The latest issue of Discover magazine highlights the 25 Greatest Science Books of All Time. Darwin snags the top 2 with The Voyage of the Beagle and The Origin of Species, with Newton's Principia Mathematica following in a close third.

This weekend I'm heading up to Old Dominion for a wedding in the Waynesboro/ Staunton area. After that I'll be cruising south to see some friends in Raleigh on the way home. I'll try to squeeze in some time to meet my NaBloPoMo quota, and I'll be back to full-steam blogging sometime on Tuesday night.

There are a several different flavors of Kettle Chips in beta right now. Yes, beta. You, too, can be one of the illustrious taste-testers for a mere $20. [via df]

A lucid bit from Heather Armstrong's recent trip to New York City: "I have finally cleared off the 4 gigs of memory cards I filled taking pictures in New York, and sadly more than half of them are blurry because every time I went to take a photo I kept thinking MUST KEEP MOVING. OR DIE. That city will totally do it to you, make you think that unless you are in a constant state of forward trajectory your lungs will stop working. And so everyone is running around on a small high of caffeine and panic, a feeling not unlike the buzz you get from certain ADD medications."

VDoogle lets you search across all the major video sites. [via lh]

Greg Sandow highlights some interesting ideas to bring young audiences to classical music performances.

You don't need to shorten, sugarcoat, or simplify the classical pieces. The people hear them just as easily as they hear the pop stuff. And, maybe best of all, it takes classical music off its pedestal, and makes it nothing more (but also nothing less) than something terrific to listen to.

Here's a weekly rogues gallery for the world's worst spammers. And here are the top 200 operations, accounting for about 4 of every 5 spam e-mails you get. "Spam gang." That is so... weird. [via jb]

David von Drehle writes that our obsession with physical appearance may not be so shallow. It's a nice essay on the (eternal) issues of society, beauty, and self-image:

Critics sometimes refer longingly to earlier times, when Rubensesque nudes and Marilyn Monroe bombshells rang the beauty bell without starving themselves. When I really studied those earlier pictures, though, it struck me that the issue isn't really weight, but maturity. Something similar appears in the Greek and Roman marbles. Older gods remained fit and powerful, but their bodies were broader and fleshier; Zeus wasn't trying to fit into the same jeans he wore when he was Mercury's age.

Back in the 60s, Harlan Ellison wrote this story in one 6-hour session. That original draft became the final published document, almost entirely unchanged, and went on to earn both the Hugo and the Nebula award for short stories. So this one has street cred. Fast-forward to modern times, the oversized illustrated version of this story caught my eye. I'm a sucker for books of outrageous proportions. The story is set in one of those oppressive future societies that we just might be hurtling towards. In this one, it is Time that is under the most strict control of the Ticktockman. Life is run by the clock. Tardiness is punished by proportional reduction in own's one lifespan. Of course, there's a hero, the Harlequin, who skitters about making merry and getting things off schedule. It's a light, breezy read.

I ended this book feeling pretty well unaffected. Eh. I don't normally read short stories, so maybe my expectations are out of whack. The illustrations are interesting as you flip through the story, but not really worth going back to examine. As a stand-alone title, I don't think it holds up. But it would be nice as part of a collection.

The 2006 National Book Awards have been announced. Only Revolutions was one of the fiction finalists. I started it just a few days ago, and think I'm starting to get it.

Video of a guy who got shut down by the cops for giving away free hugs. I love this sort of ad hoc community building.

Henry Darger is one of the more notable creators of outsider art. When living in Chicago as an adult, Darger went to church every day, worked as a janitor, and generally kept to himself. On the side, he wrote a 15,143-page illustrated fantasy, The Story of the Vivian Girls, which wasn't discovered until after his death. It's just fascinating on so many levels. Here a longer profile of Darger at Salon, and a nice little essay with links to a great collection of the artwork and other resources. Last year, PBS featured a documentary and a tour of his work. And don't forget to stop by and see the Flickr photos tagged with "Darger".

"The gethuman project is a consumer movement to improve the quality of phone support in the US." Version 1.0 of their standard service requisites was published about a month ago, and also has some suggested "gold standards".

Anyone else getting a lot of Italian spam lately? Maybe I just have that qualcosa speciale. But still I offer my thanks to Akismet for making this rather painless.

I spent the morning listening to all the Productive Talks podcasts at 43 Folders, a series of dialogues between productivity gurus Merlin Mann and David Allen. They are excellent conversations on GTD philosophy and action, without much packaging fluff. David has some hilarious ranting in the fifth episode about e-mail. Really, why are we still whining about e-mail? Another good moment came in a brief detour about kids being raised in a GTD household: "That's great, Grandma, but what's the next action here?" I love it. And then there's this important philosophical bit to keep in mind: "Quite frankly, you shouldn't be thinking about GTD."

I've taken first steps to collect and process, and I can see how easy it is to get distracted by "perfecting your system," when really it's just another project to be evaluated and processed. Lastly, I love how fast they talk. It's such a nice change from some other o-ver a-nun-ci-at-ed podcasts I've heard. Go listen, but you might want to read the book first.

I invented a word last night as I was going to sleep: booksport. At least, I'd never heard it before. I'm not sure why, but whenever I'm picking a book to read before I go to bed, I always think, "Which one can I finish tonight?"--regardless of what other books I'm in the middle of. Anyway, I was reading myself to sleep, and in the final throes of consciousness I had this vision of reading qua sporting event: mad page-flipping, accumulating points for finishing longer books, paper cuts and medical teams, smug readers wearing sunglasses during competition, etc. Luckily I managed to scribble a groggy note about this that was still legible in the morning.

Here are some plates from Alexander Jamieson's 1822 book, A Celestial Atlas: Comprising a Systematic Display of the Heavens in a Series of Thirty Maps. That there is just beautiful stuff.

The best excuse to dress warmly and sit in a dark, open space this weekend: the Leonid meteor shower is coming. The American Meteor Society has some good timing and viewing tips. The viewing should be a little better than previous years, as we'll at least have the benefit of a new moon this weekend. And if you're willing to travel a bit, the International Dark Sky Association can help you find a good spot for optimal meteor consumption (away from city lights).

ReputationDefender is a service "created to defend your and your family's good name on the Internet." The two-part goal is "to SEARCH out all information about you and/or your child on the Internet" and "to DESTROY, at your command, all inaccurate, inappropriate, hurtful, and slanderous information about you and/or your child using our proprietary in-house methodology." I'm just dying to know what the "proprietary in-house methodology" is. Looks like they have a few attorneys on staff... [via library stuff]

"I'm a 24-year-old aspiring real estate investor from Sacramento CA. After going to few seminars I bought 8 houses in 8 months across 4 states with no money down. I fixed and sold 2 and then ran out of cash. I am now facing foreclosure on 4 houses. I'm learning my lessons, finding solutions and blogging about it."