This American Life

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This American Life is an excellent radio program out of Chicago, which tells (real and fictional) stories of people's lives. It has a free podcast, and also free access to its archives. I highly recommend Episode 355: The Giant Pool of Money and Episode 289: Go Ask Your Father, but really I have enjoyed almost every episode I have ever heard (and that is many, many episodes).

Image shows Ira Glass, the show's host.

Hands-on PSPGo review

Gizmodo has a good hands-on review of the PSPGo, due to be released this week. Their reviewer was not greatly impressed by it.

The rapid growth of American obesity

A startling illustration of the rampant growth of obesity in the USA.
Gif from: www.weight.com

"Fat people are destroying America. [...] A National Institutes of Health (NIH) study released in May 2006 demonstrated that despite the fact Americans spend twice as much per capita on health care as the British do (about $5,000 per year per person in the US versus about $2,500 per person per year in the UK), middle-aged white Americans are far sicker than their British counterparts. Compared with the Brits, Americans showed significantly higher rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer - -all conditions that are directly traceable to obesity. A June 2006 study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that similar results when comparing Americans' health with Canadians'."
          Jill Elaine Hughes / Obesity in America: The Awful Truth

Segway-inspired unicycle

Check out this experimental Segway-inspired (because self-balancing) unicycle from Honda. The wheel has several small wheels on it, so you can actually move in any direction- forward, backwards, sideways, and even diagonally- just by leaning in that direction. Cool.

Via: KurzweilAI.net

Belief in evolution in the US, by education level

Only 40% of Americans believe in evolution (in Canada it's 59%). Among the least educated, it is 21%. Among the most educated it is 74%. Click the image for more details.

Smokescreen game

Smokescreen "is a cutting-edge game about life online. We all use Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and MSN to keep up with our mates - and we've all heard the stories about parties on Facebook being mobbed, or people getting stalked on MSN. The question is, what would you do if it happened to you?"

Crash Test: 2009 Chevrolet Malibu vs. 1959 Chevy Bel Air

I like this crash test comparison of a 2009 and a 1959 Chevy. Make sure you wait for the interior shots. Yikes!

Link from an anonymous comment on BoingBoing.net

M of the M

Mario of the Month for September, original here.

Free anonymous e-mail

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The well-named HideMyAss.com provides free anonymous e-mail, which might be handy in certain situations. As they describe it: "Our free anonymous email service enables you to create a disposable email address to protect your privacy online. If you need to give someone your email address, or need to sign up to a website which requires an email address, but you don't wish to reveal your identity then our free service for receiving emails is perfect. Simply signup instantly, give them the our disposable email address and you'll be able to read every email they send in complete privacy. Our free anonymous email service is also good to stop SPAM; if you don't trust a website asking for your email address, then give them one of ours instead." There is a list of other sites that provides this service here.

New iPods

Apple announced some new iPods yesterday. They are trying to position the iPod Touch more as a game-playing device (Steve Jobs even said so), and most of the changes to the 3rd generation iPod Touch are to that end: it has a faster processor and new graphics capabilities. It also has more storage, up to 64 Gbs. Prices as shown (American dollars, of course). More, as ever, at Gizmodo.com, from whence the image. Apple also announced new iPod Nanos, with an FM radio and a video camera.

Hotel Ad Fail

Simply too good to be true, I think, more at Failblog.org.

Formula Wan

Is an interesting racing game, but like MyBrute, you can only play it once a day (depending on how many managers, you have). Click on the photo for the game or here.

Crime mapping

The Edmonton Police have released crime-mapping software (powered by Google maps, of course!) that allows you to see the crime rate in different neighbourhoods in Edmonton. The image shows crimes downtown in the last 60 days. The white circles that are most common are 'multiple crimes in a single location'. Looks like the police are keeping busy!

The most useful information on the Internet

I've always wanted to be able to do this. Maybe now I can.

Japan to Spend $21,000,000,000 on a Power Plant in F%#king Space

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I can't beat either the headline or the blog entry from Gizmodo on this amazing story. My picture is kind of irrelevant, though- I'm out of time.