Ads

 Hot Wheels

 Learn to anticipate

 Don't drive sleepy

Chocolate with whiskey

Resurrect your aspirations.

[I believe in advertising]

If Superheroes Were Hipsters

[CollegeHumor]

Art from Shadows

Substance from light and shade. She's brilliant.

[Kumi Yamashita]

Bigger Than Twilight

HuffPo lists the 15 bestselling books in history, excluding the Bible. A surprise that shouldn't really be a surprise when you think about it: Chinese dictionary at #3. A surprise that isn't a surprise but I wish it were: Harry Potter at #everything.

[Huffington Post]

More Famous Than A Yankee Can

The "Jay-Z Effect":

A curious phenomenon has emerged at the intersection of fashion, sports and crime: dozens of men and women who have robbed, beaten, stabbed and shot at their fellow New Yorkers have done so while wearing Yankees caps or clothing.

I break the rules, so I don't care

[NYT]

The Man Who Makes Your iPhone

 A focus piece on Terry Gou (pronounced "gwo" - so shouldn't it be "Guo"?), founder of Foxconn and supporting actor in every Jackie Chan crime fighting movie. Gems include:

Part of Burson-Marsteller's plan was granting Bloomberg Businessweek's request for unprecedented access to Foxconn's factory floors, worker dorms, suicide-help-line operators, and Gou himself, who in the course of a three-hour interview riffed on everything from Warren Buffett ("He's too old") to the uselessness of business degrees ("You can't read a book to learn to swim") to Steve Jobs ("I forced him to give me his business card"). Gou also mocked New York bankers who "see the Hudson River and say, 'I'm a king of the world.'"

Some parts of his story are actually fairly inspiring:

In the early '80s, Gou made his first big push into the U.S., visiting 32 states over the course of an 11-month tour. He dropped in on companies unannounced, like a door-to-door salesman, arriving in a "big and safe" Lincoln Town Car he rented in every city. Once, to keep costs low, Gou slept in the backseat. In Raleigh, N.C., he booked himself into a motel close to an IBM facility. After three days of hanging around, he got an appointment and came away with a firm order for connectors.

Oh, the 80s. What wasn't possible? If only someone would produce a motivational peel-away calendar featuring daily nuggets of Terry Gou's business acumen in time for the holiday season.

 What's your question, fool?

[Bloomberg Businessweek]

Revenge of the Introvert

Psychology Today publishes the [cover] story of my life.

Although, not so sure about this...

"With a biological makeup that enables them to see positive emotional stimuli as a distraction when they are focused on another task, introverts are good at resisting all distraction."

Step 1: List gear. Step 2: eBay

Attached: illegibly shrunk version of the three-foot wall chart that Team America uses to try to keep track of all the equipment it can't afford to purchase or develop because half the federal defense budget was spent on sending this PDF file to Tyco.

[Wired]

Food for the Troops

A Taste of Home in Foil Packets and Powder shows the rations given to troops in Afghanistan. Canada's actually looks really good to me.

Apps > Songs

[Asymco]

Stuff White Guys Like

 

[OK Cupid]

Fresh

Willow Smith, 9 years old, has a single out.
(Lulu Cheng, 24 years old, opened a pack of gum without scissors today.)

John Edwards Dethroned

Levi Johnston is now the least popular person ever polled by Public Policy Polling in any state, ever.
Non-surprise of the week: Levi's approval ratings with Democrats are four times as high as with Republicans.

[NYDN]

Bonus: an oldie, but I'm not over it. This is a major reason Levi polls so highly with me...

"Throughout the years I spent with them, when Sarah got home from her office—almost never later than five and sometimes as early as noon—she usually walked in the door, said hello, and then disappeared into her bedroom, where she would hang out. Sometimes she’d take an hour-long bath. Other times she sat on the living-room couch in her two-piece pajama set from Walmart—she had all the colors—with her hair down, watching house shows and wedding shows on TV. She always wanted things and she wanted other people to get them for her. If she wanted a movie, Bristol and I would go to the video store; if she wanted food, we’d get her something to eat, like a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell."

Happiness

Good Ads

For spectators with strong emotions.

Making French easy.

Wikipedia's Most Vandalized Pages

Least surprising candidates include:

• Beaver
• Justin Bieber
• Michael Jackson
• Soulja Boy Tell 'Em
• Niger
• Kazakhstan
• Texas
• September 11 Attacks
• Halo 2
• Halo 3
• Nickelback
• iPhone (my work has paid off)
• Jersey Shore
• Asian American

Apparently The Matrix is such a hit that it warrants its own category:

• Matrixism vandals
  • The Matrix (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (Matrixism)
  • List of religions (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (Matrixism)
  • New religious movement (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (Matrixism)

[Wikipedia]

Origins of NFL Team Names

Oakland Raiders

Chet Soda, Oakland’s first general manager, sponsored a name-the-team contest in 1960. Helen A. Davis, an Oakland policewoman, submitted the winning entry, Señors, and was rewarded with a trip to the Bahamas. The nickname, an allusion to the old Spanish settlers of northern California, was ridiculed in the weeks that followed, and fans also claimed that the contest was fixed. Scotty Stirling, a sportswriter for the Oakland Tribune who would later become the team’s general manager, provided another reason to abandon the nickname. “That’s no good,” Stirling said. “We don’t have the accent mark for the n in our headline type.” Responding to the backlash, Soda and the team’s other investors decided to change the team’s nickname to Raiders, which was a finalist in the contest along with Lakers.

Welcome to Oakland

[mental_floss]

Beds

This is how I sleep.

This is how my boyfriend sleeps.

[Toxel]

Dirty Car Windows

Anything is a canvas.



[Scott Wade]

Preach It

“Cause you know life is what we make it and a chance is like a picture, it’d be nice if you’d just take it.”

-Drake

One of the more substantive rappers today. Related note: all cameras should be sold with a little sticker that says "JUST TAKE IT." I don't see how the 10-second freeze-and-hold prep times would improve a picture, unless you're trying to time the breeze.

Taking a breather after coming up with "I love your sushi roll, hotter than wasabi"