. Much more satisfying experience, I can tell you.
• Newspaper Archives on the Web - Okay. This one is a little esoteric. But I'm a historian of 19th Century America. Besides original handwritten documents, there probably isn't a more valuable resource to us than newspapers. This site provides links to places that allow access these papers. There are quite a few of them such as More than newspapers can be had. There are many periodicals of all kinds. A few of the sites cost money, but the majority are free. 
• List of Reference Desks on the Net - Last one, I promise. Just a blizzard of places you can go to hunt down stuff on the Net.

OK. Done. It's amazing what's out there on line. It truly is. 

And Have to Share These

Yesterday I shared with you five websites only two of which do I actually "use" myself. Today I'm going to share a few more, the difference being that I use these websites myself all the time. Like yesterday, this is a going to be pretty eclectic stuff.

1. Coursera
A place for you to sign up to take honest-to-goodness college classes from some of the best universities in the world, such as Princeton, Duke, Stanford, University of London, Caltec, University of Melbourne, and many more. Right now its is heavily math and science skewed in available courses, but there is a goodly selection of humanities and social science courses available. This is the wave of the future in higher ed.

I'm taking a course in Modern Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania which my sister is taking with me simultaneously. I think she would agree it is challenging.

2. The Khan Academy
An entirely different kind of learning place, but just as valuable as Coursera in its way. I thoroughly enjoy their art history lessons. Check this one out on Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze.

Here's a blurb from their site with links: "With a library of over 3,400 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace." And an explanatory video below. This is a great place.



3. CEO Express
For sheer volume of links, this site has to be seen to be believed. I cannot imagine anyone using it for a home page, but apparently that's its purpose. Claims access to news and stuff for executives, but us ordinary peons can find all kinds of useful links there too.

4. RefDesk
Even more links than CEO Express, this is a long-revered home page site. You can't see the whole thing without scrolling down, and there are a hundred places to snag you and drag you into surfing. I think my son Ben might be using RefDesk for his home page. This striking picture is the National Geographic photo of the day.

Storm near Guymon, Oklahoma

5. Musicovery
I couldn't possibly let you go without sharing one of my favorite music sites. Well, maybe that's an overstatement. But I do listen to a lot of streaming radio. That's what Musicovery is. You get to choose a mood, like "dark" or "energetic", and the radio will play that mood from any of about twenty musical genres. You can limit those, and you can also set up stations of your favorite artists. Check it out.

Here Are Some Websites for You

Every so often, the spirit moves me to let you in on some websites I've stumbled across in my travels that I found helpful or just interesting. And every so often, I suppose, you might find one or more of them either helpful or interesting. Which is why I share.

1. I Can Has Cheeseburger
Not new, this site. But I've never told you about it before. Built around the notion that pets, especially cats, can really be funny.

2. NinjaWords
The fastest dictionary on the planet. I recently turned my daughter on to it. She loves it and uses it, as far as I know.

3. digg
This is not new either but it has a great new look and it's one of those places that can really suck you in. Go here to find out what's being most talked about right this minute or in the past hour or so. Great place for me to find blog topics. Great place for you to get lost in.

4. Desk
A really silly site . . . unless you like desks and like to see the way people have arranged their desks and, in most cases, the environs of the desk too. I'm tempted to put a picture of my own pretty damn busy World War II army-issue desk up there. Pretty much all I've seen are these hypermodern looking set-ups. But I'll bet it would not pass muster.

5. kuvva
Very cool wallpapers for your desktop. You subscribe and you get an artist's stuff for a week up there on your screen. One new design a day. Here's a look at something by the guy who's on my desktop now, a Norwegian illustrator, Mads Berg. This is not the design that's there. The one that is is much cooler, but I could not figure how to put it here.

What We Hate about the Net

This is pretty accurate for me. I've gotten a lot better about wasting my time on the Internet. Don't spend nearly the time that I used to, although you probably couldn't get my spouse to agree with you.You can really piss away a lot worthy time in front of computer screens, as I'm sure you know. Remember when the Internet was first around. In those first few years, we were reading a lot of stuff about "Internet addiction." And self-help pieces about how to avoid getting hooked. Well, I don't think we succeeded very well, do you? Look out in a crowd sometimes and see how many people are messing with their smart phones. All that is Internet, except for the very few who are actually involved in phone calls.

