Clogs - Blogging Today's Clipmarks

1-7-06 - Feeds & Eats

dirty2feet has an interesting strategy -- instead of just clipping something from a page, she's clipping feeds, bringing a whole host of links into a single clip. the politics of crime is a political blog from the left that features not only interesting reports about Bush surveillance and the FBI's relationship with hit men, but hilarious videos like the drunk driving video where the guy actually recites the alphabet backwards and the cop says "Amazing... I've never seen anyone do that before." You can get a lot of content in a clip.

mamato has been clipping big-picture articles about war, society, and global warming, and they're all worth checking out. The Struggle Against Ourselves is a sobering speech about the changes we have to make in our lives to hope to survive the end of fossil fuels by George Monbiot, award-winning British journalist. The Rise of the Participatory Panopticon is about how we're creating our own Big Brother with mobile phones, placing ourselves in a constant, perfect prison.

Speaking of prisons, the people who we met in adamc's terrifying clip Nearly 200 visitors hostage in Brazil prison have been released. Some good news to counteract sobering tales such as acrv56's barbarism (a teacher in Afghanistan has been beheaded for teaching girls).

It isn't to be forgotten that the Consumer Electronics Show is rocking and rolling Las Vegas; kmandel has Bill Gates' Kenote Remarks from the event. The two big product announcements so far have been Intel's entertainment-focused computers, Viiv, which will show movies in theaters a week or two after they're released, and Urge, Microsoft's answer to iTunes. Still waiting to see what Google ushers forth at the end of the convention. (More CES clips: CES.)

skwirlinator has a clip of wishes from around the world -- Wishing well -- that's pretty entertaining. Right now I'm wishing for some food so I'm signing off.

Until next time, keep clipping!

1-6-06 - Jesus is my Dealer

Sometimes, one clip just shines above them all. And for today, that would have to be sravi2k1's Jesus healed 'using cannabis'. Turns out that "kaneh-bosem," contained in the anointing oil used by Jesus and his disciples, was a cannabis extract.

To be fair, this was reported in High Times. But the comments, from the aptly-named Homo Jesus, glennlopez and loribing, find the J-Man's alleged herb usage plausible.

Jesus is all over the news today, as several clippers picked up on larryni's Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest. Yes, it's a real case, with plantiff Luigi Cascioli up against Enrico Righi--childhood friends from rural Italy, the first an athiest and the second a priest. Does it get better than this? (religion)

Well, it might be getting a little better, as jklugman reports that the US Has End in Sight on Iraq Rebuilding. Just $18.4 billion to go! The article reports that oil production in Iraq is down markedly from before Gulf War II (where did that name go?), which jibes with rcharleston's clips about Peak Oil. One of the scariest: Kuwait's biggest field starts to run out of oil.

::sigh:: So we're starting out 2006 with a pothead Jesus, a whole lot less oil, and Sharon hit by a stroke (which might mean a new Israeli P.M., which might mean war with Iran). Good stuff. Now we see the violence inherent in the system (kurioses).

Until next time, keep clipping.

1-5-06 - Skank Apes & Chicken Heads

How can one lead a full life without visiting websites called "Imprudent Marriage," "Headphone Sex," and "Nasty Skank Ape?" The answer is, you can't, which is why tronella clipped them for you -- music links. tronella also has a photo of some cool graffiti in England: Nine Tree Hill.

For more photos, check the always reliable (and now sober) skwirlinator, whose Weird Photos clip includes shots the world's longest ear hair and the McChicken head, which also got selected for our viewing pleasure by sayderrick (encrusted chicken head). Thanks, guys, we were eating.

Now a chickenhead means a "difficult woman" in the world of hiphop, but up until yesterday you wouldn't know that from Clipmarks because we didn't have any clips tagged "hiphop". That changed with ozren's entry into the fray; his hiphop clips include reviews of a group called Birdy Nam Nam... which is actually a pet name for the Chicken Head.

Oooh, that one was too easy.

New user Homo Jesus is bringing some teenage drama to Clipmarks: B's blog about turbo. And while we shouldn't support it, we kind of do, becuase it's fun.

Until next time, keep clipping.

1-4-06 - Saurisquos

There are some words that just work better in languages that aren't English. Like, for example, dinosaurs, which is a lot better as "Dinosaurios." But even better than is the full proper Spanish for it -- "dinosaurios saurisquios." cotorreandoclub has it clipped for you in paleontologia.

