I’ve found good reading recently at MetaJohn, another weblog I’ve found through my referrer logs. John claims Kestrel’s Nest as a source of design inspiration. Thanks!

The first global earthquake risk map has been released by the Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program. Several years in the making, the map has few suprises, but does help drive the point home that half of the world’s largest cities are in an area of high risk. I wish there was a much larger version of the map there, though. It looks like South Carolina is in an earhquake zone, but I can’t really see.

One week from today: You will never seea Moon like this again, even if the world does not end seven days later. The rest of Bendy Pig is worth checking out, too.

Jorn over at Robot Wisdom has removed all weblog minibanners from his site. I found these very nice, especially the ones that changed on a regular basis, to show “headlines” or whatever. There is a similar set of minibanners over at the Weblog Monitor, but those are stored in a way to make them harder to change on a regular basis (and often inaccessible altogether!). I’ve kept my favorites down to the lower left, and will keep them as long as the owners maintain them.

UPDATE: Mike at LarkFarm now has a page of minibanners. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again: LarkFarm is an amazing weblog, and I’ve found nearly everything he’s posted both interesting and related to my own interests.

Cosma’s home on the net punishes you for using Microsoft Internet Explorer by playing Shatner’s Mr. Tamborine Man in the background. I haven’t explored this whole site yet, but it looks very interesting, not the least because each section is named with a snippit of Talking Heads lyrics. Cosma was a physics grad student in Madison, WI, but is now in Santa Fe, NM. Physics is only one of Cosma’s many interests, as you will discover.

Pamie learned a few lessons over the week-end.
5. Don’t goof off at the top of metal staircases. And the worst is when you’re goofing like you’re going to fall down the stairs, and then you do. Just act like a grown-up for once in your damn life and sit still.

The Gallery of the Absurd features advertisements and products that are just weird.

John Perry thinks like I do and has written a passionate Plea for the Horizontally Organized. He begins by talking about the plight of left-handedness. I’m both left handed and horizontally organized, so I guess this counts double for (or against…) me. There are other light essays on his site as well.

The English newspaper The Guardian has been publishing a cons ice history of the millennium over the last year and a half, covering two years of history per day. Today’s section includes, among mention of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy Assassination, the introduction of Dr. Who. Full archives are on-line, and the medieval years are highly recommended.

Recently, my office got an ADSL net connection, so I’ve been revisiting all the high-bandwidth sites I had to avoid before (during my coffee breaks, of course). My favorite is My Boot’s Movie Theater and its annex. The theater has several high-caliber movie clips of spoofs, home-videos, and other mostly funny pieces. The annex is a jumping-off point to other worth-while films, such as those offered by TrailerVision (The trailer’s better than the movie, especially when there is no movie.). The theater is just a small part of the whole My Boot site, run by Craig Mitchell of St. Louis. My Boot also includes the entertaining story “She Hates My Futon “, about dating and relationships set in and around St. Louis. If you like what Craig’s done, you can send him an entertaining Alpha-numeric page.