Song lyrics

So, I needed to know the words to Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" (it's a long story...). There are a number of sites with song lyrics around for free, but this one seems reasonably complete. Could use a bit more advanced search, but you can find a keyword in the artist, album, song title or lyric contents.

Bot Hixx

Hixx tries to respond to statements about feelings. It doesn't have much insight, but now and then will respond somewhat cleverly.
Chat with Hixx for a few minutes & see what you think.

Damn cool illusion

Very fun optical illusion. The refractory period of receptors creates a negative image over time. Watch as you process a bunch of pink dots and see them disappear and a green dot appear, but there is no green dot...

David Cope

Pretty amazing algorithmically generated music.

Moodle - A Free, Open Source Course Management System for Online Learning

The power of programming and networks are being realized at last! This is a way cool tool to help create online learning communities.

EllaZ - artful intelligence

EllaZ - artful intelligence
A pretty well-done bot site.

Similarity

Similarity
described by Robert Goldstone of Indiana University.

Conscious Entities: leading theories about consciousness, and the mind.

A site with summaries & critiques of theories of consciousness.
Something for me to waste more time on...

Process Information

Process Information
Want to know what all those friggin' process are that are consuming all of your cycles & memory? Are they apps? viruses? spyware?

Here is a resource to identify what they are likely to be.

Moving Ideas Network

Issues, ideas & research in furtherance of "progressive" policy.

WolframTones: An Experiment in a New Kind of Music

Music generated from cellular automata as described in Wolfram's book, "A New Kind of Science". This is cool stuff, but it's not really a "new" kind of science...

RhymeZone rhyming dictionary and thesaurus

All you need to find appropriate rhymes for whatever rhyming challenge you face.

What is Body Burden?

What is Body Burden?
Lots of miscellaneous poisonous stuff out in the world...

The START Natural Language Question Answering System

Pretty cool. Ask questions, get answers, no Jeeves involved...

Konfabulator

In our continuing quest to bring you the absolute best of stuff, we'd like to show you this way cool tool.

Welcome | Science Commons

"Science depends upon the ability to observe, learn from, and test the work of others. Without effective access to data, materials and publications, the scientific enterprise becomes impossible.

Yet recent studies show a disturbing trend; increasing secrecy, cumbersome materials transfer agreements and complex licensing structures have made more difficult the sharing process on which science relies. "Because they were denied access to data, 28% of geneticists reported that they had been unable to confirm published research," a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports. And that is published research.

The problem here is not simply the commercialization of science; roadblocks to sharing hurt the development of commercial products too. Nor is it only a matter of expanded intellectual property rights and curtailed "research exemptions." The problem is more complex than that, and the solution must be as well. Our goal is to solve a specific part of the problem: the creation of a larger "Science Commons" built from private agreements, and technical standardization; the same "some rights reserved" approach adopted by Creative Commons, our parent organization."

Creative Commons

Creative Commons
A sensible (IMO) approach to sharing creative work.

MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home

MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home
MIT (among a few other schools) have published syllabi, course readings & assignments for many of their courses. A great way to learn something new. Of course, having contact with professors and other students, and having assignments evaluated, is not included.

The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
Heh. Science claims to have "laws", but they are "only" theories

General Chemistry Online: Home

General Chemistry Online: Home
Way cool. This is really excellent use of technology. If you want to learn some chemistry (without doing labs...), there is a lot here.

Black Swan

In Rotorua, there were many black swans, though I believe they are native to Australia.
Assertions about swan color have become a canonical example in logic; see, e.g., Falsifiability.
They are cute but have a bit of a nasty temperament.

Buddhabot Blog
Current (?) postings on the project.

The Buddha Bot
Chat with simulated enlightenment.

Boosting Research Site: Boosting.org

Boosting methods have proven remarkably successful in machine learning. This is a great clearinghouse of resources.

Our Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians
The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians
More on the topic...

Deist Founding Fathers
To those religious intolerants who argue that America was founded as a Christian nation, some actual facts showing quite the opposite. Most of the founding fathers were not exactly atheists, but it's hard to find a Christian among them.

Kids, don't fall for 'free press' hype
Another chill falls. Read:
Anybody who thinks they want to be a reporter should be required to read every single word of the opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia No. 04-3138. That's the one that ordered Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper to reveal their confidential sources to a federal grand jury.

Pay particular attention to pages 72 through 78. Why? Because they're blank, that's why. Even experienced constitutional lawyers are flabbergasted by this. But at the request of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor assigned to this inquiry, his most powerful arguments for why Miller and Cooper should break their promises to sources are too sensitive for any of us to see.

As one respected First Amendment expert was heard to say, "What is this, freakin' Albania?"

FRONTLINE: watch online | PBS
Many excellent PBS Frontline shows available to watch online, plus transcripts & other web stuff. High quality stuff!

The Long Tail: "Pre-filters" vs. "Post-filters"
Some interesting comments on distribution. "Filters" are tools to help you find what's right for you in the mass of stuff. Old world: filters are gatekeepers. New world: filters are advisors.

Andrew Sullivan reviews two books on Abu Ghraib
The Torture memos & chronology of abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Key quote:
I confess to finding this transparency both comforting and chilling, like the photographs that kick-started the public's awareness of the affair. Comforting because only a country that is still free would allow such airing of blood-soaked laundry. Chilling because the crimes committed strike so deeply at the core of what a free country is supposed to mean. The scandal of Abu Ghraib is therefore a sign of both freedom's endurance in America and also, in certain dark corners, its demise.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: June 12, 2005 - June 18, 2005 Archives
Off topic - his experience with the tablet PC. Summary: good!

