A map of the Milky Way done in the style of the London tube map.

I was re-reading Carl Sagan's novel Contact recently, essentially a series of arguments about SETI wrapped into a story, and he alludes to some sort of cosmic Grand Central Station. That, coupled with my longtime interest in transit maps, got me thinking about all of this.

Nobody knows how tall Burj Dubai is going to be when completed later this year, only that it will be the world's tallest building by a comfortable margin. Of the mystery height, the builder has only this to say:

If you put the Empire State Building on top of the Sears Tower then it's reasonable to say you'll be in the neighbourhood.

SkyscraperPage.com says it'll top out around 2650 feet...that's 550 feet shorter than the ESB + Sears but still more than half a mile. (via things magazine)

Can I interest madame in a $2000 vibrator?

The base of the vibrator is encircled with a stunning "eternity" band of 28 round-cut black diamonds.

Classy!

People Who Deserve It is a blog listing people who have earned a punch in the face, including Office Food Thief, Traveler With Giant Backpack On Subway, Loser Who Pisses on Toilet Seat, and Sexual Innuendo T-Shirt Guy. My NYC pedestrian-related submissions: Cab Driver Who Honks Excessively From Three Cars Back Just As the Light Turns Green and Bike Messenger with Whistle. (thx, casey)

Ze Frank has started a blog of notes and advice about fostering online participation. Lots of good stuff so far.

Usually there will be a few contributions that are outliers in technical merit and scale. There is a temptation to reward these contributions by drawing specific attention to them while the project is running. This can sometimes have the effect of damping the project as a whole, since potential contributors will measure their work against an artificially high standard. Alternatively, only displaying the most recent contribution allows the tonality of the project to be at the whim of the last contributor.

Instead of only focusing on technical ability, draw attention to qualities that can be expressed by anyone: simplicity, individuality, and humanity. Allow there to be a feeling of "Hey, I could do that too".

(via snarkmarket)

Dotter Dotter features 3-D representations of 2-D games like Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, and Excitebike.

(via clusterflock)

Is everything connected with everything else? Not everyone thinks so. But that not everyone doesn't include Benjamin Cohen. In I Dream in Malcolm Gladwell, Cohen draws an unlikely parallel between marshmallow melting and the science of pediatric nutrition.

In an age when children are born nearly every day in America, and most of them to parents who have had intercourse sometime during the year prior, physicians have become troubled that once the children are born, they seem to lack the ability to feed themselves. The two researchers have been working for years on a study that may provide insight to the problem. Infants, their studies are showing, aren't very smart. Like melting marshmallows, it appears that breastfeeding is an unusual process difficult to understand. In this case, W- and S- believe, that process may involve both breasts and milk.

It all sounds so obvious when he puts it that way.

TinEye is an image search engine. You give it an image and it'll find it on the web for you. If it works -- I didn't get to try it too much because it was down -- this is great for chasing down attribution and finding other pix by the same photographer and such. (via master kalina)

Opening theme to 3-2-1 Contact. This was the soundtrack to my tween and early teen years.

Michael Paterniti penned a lovely eulogy for Bobby Fischer, the former chess champion who died last year.

This was the beauty of Bobby Fischer's mind, even then. The boy made very clean, simple lines out of very complex problems, and when the trap was sprung, his style of chess became so transparent you could instantly recognize its brilliance: efficient, organic, wildly responsive and creative.

Also worth a look is a short 1957 profile of Fischer in the New Yorker, written a few weeks after he won the US title at 14. (via snarkmarket)

A company called Fandrich & Sons buys cheap grand pianos mass-produced in China, upgrades them so that they sound more like expensive hand-made European pianos, and sells them for a reasonable price.

With his higher-end grands -- which the Fandrichs named "HGS" for "Holy Grail Scale" -- they start with pianos built in China. He and his workers gut the piano, replacing the hammers, felt and bass strings with German and American parts. They reinforce the underbelly of the piano by installing short ribs -- spruce beams between the existing main ribs.

Using a computer program designed in-house, the keys are reweighted across the board to eliminate friction and even out the response. The reweighting gives the Fandrich pianos their signature touch, one that some players have described as buttery, effortless.

In automotive terms, the Fandrichs are "trying to upgrade a Hyundai to run like a Bentley, for the price of a Honda". (via girlhacker)

Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a recovering sex addict. As part of his rehab process, he wrote a note from the addict inside of his head:

I will make Benoit lie and manipulate and chase sex every hour of every day, until he can't feel anything anymore, until everything good and decent about him is removed. He needs me. His life is boring when I'm not in charge. I control him. I keep him numb so he can function. I make him feel good, and I make him feel worthless. The minute he steps out of this stupid rehab, I'll start whispering in his ear. That's all it takes -- whispers. I win. I ALWAYS win.