People are trying to get their money in order for 2006. It's a little late to make those last-minute charity contributions for '05, but Dargie's clip Year-end money moves also includes links to a free credit report and tips for cutting costs. Meanwhile, SteveJohnSteele's got some surprising news about a shrinking debt burden, if you can believe that, among UK consumers (Consumer appetite for debt wanes). Maybe they're getting financed by the earnings of Alex Tew, creator of milliondollarhomepage.com, a genius idea clipped by Wordhewer (Cash pours in for student with $1 million Web idea). Tew split a web page into a million pixels and sold each as advertising space for a dollar. They just make better entrepreneurs these days.

larryni clipped two pieces of mythic news today -- about AC/DC and Jesus. AC/DC's rumored "first recording," laid down in 1974, does in fact exist, in bootleg LP form -- only 200 copies worldwide (Earliest AC/DC Recording Really Does Exist). Meanwhile, we're going to know very soon whether Jesus really existed, because it's been ordered by an Italian court! (They're the best kind of court, really: Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest.)

Finally, wideglide49, who got points yesterday for his drunken-monkey icon, gets more today for clipping some cool art. ozren and npclips have also been keeping Clipmarks healthily arty with pieces by Debra Hurd and Jean-Manuel Duvivier. I miss ottomagus' Burning Skull, though.

Until next time, keep clipping!

12-3-06 - From Spam to Monkeys

Something important to consider at Clipmarks is how much of your own stuff you can clip before you become a spammer. radi8 seems to be one of the good guys: his self-clip (Rolli's news on the web) is a good blog with a servicable web 2.0 definition. But a two weeks ago we had welhitamy's clip Streamload Online Storage, which Wordhewer called "spam" on.

Maybe it's all that spam that's crashing your Windows machine, in which case you might want to check out larryni's Uptime for Windows 2000, 2003, XP and NT. It won't solve your problems, but it will give you the date that you last started up your computer. If it's yesterday, and you didn't shut it down yourself, that's bad. (Type "net statistics server" at the command prompt.) My computer was last started 1/2/06 at 4:39pm, for those who want to mock.

ngorchilov has plenty of advice to start the new year out right from Russell Simmons, Mark Cuban, and someone named Sergio Zyman, who should be obeyed just because of his name. You can check those out at business.

ajg23's recent clip about the power nap was echoed by npclips (power napping), and in other health news, if you're interested in putting healthy bacteria back in your gut, check deps06's NATRENS PROBIOTICS -- good picture too.

Finally, a hearty welcome to new clipper wideglide49, who so far has the best. Userpic. Ever.(It's a drunken monkey.) (In a straw hat.) (And it appears to be drinking Glenfiddich.)

Until next time, keep clipping!

1-2-06 - It Was Rum that Did It

Clipmarks rang in 2006 in typical, random fashion. How random? Well, a new user called asiankitty68 (I, too, thought she might be a naughty spammer) is clipping about pirates. No indication yet as to why, although there seems to be a wedding in Florida involved.

Meanwhile, Clipmarks regular skwirlinator went out on New Year's, came home, composed a blog entry full of exclamation points, and clipped the whole thing as Yes, I'm drunk and it is rum that did it! We can't condone this sort of behavior, skwirl.

One the more serious side, those predictions for 2006 keep coming, with srenshaw grabbing a great LATimes article (Media & Technology Trends for 2006) that focuses heavily on Google. This Friday, January 6th, Larry Page will be giving the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and may take the opportunity to announce one of Google's sweeping rumored offerings for the year: a PC, sold at Walmart, running on Google's own operating system.

It's going to be quite a week. Until Friday, keep clipping!

12-31-05 - Happy New Year!

If you're on Clipmarks right now, hopefully its on a mobile device and you're at a party.

Happy New Year!

Until next year, keep on clipping, and thanks to the clippers who have appeared and commented on this blog.

12-30-05 - A Helluva Year

By almost any standard, 2005 was a horrific year, rife with floods and death. People seem a little bit more enthusiastic about 2006.