I find it encouraging that the number one complaint is "untrustworthy information." But I wonder where all of these citizens for accurate information are? I haven't met many of them. The last four reasons at the end of the graphic are interesting. The last two are obviously porn-related. But I wonder about "damage to credibility." Are we talking about people publicly citing the Net with some of that untrustworthy information? And I have to confess I'm a bit baffled by the "unfamiliar forums." Anybody have any idea what that means? Obviously, there are going to be forums that aren't familiar . . . . but why should that be a complaint for almost half the people?

Related articles

• Does the Internet Really Make Everyone Crazy? (healthland.time.com)
• We're All Internet Addicts, And We're All Screwed, Says Newsweek (forbes.com)
• Are You Addicted To The Internet? [You Told Us] (makeuseof.com)

Infographic on Civil War Battles

This is a nice summation of information about Civil War battles. It's too big for me to post here . . . at least in a size that is readable to you, but this is really a good aid to understanding very quickly what a horrifying loss of life it entailed. A couple of things recommend this graphic: it clearly graphs the battles by name and casualties. Plus it's got a lot of other information jammed into a little space.

Sorry if this is not your thing. It's mine, and I'm always pointing out to people just how far superior we are at killing each other than we ever have been with external enemies.

On a related subject: I've just discovered Pinterest. Actually, I had discovered it before, but it never took just how useful it could be. For example, a place to stash all the graphics, maps, and photos I use for my historical work. A place to put all of the visual stuff that I put up here on the blog. (Yes, I really wish I could remember where I put that stuff, because I do indeed go looking for it again on occasion. And a place to stash all the interesting illustrations, pieces of art, photos of anything and everything that strikes my fancy. Some day down the line, I'll point you to my Pinterest site, but there's no point in your going there now because there's hardly anything on it.

It'll Only Take a Minute

Well, just a little bit over a minute to be purely precise. That is, to watch this short movie. I was just talking recently about the wonders of the Internet and the great stuff you can find there. This fits into that category. It's becoming ever more apparent to me that technology is just becoming totally impenetrable for me. When I was a kid, you could understand the basics of things like the internal combustion engine, the movie camera, light bulb, stereo record, and with a little research perhaps could make these things understandable to somebody else. No longer. I have no idea how this little movie does its tricks, much less how things get put on the Internet, transferred everywhere, etc.). All I can say is, the tricks are fascinating.

   

Source: Here

Choo Choos Plus

Just one of a hundred RR logos 

Finding sites like this one, from which the UP logo was extracted is yet another reminder of what a miracle the Internet can be. I have to confess to being an unabashed information junkie. It seems like I find way too many things interesting. I get to poking around on the Net, and before you know it, a couple hours are gone and all I have to show for it is . . . . what? A history of totally random trail of web sites that for one reason or another caught my interest. Seriously. I get fascinated by all kinds of things. This particular site caught my eye because it had to do with trains, which I have loved ever since I was a little bitty kid in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and my mom used to take me down to the train yard there with all those wonderful, noisy, smoky black steam engines, like this one >>>

Trains are one of my earliest memories. . . . but I digress. I found the site by accident and got hung up in looking at all the different railroad logos. I remember lots of them from when railroads were a going concern in this country, including passenger rail. Which was before Amtrak, of course.

And then I started poking around the site and I run into things like this:

I mean, how cool is this? These are book covers for a mystery series. It turns out I stumbled upon the website of Christian Annyas, who is a web designer and graphic artist. I love these happy accidents.

Yet Another List II

Continuing on from yesterday. You'll recall I was listing web sites that I had never heard of off Time magazine's list of the 50 best web sites of 2011. Well, I have a confession to make. In perusing Time's list of sites more closely I discover that I have not heard of most of them. So what does this tell you? Probably the obvious: I don't do a hell of a lot of web surfing, or conversely, I don't have call to check out sites in some of the magazine's topics, such as Family and Kids--we're past that stage, Susan and I--Social Media, Games. So there are several other areas left, and plenty of interesting sites, viz.:

• Freerice -- With Freerice, you can do good by having fun. Answer one of the multiple-choice questions correctly — on topics such as English vocabulary, geography or chemistry — and the site's sponsors will donate 10 grains of rice to the U.N. World Food Programme. It doesn't sound like a major act of charity — but so many people answer so many questions that the site is responsible for the donation of hundreds of millions of grains of rice every month. That's enough to make a major difference for tens of thousands of hungry people in Haiti and other countries that need help. [There are 60 "levels," and I was on 42 when I quit. I got hung up in it for about 10 minutes. BTW, all I saw were vocabulary questions, nothing on anything else. 
• CalorieKing  --  Half the battle of eating well is knowing what you're eating. And knowing what you're eating is a whole lot easier with CalorieKing. The site provides the nutritional facts for thousands of foodstuffs, from grapes (34 calories and 0.1 grams of fat per serving) to Wendy's Baconator Double (940 calories and 59 grams of fat). This basic info is free . . . [There's a pay plan where you can get menus, advice, etc., etc., but the heart of it is the calorie-counter. Great for me since I've been counting calories for a couple of months. I have an app on the iPad, but this look-up is quicker. Seems to be pretty damn comprehensive.]
• Hipmunk  --  [This one is for Susan, the travel agent in the house. Cool tabular display of flight options for trips.] Shopping for plane tickets will never rank among life's greatest pleasures. But with Hipmunk, it's no longer among the most tedious. This slick site lets you search for flights across major airlines, giving you easy-to-scan results in a grid sorted by agony ("a combination of price, duration and number of stops"). Nice touches include an icon that highlights flights with wi-fi, and there are iPhone and iPad apps that let you use the service on the go.
• Big Think  --  The thinking at Big Think is big indeed. This blog and video site covers, well, the world: arts, business, science, history and much more. Resident big thinkers such as futurist Ray Kurzweil and distinguished guests tackle the topics seriously, and counterintuitive notions and outright heresy are welcome. It's a great place to go to challenge your preconceived notions and recharge your mental batteries. 
• Khan Academy --  In 2004, Salman Khan started tutoring his cousin over the Internet. In 2006, he began uploading educational videos to YouTube. And in 2009, he quit his day job as a hedge-fund manager to concentrate on Khan Academy, a sort of one-man university. Today the site offers his free lessons in thousands of highly visual 10-minute chunks. Math and science dominate, and students are the primary audience, but Khan is adding additional topics and welcomes adult learners. It's a remarkable undertaking — and with funding from Google and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it has a bright future.

Now, I have to tell you that I lied again . . . because I have heard of Big Think and Khan Academy before now. And I agree with Time about both. Great sites.

Related articles

• Ryerson Tech Tip: Use KhanAcademy to brush up on basic concepts (studentlife.ryerson.ca)
• Grading the Digital School: Khan Academy Blends Its YouTube Approach With Classrooms (nytimes.com)
• Khan Academy: A World-Class education for anyone, anywhere (carpebootium.wordpress.com)

Yet Another List

Everybody loves lists, right? Well, I'm going to share with you a list that some of you might find strange. This is a partial list of websites that appeared in Time Magazine's annual list of "best of" websites. There are fifty of them altogether. But I'm not going to list them all. You can go here if you want to see the whole list. My criterion for appearing in the list below is that I have never heard of the site. As to why you might find it strange, I'll venture a couple or three guesses. First, you may think I'm terribly uninformed not to know about some of these places because you know about them . . . in fact, you couldn't imagine somebody not knowing about them. Another reason could be that you know the site, but cannot imagine why anybody would put it in the top rungs of anything. Finally, you may just find it strange that I even bother with such a subject. Well, here's full disclosure. It's been a slow news day, and sometimes you just have to dredge something up. I'm going to include some of Time's blurb about the site for what it's worth. I do sincerely hope you might even find some of this useful.