A Canadian pig farmer came up with an interesting solution for herding pigs. Instead of using heavy wooden "chase boards" to guide the pigs, she used a length of fabric of the same color, allowing a single person to do a job once done by many.

Compare and contrast: a map of the center of the world's population (currently located in the northern part of south Asia) and a global accessibility map, which shows the travel time to major cities. (via lone gunman & stamen)

Sports Illustrated named 2008 the best year ever in sports. In my best links post, I said that three 2008 sporting events stuck out in my mind but this article reminded me of one more: Jason Lezak's amazing anchor leg in the 4x100 freestyle.

Is there a mini Stonehenge under the waters of Lake Michigan?

In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College, discovered a series of stones - some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon -- 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan. If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old -- coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

Photographs of an abandoned London. Turns out that the streets of London on Christmas morning are extraordinarily empty. Details here. (thx, peter)

A wide-ranging and carefully considered list of the top 50 special effects shots in movies. The Matrix bullet-time effect doesn't make this list because:

An effect extraordinarily limited in what can usefully be done with it, it has nonetheless been flogged to death in the 10 years since The Matrix.

The Burly Brawl from the second Matrix movie thankfully didn't make the list either, likely because the whole thing looks like a cartoonish video game (and not in a good way). The only quibble I can think of: maybe Titanic should have been on there somewhere? (via fimoculous)

Photos of the abandoned soundstage for The Wire.

So I found out yesterday that the soundstage for "The Wire" still existed. I wasted no time in visiting it and was there almost less than 24 hours. It's one of my favorite TV shows ever and I had to see this before everyone ruined it. The building is also scheduled for demolition and they are going to build a super market on it.

(thx, hurty)

The trailer for Objectified, a new documentary film about industrial design by Gary Hustwit, who also made Helvetica.

This is the fifth annual selection of my favorite things I've linked to on kottke.org. This year's list includes games, photography, top-notch journalism, time-related material, architecture, design, and even politics, about 100 links in all. The format of the list is a bit different this year. Sprinkled amongst the usual high quality links are collections of links which fit into accidental categories that sprang up while going over the material, including my picks for the sites/blogs of the year. Enjoy.

Passage is a game that takes 5-minutes to play which possesses a poignancy that you wouldn't expect from such a simple game.

Beautiful slow-motion skateboarding with explosions. Directed by Spike Jonze. See also this video of slow-mo skateboarding tricks filmed with an ultra high resolution camera.

An extensive history of visual communication, from cave paintings on up to the present-day computer.

The NY Times published a stacked graph of movie box office receipts from 1986 to Feb 2008. More about stacked graphs.

Sites/blogs of the year: The growing cache of vintage photos from museums and other public institutions on The Commons project on Flickr barely edges out excellently edited superb photography of The Big Picture for the site of the year.

On the final episode of St. Elsewhere, it was revealed that an autistic child named Tommy Westphall had dreamt the whole show. Since St. Elsewhere had a number of connections to other shows, it turns out that a surprising number of other popular TV programs all took place in Tommy's mind too.

Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris article on Sabrina Harmon, one of the camera-wielding US soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

From The Onion: Pornography-Desensitized Populace Demands New Orifice To Look At and Researchers Discover Massive Asshole In Blogosphere.

Big Dog is a large robotic dog that can walk in snow and cannot be knocked down, even when kicked.

A 2104 messageboard about time travel reveals that you can't just go and kill Hitler whenever you'd like.

Maps of the Apollo 11 moon walks superimposed on a soccer pitch and a baseball diamond. They sure didn't walk very far.

This peeping shrubbery photo taken at a wedding by Mindy Meyers still makes me laugh.

David Attenborough narrates while two leopard slugs mate while hanging off of a tree branch.

An obituary recounting the almost unbelievable life of Charles Fawcett, actor, filmmaker, and adventurer.

Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: Backed by two huge and clueless media conglomerates, Hulu was never supposed to succeed but NBC and Fox managed to create a simple and compelling site for watching TV and movies online.

Matthew Dent's awesome designs for the new UK coinage.

Sentence Drawings and other literary visualizations from Stefanie Posavec.

2008 video for Something Good by The Utah Saints. Don't know why, but this makes me smile.

Elevators and stories about elevators, including an account of Nicholas White, who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Includes security camera footage of White's ordeal.

The interesting and extensively documented story behind that famous photo of Elvis Presley with Richard Nixon.

A map of all the streets in the lower 48 United States by Ben Fry.

An account of when Dateline NBC's To Catch a Predator segment goes wrong and someone dies.

The financial mess of 2008: Early in the year before the full extent of the chaos was known, n+1 had a lengthy interview with a hedge fund manager and followed up with him a couple months later. This American Life aired two radio programs that did an excellent job of explaining what caused the crisis: The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show about the Economy. After much of the smoke had cleared, former bond salesman and current bestselling author Michael Lewis sums up what happened in The End of Wall Street's Boom.

