dsng.net - the daryl sng blog

Iceberg lettuce safe (via Popgadget ) Zodiac looks v promising . Here's a 6-6-6 tribute to David Fincher via Kottke : 6 of his best commercials, 6 of his best music videos, and his 6 feature films. Still can't believe Mitch Hedberg died so young. Here Jesse Kornbluth reviews Hedberg . Mixed race, pretty face?

Finally managed to upgrade my Blogger blogs (apparently dsng.net had too many posts to upgrade previously!) So here are some links. Why do we think good writers should have good morals ? In-n-Out Burger's Secret Menu . The hidden obscenity on Bill Ripken's Fleer baseball card .

G rammies last night. The Eagles tribute. Lionel Ritchie. Apparently they were going to party like it was 1979. But boy, I love Smokey and "Tracks Of My Tears" is one hell of a song. Anyway, on to the links. Afternoon naps can reduce heart disease. Speaking of hearts, here's how to go green for Valentine's Day . And at your wedding . Gargalesis (the 'heavy tickle') is one of the best new words I've learnt in a long time Ralph Fiennes gets frisky on the plane . Apparently he's English and he's patient. Why do we see faces in cheese sandwiches ? How the brain "sees" things always fascinates me.

Just dumping all my surfing into one place for reference at another time... Anna Nicole Smith gets shunned by Mexia , her hometown. That reminds me of the joke about Mexia : Two Aggies pass through Mexia, arguing over the correct pronunciation of the city (one arguing for "muh-hay-uh" – the proper pronunciation; the other insisting on "mex-ee-uh" – the incorrect one). They stop in at a local eating establishment to settle the matter, asking, "how do you pronounce the name of this place?" The waitress responds, very slowly, "Deh-ree Kween." The Painted Veil deserves some Oscar noms , says the NY Times. If you want to join the Mile High Club ... apparently it's not against FAA regulations 24 has a deleterious effect on soldiers . I've mentioned the Tesla Roadster before, but sadly according to the website it's sold out for 2007. *marks 2008 down in calendar*. Ads for tampons, razors, pregnancy test kits etc. get a lot less squeamish ...

Groundhog Day! Ever had the feeling of deja vu? (Pause) Ever had the feeling of deja vu? On the difference between camera shake and poor focussing . Top 10 Flickr hacks Debbie Cai watches Singapore v Thailand Who knew Sidney Sheldon had both an Oscar and a Tony?

Man, the new version of Blogger (which I can't switch to, apparently, because I have "too many entries") might be up, but old Blogger was down for a while... so here's slightly delayed links. Was the fall of the Tang Dynasty caused in part by changes in climate ? Yang Guifei gets all the blame, but a new study considers the impact of prolonged droughts. John Campbell and Ed Glaeser (my former professor, for full disclosure) did a recruitment video for the Harvard Economics Department that was less than successful. So naturally it spurred parodies . (via Leiter Reports ) You really don't need all that many skin care products . Or so say dermatologists. The secret cities of the Soviet Union . Wesley Autrey's subway rescue has to be one of the coolest stories of 2007, even if the year is only a few days old. My box in a box . In response to Timberlake. The Simpsons as anime characters .

G rammatical peeve of the day from conversations overheard on the MRT: "fats" is plural if you're referring to different kinds of fats - saturated, monounsaturated etc. "Fats" is not plural if you're referring to the spare tyre around your stomach. (Non-grammatical peeve: quasi-anorexic women speaking about fat (or 'fats' - ugh) that don't exist.) Oh, another peeve spotted on the MRT (see photo of ad above): use of the open inverted comma (aka the single quote mark) when you should use an apostrophe , such as before a year. I don't mind the Prince-style use of "4" for "for" that much - it's a bit naff and dated, but tolerable - but that quote mark really grates with me. I know - I complained about it earlier this month , complete with link to a typography page , but I figured I might as well drum the point home...

In which I just put up all the random articles I've found interesting over the last few days: The Least Essential Albums of 2006 . An article that taught me about Neil Hamburger . Inbred dogs in Japan , land of fads. Very sad. And the part about dogs being mated with their offspring is just gross. David Pogue lists the top 10 ideas in technology . I like the flash drive fuel gauge. Regret the Error lists the best corrections of 2006. I particularly like the fake corrections ( IN previous issues of this newspaper, we may have given the impression that the people of France were snail swallowing garlic munching surrender-monkeys whose women never bother to shave their armpits. We now realise that the French football team can stop the Portuguese – and in particular their cheating whingeing winger Cristiano Ronaldo – from getting to the World Cup Final which we so richly deserved to do.) Speaking of which, Kill Duck Before Serving , the book about New York Times corrections, is pretty ...