Schott's List of Websites

Which Somebody Thinks are

Fabulous

But Which He Never Heard Of

• My Damn Channel -- Brevity is the soul of the wit at My Damn Channel, a video site where almost everything is entertaining and nothing runs for much more than five minutes. More professional than YouTube and less schlocky than much of what's on the networks and cable, My Damn Channel is damn good TV.
•  Grantland -- The Web is already well equipped with outstanding sites on every known athletic pursuit. Is there room for one more? Absolutely, if that site is Grantland, the new creation of one of today's finest sportswriters, Bill Simmons. Grantland -- The Web is already well equipped with outstanding sites on every known athletic pursuit. Is there room for one more? Absolutely, if that site is Grantland, the new creation of one of today's finest sportswriters, Bill Simmons. [personal observation: I found out on this site that Barack Obama's favorite character from The Wire is Omar.]
•  Get Human -- Some of the biggest companies in the U.S. are in hiding — or at least, you might think so when you want to talk to a real person at one of them. Phone numbers are often tough to find, and if you do uncover one, it could lead to a voice-menu system that tries to placate you with recorded messages. That's why GetHuman is so essential. It provides numbers for thousands of companies, from AT&T to Zynga, plus information on which buttons to press to reach a human and how long you're likely to wait on hold. Users can also vent by writing customer-service reviews; they're pockmarked with phrases like "What a nightmare!" [personal observation: "Hard to find 800-numbers" was a great website that went kaput a while back. This is an even better replacement. How could I have not known about this place?]
• Smarthistory -- Smarthistory focuses on art history, from cave paintings to Warhol. And while the site calls itself a textbook, it's not the text — or even the illustrations — that make it special. It's the growing library of videos that feature spirited, unscripted conversations among historians about notable works. You can start in ancient times and work your way forward or browse the collection by artist, theme or medium.
• Quora -- When you've got a question that's strictly factual, a search engine usually does the trick. When the answer would benefit from expertise and opinion, you want to ask a smart human being — or even better, a bunch of them. Quora is a terrific way to find those savvy folk and benefit from their knowledge (and pay back the community by sharing your own insights). It's one of umpteen Q&A sites on the Web — others include Ask.com and Yahoo! Answers — but the quality of the conversation is uncommonly high.

Guess what? There's not enough space in this one post for me to list everything I wanted to. So . . . to be continued.

Not a Way to Go

I had lunch with my daughter and Susan yesterday and was pleased to introduce her to a podcast I had recently discovered called "Stuff You Should Know." In the two weeks or so since I found out about this podcast, I've listened to 8-19 back episodes and now I'm downloading them the iPod regularly. This is the home web site. Guaranteed that this site, which covers fascinating subject matter all the time will become a rich source of blog material.

Case in point: 10 bizarre deaths. It turns out, as was discussed on the podcasts, that most human beings have a somewhat morbid curiosity about death. Which for me doesn't seem all that unusual. It's a place we're all going, no exceptions. Something as universal as this is bound to make people curious. I've had a saying for years: "There's only one way into this world, but there are a million ways out of it." It turns out most of us are interested in finding out about the million ways.

So I'm assuming that many of you--well, not that many because not that many read this blog regularly--are going to click on the link to find out about these 10 bizarre ways to die. So I won't be be a spoiler. But I will titillate you with some descriptive phrases. Death by beard, by storm drain, deodorant, hungry sheep, molasses, and more.

I Needed This

So one of the side benefits of the 30-minute walk is 30 uninterrupted moments to listen to podcasts. I just added one to my usual complement of "This American Life" and "Planet Money" podcasts. This one is called "Stuff You Should Know." I'm a sucker for these kinds of things. Little 15-20 lessons--discussions between two knowledgeable guys (usually, because I encountered one with a gal and a guy) about all kinds of stuff that either you should know or that you're pretty curious about. So over the past couple of days I've listened to I've found out about:

• how altruism works--a philosophical question, really, about whether anybody can actually perform a totally unselfish act
• is there a worst way to die?--most would say immolation is worst, and drowning is up there, too. And did you know 25 percent of people say they are not afraid to die. But they concluded if you're in a plane going down from, say, 35,000 feet . . . well, the fear would doubtless be universal. Worst case for most people is dying alone.
• will we soon be extinct? Possibly. Just about everything that's ever been on the planet went extinct before us.
• how living off the grid works? Did you know some people have arranged to live so they don't ever pay utility bills?
• how habeas corpus works

I'm just getting into how corporate personhood works, and I have about 15 more episodes to listen to before I'm caught up. I really needed this extra thing to catch my interest. I'll get caught up on "Stuff You Should Know" and then I'll be behind on the other two. Not to mention NPR's Live Concerts and KEBX's Song of the day.

Here's the hook for the Stuff You Should Know podcast:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/stuff-you-should-know.rss

Related articles

• 5 Podcasts You Should Seriously Check Out Right Away (makeuseof.com)
• Podcasts that you should listen to, because I do... (jamesleighton.com)

Fun, Fun, Fun

As I'm periodically moved to do, I'd like to share with you some websites I've encountered that struck me as cool or useful or intriguing or perhaps all of the above. First of all, in music. I'm always looking for a new way to enjoy music or for some capability involving music I don't presently have. So have a look at these:

• ListnPlay - this site is designed to marry songs and videos together. Type in a band or artist or album or song, and the site delivers up videos which you can then pull singly into a playlist.
• LyricsnMusic - another aggregator site. This one not only gets the lyrics to a tune, but will also deliver up YouTube videos, concert dates, artwork, tabs, and Wikipedia results all on one page.
• uWal ltv - massive walls of artist/band pictures. Move your mouse over them, click, and up comes a playlist, some of them pretty extensive. The key here is that you can narrow your search to specific genres, and there are 23 of these, everything from classical to tango. You can earmark favorites and construct playlists. In fact, you can do that with all of these sites.

