(editor’s note: I couldn’t find the original video, if it exists. There are a host of fan-created ones such as this. It’s the music that matters.)

As usual, an oldie but a goodie. Probably inspired by an idiotic decision to spend some time playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which is essentially one long, interactive, game version of that leaked video of US helicopter pilots murdering journalists and civilians. The sequel, which has been one of the best-selling media properties ever, apparently has a section where you take on the role of a terrorist and murder civilians in an airport.I mean, I get it that it’s a sick, violent world out there and that we’re all partly responsible by allowing it to happen, but sheesh!

The insidious part for me (and the reason I say it was an idiotic decision), is how bloody addictive this and the other Call of Duty games are, and not to note that it’s extremely fun to play would be remiss. The originals were set in World War II, and while many people feel little remorse for killing lots and lots of Nazis, a game, even one that’s fictionalized, set in a modern war with middle eastern terrorists is just a little too close for comfort. It really is stuff like this (masterfully, artfully created) game that programs our perceptions of violent conflict.

In that vein, I wanted to share a comprehensive (not exhaustive – there’s a lot I left out, amazingly) collection of my links and bookmarks – everything from news sources to my friends who blog to stupid YouTube video aggregators. Some of these may be familiar, some not, but all are worth a look (all links open in a new tab or window).

Recent Finds:

Best of Craigslist – from novel-length explanations of why you should or should not be cruising the personals section looking for Mr./Ms./Mrs./? Right to where to get a duck egg that someone’s cat brought home for cheap. Always entertaining!

Best of Wikipedia – Twice a day, here you will find bizarre things on, or recently removed from, Wikipedia that you had no idea existed (today: “Triboluminescence“). Archiving this junk is exactly why the internet was invented. Except for porn that is.

Racialicious - Thoughtful, varied blogging on race issues and non-issues in contemporary culture.

News and politics:

The Daily Dish, by Andrew Sullivan – Hands down the most important political blog out there, and winner of the “Best Blog” category at least this year and probably previously. Written by a self-described “conservative” British expat who is homosexual, HIV-positive and married to an American. Thoughtful, exhaustive discussions and debates span the gamut of politics, religion, culture, war, civil rights and more.

Wonkette - A hyper-savvy political satire blog. Skews left but leaves no political misdeed unexposed, usually with a Blingee-enhanced picture attached.

Freakonomics - For when I want a fix of off beat economics-related wool-gathering. I highly recommend the book as a great way for those a bit intimidated by “the dismal science” to get initiated, and I am certainly convinced by their thesis that incentives (positive and negative) drive most of our behavior.

Climate Progress – I will refrain from listing the half-dozen or so “green” blogs (Green, Inc. being the first stop) and sites that I attempt to keep on top of, but this one is worth mentioning as a premiere source of climate change related no-holds-barred political commentary, backed up with studious scientific analysis. THE place for talking points when attempting to educate the flat-earth (aka climate change denial) crowd.

Also see: NYT, The Atlantic, New Yorker, Mother Jones, Reuters AlertNet, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Al-Jazeera English.

Arts and Culture:

Boing Boing – A directory of wonderful things that is one of the best sources of information for our wired, connected lives. Used to really capture the zeitgeist, but its writers are beginning to show their age and predictable patterns emerge. Thankfully they get an incredible variety of guest bloggers, from my buddy who helped launch the fantastical Atlas Obscura to a couple of Muslim bloggers who turned me onto All Things Pakistan.

Judith Warner – Blogs about women, motherhood, feminism and politics for the NYT. Good because it’s authentic.

Vice - Dirt dog takes over the mainstream. So played, and yet who else is there?

Consumerist - Look here before you buy anything. Also teaches you how to get results from any customer service rep in existence.

Things You Wouldn’t Know If We Didn’t Blog Incessantly (TYWKIWDBI) – Lots of interesting posts, from rare butterflies to old-timey photos.

Also see: Jezebel (and all of the other Gawker sites), Losanjealous, Buddyhead, Arab Parrot, This Isn’t Happiness

Comics:

Penny Arcade – About video games and stuff.

The Fart Party – About a whiny chick in Brooklyn.

Alien Loves Predator – Playing with dolls.

Foreign:

Pink Tentacle – Weird Japanese stuff.

Pestiside - Hungarian gossip in English.

PUFFF.hu – Hungarian electronic music site.

Funnies:

FailBlog - A guaranteed dose of “no matter how shitty I feel about my life, there’s always someone that’s more of a jackass than me.”

Fuck You, Penguin – Buy the book!

Item Not As Described – As described.

Dickipedia – A wiki of dicks. People, that is.

Also see: Passive Aggressive Notes Dot Com

Media:

The Big Picture – Awesomest mainstream photo blog I’ve found yet.

Pandora - Make up your own damn radio stations.

SomaFM - Groove Salad is the best ambient background funk around.

KCRW - One of the best NPR stations in the world.

Nations Photo Lab – Where I get prints done. Great prices and fine quality.

Today’s Big Thing – Viral videos.

Useful tools:

Flip - Makes your text uʍop ǝpısdn.

TinyURL - Makes a long link short.

Google News Timeline – Expresses news stories from a variety of selectable sources in a timeline that goes back decades.

GapMinder.org – Statistics about the thorny issues out there.

Good Guide – How environmentally and socially sustainable is your shampoo? How about your toothpaste?

