Robert Altman, RIP. The Director of Nashville, Mash, and A Prarie Home Companion has passed on.

The Power of PowerPoint The US Army loves it and posts a lot of PPT material online. It has some odd uses: A few weeks after Jeffrey's Nov. 14 burial....soldiers arrived at her home and presented an hourlong PowerPoint presentation on the details. Sometimes it doesn't work: Flaws Cited in Effort To Train Iraqi Forces As previously noted here, design guru Edward Tufte has issues with the wisdom and effects of using PowerPoint. Of course, others disagree.

Autodidactic goodies on a budget: Free computer books and online lectures, seminars and instructional materials from a variety of renowned institutions.

E is for Engage. Captain Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise sings the Alphabet Song.

Fritz Haber's story is the story of the double edged sword of science. He won the Nobel prize in 1918 for his groundbreaking work in breaking the nitrogen cycle for Germany's WWI efforts, but it's been estimated that two out of every five people now living would not have been born if it weren't for artificial fertilizers created using his process. He also spent much of the war developing poison gases; first chlorine (after watching its first use, Haber's wife committed suicide) and later Zyklon B (the cyanide insecticide later used against his fellow Jews in concentration camps). He died alone and in poverty in Switzerland. But the lessons of his life haven't quite been forgotten.

Crime and Punishment, Online Style Long a bastion of metaverse fantasies, avatars competing for style, and commercial dreams, Second Life has become a phenomenon. Lately, though, things are going a bit awry. Hacking attempts have been common, with the latest shutting things down only a few days ago. To address this crime, the SL crew is looking into creating a virtual FBI. Dibs on the Scully avatar.

Ottobib does what it sets out to do very well: take a list of ISBN numbers, the international standard book number system, and generates citations for you. It's as if it is automatically making bibliographies. (ha! get it!) Currently supporting the MLA, APA, and Chicago Manual of Style citation formats.

Wierd tanks: Tank design has pretty much come to the point where all tanks are alike. They are mostly 60 ton machines with single turret with a 120-125 mm main gun. A number of different approaches has been tried through history, tough. One is the the heavy multiturreted Soviet T-35 from the 30s. Another take is the Swedish S-tank from the 60s, which did away with the turret altogether. A bit more conventional, but pretty much a one-nation tailor-made design is the Israeli Merkava, which is balanced heavily in favour of crew survivability with the engine in front and the ability to carry along a few infantrymen. The strangest of the bunch is the Russian WWI Czar tank, but just a tad impractical, standing 9 meters tall.

Sick, scum, bloodstained trash [see more tags] . . . . Now that O.J.'s book has been cancelled, the book's Amazon page has become a virtual spitoon memorial wall for this "ill-considered project." One thing's for sure: O.J. did it! Or he didn't. Well, you can discuss it on over 320 forums. Or here, for that matter.

WhichBudget.com: a site that helps you find a low cost airline flight for your destination

"I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."Film-maker Shane O'Sullivan has spent the last three years investigating the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968. He has uncovered new evidence that at least three CIA agents were in the hotel the night he died. Tonight we [BBC's Newsnight programme] show the findings and ask could CIA agents have had something to do with the murder of RFK?

Roger Eagle is one of the great, unsung heroes of the British music scene. Over a period of twenty five years or so, he was responsible for not one, not two, but three legendary music venues, each of which defined their particular era. Still fondly remembered.

The Harvard University Worklife Wizard , created by an international team of journalists, economists, and statisticians, is Barbara Ehrenreich's wet dream. It's also a fantastic resource that has flown pretty much under everyone's radar. The Worklife Survey drives the constantly-revised, constantly-refined Salary Comparison Tool, which is always hungry for more data about employment from around the world. And when they say they want data from everyone, they mean it-- there's even a VIP Salary Checker that pits the wages of the Yankees against those of the Red Sox. (Plus if you take the survey, you can apparently earn a chance to win a trip to South Africa). Personally, I love the Workplace Horror Stories (and there's a competition there too). I can't look at a nail clipper the same way now.

Sites that know what you want before you do The web is transforming from a paradigm of self-orchestrated searching to a world in which your shopping cart is full before you login.

What Makes a Muslim Radical? Gallup polls 9000 Muslims in 9 countries and separates the Moderates from the Radicals. Most of the results are counter to "Conventional Wisdom". The most important stuff is on the last page of 5, including the methodology for deciding who was radical and who was moderate (in small print). Let's all get out our copies of How to Lie With Statistics and see if this survey is fatally flawed, shall we?

According to CNN, the US Mint is coming out with a new dollar. Apparently collectors just hung onto the Sacagawea dollar coin. Let's also not forget what happened to the Susan B. Anthony (Wikipedia) which many thought was a quarter. Speaking of, not only is the Mint making the dollar over again, they're taking the idea that worked with the Quarter. They're going to put different presidents on the new dollar. More coins, if you thought I didn't say "dollar" enough.

I Know I'm Not Alone: 10 minute embedded video interview of Michael Franti regarding his jaunt to Iraq (and Palestine/Israel), originally broadcast on CBC's The Hour.

Michael ("Cosmo Kramer") Richards loses his mind. On stage at the Laugh Factory in L.A. last Friday, Richards flipped out at heckler and launched into a stream of racist taunts, all caught on video. The Seinfeld Curse strikes again.

Galactus is Coming! Galactus is coming to eat your planet, and nothing can be done to stop him! There is only one way to be saved!

Wikipedia Brown - a minimystery for the internet generation.