And here's some more I've found recently:

• Visual.ly - "Infographics and Data Generlizations" I'm a sucker for this sort of thing. I still have a much loved volume of this sort of thing called Understanding that first alerted me to these arresting ways of presenting data. Here's what the site says about itself: "Infographics and data visualizations are shifting the way people find and experience stories, creating a new way of seeing the world of data. They help communicate complex ideas in a clear, compact and beautiful way, taking deep data and presenting it in visual shorthand. We’ve collected the best examples on the web and gathered them for you to reference, share, and enjoy." Almost 6,000, divided by category.
• knoword - From directions: "a game of quick thinking, smart decisions and great words. When you begin, you will be given one randomly generated dictionary definition along with the first letter of its corresponding word. You must fill in the rest of the word to experience a gain in points and an added time bonus. You will start off with one minute before the game ends, and every word is an opportunity to extend your time. If you're ever stuck on a word, just hit the skip button and a new puzzle will present itself."

Have  a blast.

Related articles

• Visual.ly - Browse Thousands of Infographics (freetech4teachers.com)
• The Infographic (dianesimonelli.wordpress.com)
• Muse-ic (tellie689.wordpress.com)

Great Websites

For various reasons.

• Ninjawords: Doesn't everybody have a dictionary link on their toolbar? I cannot imagine anybody not having one. But till I discovered Ninjawords, I had to wait wait wait for the dictionary site to come up, type in the word, and wait for the system to grind out the word and definition. No more. If all you want is a quick definition, this dude will blow your hair back. Try it. Info about it here.
• Wikisky: The kind of place that makes me realize just how little I know. But it fascinates me nonetheless. This is an astronomy site that you have to see to believe. Here's their own description of what it is: "Our on-line system is a detailed sky map. We generate the map automatically using our database with the positions and basic characteristics of space objects. You can get more details from Getting Started." I get lost here every time I go.
• Kiva: Lend some money to some enterprising citizen of the developing world. Help them stand up a business, do yourself proud, and love your neighbor all at the same time. "[A] non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world."
• Wikitravel:Wiki again? Yep. This is a Wiki Travel Guide. It's got over 25,000 destination guides and other articles for planning travel. Look up close by (ton of stuff on Oklahoma City) or what you're thinking about (rail travel across Canada). Tons of great information.

One Sentence

I had all the best intentions of blogging about the "Occupy Wall Street" movement(?)--is it a movement? What is it? . . . Anyway, to show how easily distracted I am, I just now ran across this website and feel compelled to share it with you. I'm thinking something like this will really appeal to my daughter, who loves postsecret.com. This site that I stumbled across is similar. It's called One Sentence. The subtitle tells all: "True Stories, Told in One Sentence." Now, who can resist that? Well, maybe some people can, but I can't. I naturally got hung up reading them. These sentences are a lot like M&M's. If you eat them one at a time, you'll have eaten five or six dozen before you know it. Of course, they run the gamut, from funny to bizarre to heart-wrenching and all over the rest of the emotional map.

So I thought you might like some samples:

• When I asked her why he was out of her league her only response was, "Because I know he won't beat me."
• I just walked in on my mom and neighbor smoking pot and felt so uncool.
• The Soup Kitchen that I volunteered at as a teenager is now my only source of 3 meals a day.
• I have freezer burn on my chest and under my boobs because I reasoned that a popsicle held up in my bra would be a great personal air conditioner.
• My wedding cost $6700 and my divorce cost $16425, both were worth it.
• As I cried in front of the cash register at CVS, a woman pitied me for having my college health insurance expire the day before and paid the $200 fee for my medication, saying "Christmas came early this year."
• I asked my 93 year old Grandmother, who I adore, what she thought life was all about and she replied, "I don't think about those type of things." -- one of my favorites
• I called my dad from my dorm to bitch about my dvd player not working only to be told that my home was on fire
• "I wrote a poem for you," he said, then proceeded to read "Ode to your cleavage."

And so forth. Great stuff, and yet another way to waste time I could be much better spending on something productive.

I will "Occupy Wall Street" tomorrow.