The Missing Links – February 4, 2011

The Missing Links is just what it sounds like – a collection of links to interesting things I found on the interwebs this week. I hope you enjoy them. This is the second in a never-ending series.

Top links of the week:
Winner! The 7 Greatest (True) Bill Murray Stories Ever Told. There’s no two ways around it, people, Bill Murray is my hero.
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A close second: Kanye West on Twitter validates the existence of Twitter. And now his tweets have been put into song.
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Best in Show: More truth from the Onion. If only this were also true (see my review of Gladwell’s The Outliers here).

Links on Language:
Here’s an interesting language for you – whistling.
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A bit of history on the word groundhog and other words we get from Algonquian (via Dictionary.com’s Hot Word column, which I highly recommend subscribing to).
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The Sordid History of the Oxford English Dictionary in 10 facts. Trust me, there are many more worth looking into. Lexicography rules!
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Anyways, in case you didn’t know, it’s perfectly OK to use anyways.
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The Thomas Beale Cipher – pretty interesting stuff. Feel like cracking an unbreakable code to find a large (and possibly non-existent) treasure this weekend. Go right ahead.
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Language! Backronyms!
The Foosball:
Wanna know how that fancy digital yellow line on football broadcasts works? It’s explained here. Tell your friends in between the commercials this Sunday.
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Have fun watching the game this weekend, but don’t forget it’s being brought to you by Greed, Inc. and they will probably be trying to sue you soon.
Links on other cool stuff:
James Randi takes a bunch of sleeping pills and talks about psychics (TED Talk via mental_floss).
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NPR on Vimeo. The animation about why people can’t walk straight when blindfolded was great. I will mos def be spending a lot of time here watching the other videos.
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Talk about a guy who didn’t know the meaning of foreplay, here’s something to think about over your bowl of Kellog’s
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Wanna know more about eugenics in America? Cause who does eugenics better than the good ol’ U, S, and A?
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The amazing powers of the internet (and our internet overlords): Egypt tweets without internet access.
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What’s the matter, Apple? iPad sales not enough for you? If only you could figure out a way to charge websites for appearing in Safari. Wouldn’t that be great? Anyways, it’s nice to know you’re looking out for number one instead of letting those app developers get all customer friendly.
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On a serious note, here’s a photographed life of drugs and poverty. Scroll to the right to see the pictures.

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