Being Present, Mindfulness, Nowness, the Power of Now, and Self Remembering
Some pithy wisdom. Be here now.

COHE :: Ethics Overview
A secular perspective.

Ethics For A Secular Millenium
An interview with the Dalai Lama.

The Official Home Page of Grateful Dead
Still alive for us. All things deadhead.

DSIRE: DSIRE Home
Database of state incentives for renewable energy.

Cognitive Illusions and Pattern Hallucinations
A presentation I gave at U. of Iowa back in 1998 or so. I've had a keen interest in cognitive science for many years and this talk pulls together some behavioral finance work with other cognitive stuff.

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion
Well done!

Computer and Information Science Papers CiteSeer Publications ResearchIndex
Now has a new home. Scientific publications should be freely & widely available.

Turtle Beach - Video Advantage - Video Capture and Editing Solutions
Pretty snazzy way to capture video to digital.

:: CRUSHPAD ::
Want to make your own wine? Here's a San Francisco "community winery" where you can sign up for as little as one barrel (25 cases) for as low as $4,000, and get some premium grapes & assistance.

Welcome to Emotionally Focused Therapy!
Looks like a very sound approach to relationship counseling.

SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator
Need to get a submission in place for some crummy conference so that you can get another publication in place for your tenure review?
If you are in Computer Science, try this. The creators of this program were able to get a randomly generated paper accepted to a conference.

Augusta National Course Rating
While watching the Masters, I wondered just how hard is Augusta National? Turns out
it's not publically rated, but a "stealth rating" has been made. Answer: pretty hard.

The Atheism Web: Common arguments
Freethinking.

Fallacies
While on the subject of rhetoric... here is a list with pretty comprehensive descriptions of logical fallacies.

democracyarsenal.org
OK, back to politics for a while. A site for "foreign policy progressives", encouraging liberalism throughout the world. Recent post points out that Bush, regardless of whatever other valid criticisms you might want to level at him, deserves credit for promotion of democracy in the Middle East.

Anti-Phishing Working Group
Helping to stamp out "phishing" and "pharming" attacks.

Yahoo! Finance Weekend

The Teaching Company - Great Courses That Engage The Mind
Want to hear college course lectures from the most outstanding professors? Want to blow off exams & homework? This is your place! I've got a couple of these & love them. I'm a polymath by nature, interested in nearly everything (and with advanced degrees in Law, Finance and Engineering), and I bet I will be going through a lot of these.

LIBERAL FORUM - The Liberal talk & political forum
Little green softballs?

The Poor Man: Poker With Dick Cheney
Heh. Perspective on today's rhetoric.

Wampum: 2004 Koufax Award Winners
Find out who the readers think are the best lefty blogs.

Golf - Golf Instruction - Dan Shauger
Probably can't do damage to my mess of a swing...

Mercury Rising
Yet another lefty blog.

Standard & Poor's Hot Topics
Switching the indices to using free-float rather than total shares outstanding.

Linus Geisler - Doctor and patient [5]: How real is reality?

Custom Golf Clubs by Pinemeadow Golf - Factory Direct to You
OK, want some nice clubs for much less than you would spend at the pro shop?

The New Yorker: Online Only
I am saddened by the realization that my beloved country is now actively promoting a policy of torture. We strongly support several other nations which are known to engage in torture, e.g. Egypt, and appear to use their "security forces" for torture when convenient. Euphemistically known as "extraordinary rendition".

Primary documents are available at the above link, including correspondence between John Yoo & William Taft, and between Taft and Gonzales.

See also Peter Brooks' deconstruction of the Bybee memo.

The United States used to hold moral high ground. This administration has squandered that, and set us back at best generations; at worst, permanently.

Defending this country & providing security for Americans is an essential role of the government. But using that goal as a pretext for abuse is indefensible.

PMS & PMDD Message Boards - Home

TheJapanesePage.com - Learn Japanese for FREE -- How to Wow! with language, culture, kanji, and grammar
If you are interested in Japanese. It's a remarkably challenging language, substantially due to the following:
- there are only a few syllables, and very little spoken inflection, thus the beginner hears a lot of ambiguity and it's hard to parse
- there are two "alphabets" (plus some other ways of writing)
- there are about 2000 pictograms (kanji) which typically have more than one pronunciation & meaning each

Pronunciation isn't all that hard. Basic grammar is pretty easy as well, so it's not very difficult to get to where you can communicate a little bit.

Number is different from Quantity
a short essay by Gregory Bateson, 1978.

TheNewMexicoChannel.com - Closings has good and prompt information on local school delay information.

Current time around the World and standard time zones map of the world
nice to have handy.

Nobody's Business: Pretty Words vs Reality
A detailed comparison of G.W.Bush's second inaugaral address with some of the realities of our government's activities in torture, rape and murder of "detainees".

The Simon Laven Page is a fairly comprehensive source for information about chatterbots. Having written an Eliza clone lo nigh unto 30 years ago, I'm still interested in the field. A lot of amazing progress has been made, and there are a lot of tools to help you build your own.

Kumeu River Wines Online
About screwcaps for premium wines. My favorite winery, David Coffaro is bottling a large fraction of wine with screwcaps, after many years of using synthetic cork in an effort to eliminate the frequency of tainted bottles.

The Kiwis are at the forefront of the revolution; see the
New Zealand Screwcap Wine Seal Initiative

The Decembrist is a well-thought out lefty blog. Not shrill and paranoid.