–If you’ve already found out how popular your first name is… then you can also find out where your last name currently ranks. Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, and Brown claim the top five. “Larson” comes in at #233.
—Photos of more modern, more intricate crop circles.

–According to the latest statistics, blogs are growing like weeds.

–Here’s some evidence of 1st-world perception bias, from living in a country on some kind of technology buzz: I’m still surprised at how little the internet has spread. The internet’s reach is only to about 1 of every 6 people on the planet. There’s an enormous amount of stats there for the hyper-curious.

–I’ve enjoyed the New York Times series on the “New Gender Divide”. Nice infographics, to boot. These recent articles in particular: one discusses that men without college degrees are not marrying as much as in years past, and one that really blows my mind, an article about men choosing not to work. I suppose if your lady will put up with it, why not? The scary thing is financing all that sloth with new debt. Bad idea.

Today, August 6, the Internet celebrates its quincea?±era. 15 years of interconnected pandemonium.
A bit of personal trivia: on my first tentative leap onto the “Information Superhighway,” the first website I went to was www.vw.com. I had a thing for Volkswagon back in middle school. It only took about 26 hours to pull up the site over our blazing 28.8bps modem. Those were the days, eh?

—In praise of boxer-briefs. A pair of boxers are the “classic preppie choice‚Äîlooks sharp, underachieves.”
–Who wins where? Pop vs. soda vs. coke.

–The PocketMod turns an ordinary 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper into a hi-octane customized personal organizer. And by extension, turns the ordinary you into a Person Who Makes Things Happen. Or you could make a 100-page notebook. Go ye forth and produce!

–Lose weight by following The Hacker’s Diet: How to Lose Weight and Hair Through Stress and Poor Nutrition. Written by an engineer/ programmer/ entrepreneur–who needs nutritionists?

–The Economist on differences between the sexes. I think this is wild: “a one-day-old girl will look for longer at a face than at a mechanical mobile; a boy will prefer the mobile.” There’s a table in the sidebar to summarize some areas of difference found by one study. Men were much better at mentally rotating an object and physical aggression… and women were better at spelling and “indirect aggression”. There’s a can of worms for you.

-A very, very, very, very large webpage. See also my earlier post about being only 1 pixel.

–We may be raising a nation of wimps. Perhaps this a curse/opportunity afforded by wealth? My own brainstorm: it seems like weakness, like environmentalism, is a luxury good. That is, parental overprotectiveness would not happen to such an extent in a less prosperous nation. This small bit in particular is one of the most interesting: “Children are far less integrated into adult society than they used to be at every step of the way”.
–Emotionally stunted, perhaps… but we’re larger and healthier than our ancestors even just a few generations back. Another benefit of wealth and productivity. [via mr]

–A large archive of free (out of copyright/ public domain) movies, including a nice little selection of the old Bugs Bunny and Superman cartoons. [via digg]

–College athletes are “ethically impaired“. Interesting notion here: “In measurements of college athletes’ moral reasoning, players of team sports ‚Äî and in particular, team contact sports ‚Äî fare significantly worse than those who play individual sports… partly because team-sport athletes often do not make as many decisions during games.”

—Escape from awkward situations with the Popularity Dialer.

–The New York Public Library offers a digital gallery of almost 500,000 of their photo and print collections. I could spend all day in there, and come back the next day for more.

—Kazaa is slowly getting out of its legal quagmire. That’s good news for everyone who cares. I have to wonder how it will hold up in the face of mass-market online retailers like iTunes, and allofmp3.com, mostly free services like Last.fm and Pandora, and the torrent venues like BitTorrent. The more the merrier I suppose. The industry moguls can’t sue everyone.
—Can videogames make you cry? Interesting little article on the potential of the medium. My answer is… umm… *coughyescough*.

–An article in the New York Times points to the decline of independent music stores[$]. The clientele is older and the tastes more esoteric. This seems to match up with my experience in the local store called Wuxtry. It was me, and a couple of 40- and 50-year-old guys. I did manage to walk out with some classic Moby and Sasha on the cheap.

–Here’s a trio of guys who walked 600+ miles across the most remote wilderness in the United States without any outside support.