I love Slate's the Explainer column, and this week's collection of the questions the Explainer couldn't answer is pretty funny. (Sample: "yea i have my own 620 gang and i dont know how to run it to make not look like a little bitch gang joke it is just me and my friend how do i run it?") Personal ads from the London Review of Books . Literate, wry, self-deprecating. Saparmurat Niyazov, old-school dictator , passes away. The NY Times' "Fantastically well-developed personality cult" barely scratches the surface - but then it seems hard to describe someone who created a statue of himself that rotated to face the sun. In case you ever needed to buy pantaloons . Or bloomers. The most disturbing part is that they offer "split crotch bloomers".

Some pieces on design: The roller toaster looks great. An awesome piece of Singaporean design. A rave review of the Tesla Roadster . I hope someday to get a chance to drive the car. It's really nice to see that it replaces the internal combustion engine not just for environmental reasons but for performance. Ten tips for top type . I particularly like point #3, on using typographer's quotes (and apostrophes): "Here's one thing the program can't do for you: It can't tell an apostrophe from a single open-quote at the start of a word. That's how you end up with a backwards apostrophe before an abbreviated year ('98, '06), or with the two apostrophes in "rock 'n' roll" looking like mirror images of each other, instead of identical." The backwards apostrophe always annoys me. Trans-krypt: setting song lyrics to graphic design . Which is where the "A Design for Life" art comes from.

Global ecosystems 'face collapse' (from the Living Planet Report ) The conservative Weekly Standard places a Democrat on the cover and writes a glowing report . More on invisibility , from Popular Science . Salon's Broadsheet blog notes the furore over a Peekaboo pole-dancing kit being inadvertently put in the children's toys and games section at Tesco. Yep = iPhoto for PDFs (via Popagandhi ). Nifty.

History Shots . What crisp presentation of information. An old one, but Fiona Apple is a sweetheart . Weird Al Yankovic, and what he owes to MTV , as well as why he's not weird.

Gary Brolsma, the Numa Numa guy, sells out . Where the phrase "hunka hunka burning love" comes from . I particularly like the titbit that "in 2005, an Australian woman stabbed her partner in the back, thigh, and shoulder with a pair of scissors because he played the song too many times. His injuries were classified as 'non-life threatening'". Slate has a slideshow on various kinds of balustrades - this particular one links to I.M. Pei's work at the National Gallery of Art.

H eard Mousse T's "Horny as a Dandy", the mashup of Mousse T's "Horny" and the Dandy Warhols' "Bohemian Like You" on the radio today, and decided to look up the video. Meanwhile, some random links. Dane Cook is overrated . Advergaming spoofs . Sorryassbabydaddies . I just thought the domain name was funny.

China stops the practice of having strippers at a funeral . Ah, traditional Asian values. Beautiful people are more likely to give birth to girls , apparently. Kobayashi breaks another eating record. 58 brats ! Obliterating the 2nd-placed guy (45 brats) and the world record (the dimunitive Sonya Thomas had held that with 34.5 brats). The guy's so far ahead of his competition it's like watching Tiger Woods in his prime. Knee Defender to counter those annoying people who recline their airplane seats too much.

No soap, radio ! On one of the most popular joke traditions. The New Yorker looks at the long tail The Pedant's Revolt looks like the kind of book I'd like - all about misconceptions and myths Speaking of things that are false, the urban legend that Alabama redefined pi is false .

Book/band mashup titles . I like "The Natalie Merchant of Venice" and "The Sun Also RZA". On the Chinese gaming business . Actually the entire issue of the Escapist on the subject is good to read.

Slate reimagines classic novels with pulp covers Or you could spell out the whole of Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" in cookies Meat grown in a lab . On the one hand, this has a weird-science feel about it. On the other - it would solve a lot of ethical dilemmas, such as concerns for overfishing or living conditions on farms. A funny interpretation of "Sugar, We're Going Down" and its mumbled lyrics. Meanwhile, the Iraqis love Lionel Richie . "Richie says he was told Iraqis were playing 'All Night Long,' on the streets the night U.S. tanks rolled into the country in 2003."

Hawai'i re-honours the humuhumunukunukuapuaa as the state fish. I suppose the humum ... humuh ... rectangular triggerfish forgot to pay its state-fish-license-renewal-fee. I've said it before, I think, but I want a solar cellphone charger . Especially for nights in the jungle when the phone's running out of batteries. "Hotel California": not a song about Satanism .

Clive Thompson writes in the NY Times Magazine about Google and China . The 100 Unsexiest Men in the World A Gnarls Barkley interview in the Grauniad (okay, the Observer). Good to see them get the publicity.