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Sam Hughes has compiled a Guide To Moving Earth:

You never know when you might want to significantly alter the orbital path of the Earth. Maybe the Sun is going Red Giant and you miss the days when lead didn’t melt in direct sunlight. Maybe Earth is about to hit an asteroid. Maybe it isn’t, but you want it to. Maybe you want to destroy it: a significant number of methods for destroying the Earth involve moving it by some substantial amount.

Well, it isn’t easy. In fact, it’s very very difficult.

He does a nice job of going over various methods, sorted by degree of plausibility. In case you’re wondering, getting everybody to jump at the same time isn’t plausible in the slightest…

Hitachi explains its new hard drive technology in the video Get Perpendicular, which employs Schoolhouse Rock-esque characters to explain terms like “superparamagnetic effect.”

You have got to go read Idaho House Concurrent Resolution No. 29 in reference to

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE – Stating findings of the Legislature and commending Jared and Jerusha Hess and the City of Preston for the production of the movie Napoleon Dynamite.

Freakin’ awesome! 🙂 I so thought it was a joke; I guess it’s just a hilariously tongue-in-cheek thing…

Follow-up: A while ago I made a post speculating about W’s iPod playlist, with some nice suggestions ;-p. Well, the White House has finally seen fit to let us in on a few of the tunes that aides have uploaded to W’s iPod:

John Fogerty: Centerfield
Van Morrison: Brown-Eyed Girl
Stevie Ray Vaughan: The House is Rockin’
The Knack: My Sharona
Blackie and the Rodeo Kings: Swinging from the Chains of Love
Country stars Alan Jackson, George Jones, Kenny Chesney
Classic rockers Eric Clapton, Robert Palmer, Bryan Adams

My Sharona?! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great song, but considering the subject matter, I’m surprised they made a point of mentioning it. Interesting… In any case, you should definitely visit the BBC page to see some more appropriate suggestions… 😉

Google Blog reports that Google can now search for packages by tracking number by simply entering the number in the search box, automatically determining whether you are looking for UPS, Fed Ex, USPS, etc.

The Pain has a comic entitled Science vs. Norse Mythology on Creation which compares the “scientific” explanation for the creation of the Universe with Norse beliefs found in the Edda. I especially like the cartoonist’s disclaimer at the end of the strip:

I would like to issue an official apology to any believers in the Norse faith. I certainly have no wish to get on the wrong side of any Vikings, who historically have not expressed their grievances through letters-to-the-editor. As my friend John Patton pointed out to me, it’s a little foolhardy of me to insult the religion of a seafaring warrior people when I live right on the water.

I haven’t been keeping up with Homestar Runner, so this is probably somewhat old, but I just saw the video for They Might Be Giants’ song Experimental Film, which stars Strong Sad and some of the other Homestar Runner characters.

Check out this fun Homer Simpson soundboard, which has a bunch of sound clips of Homer singing.

I first stumbled upon the phenomena of “memory mapping,” the combination of Google Map’s new satellite photo feature with Flickr’s annotation capabilities, at mathowie’s flickr page. I was inspired enough to try my hand at it, coming up with a pretty nice view of my neighborhood in Columbia, MD with some (hopefully) fun notes. There are a lot of others that have done the same; check out the googlemaps and memorymaps tags at Flickr for more. And here’s the link to the Google Maps satellite view I used if you want to play around or explore further…..

Progressive Boink has compiled a great list of 25 Favorite Sesame Street Memories.