Friends:

Curious Expeditions

Japandroo

YellyElly

Second Skin

Working Definition

Whew, that was a long list! You can see I sort of petered off there at the end. Probably I should get back to looking for a job now. Post your favorite links in the comments!

Newest mental toy:

1. Go to Google.
2. Type in the beginning of a common phrase (e.g., “how do I..”, “where are…”, “is barack…”)
3. Look at the drop-down list of suggested searches.
4. If appropriate, laugh riotously.
5. e.g.,

Try it yourself, and add any fun results in the comments. Or if you want to send me a screenshot for a later post, email it to me at info [at] what-what [dot] com.

The book was given to me by my uncle, though it has been recommended by others, and he said I’d be hooked almost instantly. I’ve only read about 40 pages, and can already tell you that he was right. However, the reason I’m writing about it now is that something in particular jumped out at me from the first chapter. At this point in the story, Deng has been living in the U.S. for a few years, and although he has been warned about theft and violence in the low-rent community where he lives, he naively opens the door to some strangers and is robbed and beaten. After being intially pistol-whipped and subdued, he begins to take stock of what they might steal:

Lying here, I begin to calculate what they can take from me. I realize with some satisfaction that my computer is in my car, and will be spared. But [Deng's roomate] Achor Achor’s new laptop will be stolen… The records of all the meetings, the finances, thousands of e-mails.

For a victim of civil war, who for years has hidden, been shot at, seen friends killed by planes, soldiers, disease, starvation, even taken by lions, has walked hundreds if not thousands of miles through harsh terrain, then been transplanted to a new and mind-bogglingly different place, a laptop computer is the first thing that he thinks of.

Even for me, having grown up in comfort and stability, a computer is, at it’s root, a metaphysical concept. It is a clever and compact combination of plastics and metals, with the power to hold seemingly infinite amounts of data, project images and sounds, connect to and analyze a limitless amount of information – nearly the sum of human knowledge, an incomprehensible idea in and of itself – that essentially relies on the user’s ability to believe that it exists. It is, as my 91-year-old grandmother might say, magic.

I have absolutely no idea how it works, though I recognize that it is a marvel of human engineering. But somehow, I would have guessed that someone in Deng’s position, having undoubtedly learned firsthand the value of life above all, and the temporary and comparatively meaningless nature of possessions, situations, even information – “stuff”, if you will – would have thought of something else before his computer. What else would he have thought of? It’s hard to say, but perhaps he would have been worried for his own safety; the value of lives in places like Sudan seem to command a lower asking-price than we’d generally be comfortable with. Maybe he’d be worried first that they would steal his paper money, or clothing, or take his food – all things that I would guess have a higher value to those at the desperate edge of survival than a hunk of plastic and metal.

But perhaps I’m underestimating the value of possessions, especially those with the demonstrably “magic” power of a personal computer. Indeed information itself is valuable to people in any situation, and a computer’s most impressive and easily-grasped attribute is that it is the single most powerful, tangible aggregator of information that we come into regular contact with. Though one could perhaps argue that our parents or societies are also immense and powerful conglomerations of information, I think that these quickly become difficult to accurately distill the boundaries of. When one thinks about it, the theft of a computer is more than a theft of a useful machine or expensive toy, but is a theft of the mind and body – memories and creations, the fruits of labors both physical and intellectual.

It makes a pretty good argument to back up your files. Or keep infinite copies on the internet, like this blog.

Of course, I could be reading a little too deeply into this. It could be that Eggers himself, in relating this incident through Deng’s years of dictations and conversations, placed the computer as the first and most important object of value in his character’s mind, and that this entire issue could be boiled down to a first-world author attempting to distill the mind of a third-world refugee. Indeed it would be natural in my own comfortable setting – if my house were burning down, if there was one thing I’d run in to get, or bring with me on my way out, it would probably be my computer (perhaps followed closely by my film negatives, another irreplaceable aggregator of information). What would you take?

Read more about the Lost Boys of Sudan here, and learn about the documentary here.

Even though this video doesn’t explicitly say so (and even references a “third way” in operating systems), I am not necessarily a Mac person. I think Macs are great, but they’re sort of a status symbol. You can do anything on a PC that they can, and if you’re at least semi tech-savvy you won’t get any viruses. Anyway, I’m not trying to start any beef – just watch the video.

“Hi, I’m the What-What dot com favicon!”

Previously:

So it’s long past due for me to add a “favicon” to this site. What is a favicon, you ask? A favicon is the little icon that appears next to the web address of a website, as well as on your favorites list. It adds a small visual distinctiveness to an otherwise cluttered mess of text-based links.

See some examples of where favicons go by clicking here and here.

I have gone through a lot of my photographs from over the years and come up with a few ideas, all of which I feel describe myself and/or this website in some way. Vote for your favorite, or if none of them really mean anything to you, suggest a concept in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.

Here are the candidates:

“He-No” face – a Japanese way of drawing a face using hiragana

“Rebel stencil” – from Kuta Beach, Bali

“Glasses stencil” – from above the tunnel in Budapest

“Lenin Sun” – from Statue park, Budapest

“Lotus” – from somewhere in Japan

“Fish graffiti” – from Padova, Italy

“Peace rap” – from somewhere in Romania

One thing to keep in mind is that a favicon is displayed usually at 16×16 pixels, or one-quarter the size of what you see here. That’s the reason I’ve kept them so small.