Some funny prognostications for the year are at jrose320's Tech predictions, while some more serious ones, courtesy John Batelle, are at egoldstein's predictions for 2006. There are 180 television series and 2821 movies slated for production next year according to skwirlinator's IMdb Movies For 2006--highlights inclue "Yo Momma," a reality show in which Wilmer Valderrama will travel the country in search of America's best trash-talkers, and, of course, the Keanu Reeves-driven, Waking Life-style A Scanner Darkly.

For those of us who want to start businesses in 2006 (which, judging by the number of clips on web 2.0, startups and business strategies, is a fair number), frgregoryj has No one starts with a masterpiece, a reassuring and insightful clip to check out.

And if you'd like to not pay any income tax in 2006, dirty2feet , who has racked up 200+ clips since yesterday, has The Federal Mafia for you. In it, Mr. Irwin Schiff explains how income tax is voluntary and the federal government has hoodwinked us all. By the way, if you want to write via street to Mr. Schiff, you can do so C\O Las Vegas Detention Center.

Very important: browseupchief has a clip of a very large, or perhaps very small but well-positioned, or perhaps some kind of large-scale facsimile of, a chicken: chiecken with big karbolet. Great clip name too.

Just one more day to go. Hopefully no plague of frogs.

Until next time, keep clipping!

12-29-05 - Hacks

The word hack has had an enlightened history. You used to hack a chicken's head off; then you were a hack if you wrote for a bad newspaper; now you're a hack if you are an add-on to Googlemaps. One of the most interesting variants of the word to come about is the lifehack, a simple strategy or device for making your life more efficient. There's a whole lot of them on lifehack.org, including what ajg23 clipped: the power nap. (Although dirty2feet might quarrel with its effectiveness: Sleep Deprivation.) Shugarbear has a clip on a retro, all-paper PDA called the PocketMod that is also supposed to make your life much improved.

Now, it might be considered a lifehack to get out of the way of a large train, and to that end chela13's clip (Why do trains seem to blast their horns so randomly and so often?) is worth a look. It contains a glossary of what locomotive horn blasts mean (it's a little like morse code) so that you can back up when you hear the signal to "back up."

And if you consider free Mac OS X software a lifehack, then tootmalloy totally has you covered. It's like spam, but not quite.

Todays new clippers include littledino, who brought Hebrew into the fray (המדריך לאבטחת המחשב), and edjukatr, who gets points for the username and the following clipped photos: Woman on Sport Bike, Robot Crushing Car. Those are incidentally the names of edjukatr's first two abums.

Back to hacks, the best lifehack of all is, of course, a good solid antidepressant, like the ones greg606 alerted us to today: Antidepressants May Boost Brain Growth. Turns out that rats given Prozac get "denser" brains. But are those brains thinking good thoughts, is the question...

Until next time, keep clipping.

12-28-05 - New Year, New You, Finite Amount of Energy

2006 is pretty much here, and the wrap-ups keep on coming -- kjellbergsweden has one on Best Web Companies and Innovators of 2005, where it's not much of a surprise that Yahoo came up big (Flickr, del.icio.us and konfabulator, oh my). Maybe more of a surprise is the pick of 37 Signals as the best Little Web Co of the year -- the company scores big points for its project management web application Basecamp and its heavily-trafficked (what a strange-looking word) Signal vs. Noise blog.

adamc caught the Word of the Year for 2005 -- integrity. Click to determine how it was selected.

london2020, one of the Spanish-speaking members of the Clipmarks community who didn't get a mention yesterday, today brings us a point-and-click web slideshow -- drag your folder in and watch your pictures go straight to the web (create online slide shows). This clip is in English, actually, making london2020 our first Spanglish clipper.

roostishaw entered the fray with a real-time translator in Ajax! What genius. That's the sort of thing you didn't even know you needed. It harkens back to the wonderful babelfish of yore, before freetranslation.com came around and ruined everything (AJAX Translator: Text translation in real time).

But the Clip of the Day most certainly goes to balachandar for his Master Equation for All Life Processes. This is big. Scientists have found a golden rule that maps a living being's mass to its metabolism, and it's simple enough to write out and understand: an plant or animal's metabolic rate appears to be proportional to its mass to the 3/4 power times a function of its body temperature. This helps explain why elephants and mice, with vastly different live spans, have essentially the same number of heartbeats. We've all got a certain amount of energy traveling with us through life, it turns out, and when it's done, it's done, so make the best of yours. By reading clips like balachandar's.

Until next time, keep clipping.