City of Shadows, timelapse photos of people in St. Petersburg taken by Alexey Titarenko. Particularly this one.

Stunning photos of the electrified plume of the Chaitén volcano in Chile. Some bigger photos at The Big Picture.

John Resig ported the Processing visual programming language to JavaScript.

Photos of a wedding and then an earthquake in Sichuan, China.

A retrospective of the NYC restaurant Florent by Frank Bruni for the NY Times doubles as a history of Manhattan's ebbs and flows over the past 20 years.

US political election logos from 1960 to 2008.

Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: It technically launched in 2007, but this was the year that many people realized that Amazon's MP3 store finally made it easier and more convenient to search for and buy DRM-free music than getting it for free and illegally elsewhere (Bittorrent, etc.). And I haven't bought a single mp3 on iTunes since Amazon's MP3 store opened.

Unbeknownst to the family who hired him to renovate their house, architect Eric Clough hid a puzzle in their apartment that remained unsolved for more than a year.

Atul Gawande writes about itching in the New Yorker. Really, really interesting.

Urban prankster Remi Gaillard kicks soccer balls into all sorts of unlikely goals, such as garbage cans, drive-thru windows, and police station entrances. The AC/DC soundtrack makes it perfect.

The covers for the books in Volume III of Penguin's Great Ideas series, most notably the brilliant cover for The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

A classic text on the economics of POW camps in Europe during WWII.

A 1985 BBC documentary about the painter Francis Bacon. Entertaining and enlightening even if you don't care about painting.

Sports: Three 2008 sports happenings stick out for me. 1. The epic Federer/Nadal final at Wimbledon. It was almost 5 hours long (not including the rain delay) and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. 2. Usain Bolt winning both the 100m and 200m in world record time at the Beijing Olympics. Bolt celebrating so early before crossing the finish in the 100m was impressive but the margin of victory in the 200m was an astounding athletic feat. 3. The Michael Phelps / Milorad Cavic photo finish in the men's 100m butterfly final provoked much discussion and some of the only excitement on the way to Phelps winning a record eight golds at the Beijing games.

Christopher Hitchens writes about being waterboarded. Here's the video of his experience.

This Lego version of Stephen Hawking is uncanny.

A selection of thirty stunning satellite photos of the Earth that appear abstract.

David Carr recounts his time as a single parent and crackhead in Minneapolis.

Dorothy Gambrell documents a trip around the world, part of which happened aboard a cargo ship. Read from the bottom and keep clicking "Next Entries".

Things which aren't so much links as products:The Apple keyboard is the best keyboard ever made. RjDj is an iPhone app that samples sounds from your immediate environment and plays them back to you with music.

On June 19th, the Mars Phoenix Lander twittered that it had discovered evidence of ice on Mars.

Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats showcases vintage photography in categories such as The Cool Hall of Fame, The Heretofore Unmentioned, and When Legends Gather.

Frédéric Bourdin is a French con man who made his way to the United States posing as an abducted teenager even though he was in his mid-20s at the time.

Brain researcher Jill Boyte Taylor tells the audience at TED about the time she had a massive stroke and how the experience informed her later research.

Bill Sizemore, a long-time observer of Pat Robertson's activities, pens a lengthy profile of the fundamentalist Christian for VQR.

Lenny "Nails" Dykstra, former Met and Philly, is faring well in the business world and remains highly entertaining.

Fantastic Contraption, an incredibly addictive Flash game where you build machines out of seemingly simple parts to solve increasingly difficult puzzles.

Switched at Birth tells the tale of two girls who were swapped for one another at the hospital and didn't find out more than 40 years later even though one of the mothers knew the whole time. See also The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar.

Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: Roger Ebert's blog demonstrates that he might be a better cultural commentator than film critic. Either way, he's never been better.

Some well-meaning kids show off their unintentionally hilarious science project posters.

Dyna Moe's excellent illustrated moments from Mad Men.

Merlin Mann wants to do Better.

Improv Everywhere used a Jumbotron, dozens of crazy fans, color programs, mascots, NBC sportscaster Jim Gray, and the Goodyear blimp to make a typical Little League game between the Lugnuts and Mudcats into The Best Game Ever.

Dan Hill explains extensively about the process for designing the web site for Monocle magazine.

Footage from a 1975 CBS News report about the final flight out of Da Nang near the end of the Vietnam War.

The literal version of A Ha's Take On Me video.

R.I.P. David Foster Wallace: Wallace gave what I think is his final interview to the WSJ's Christopher Farley about Wallace's book about John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. After Wallace died, I collected a number of online remembrances. David Lipsky's The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace for Rolling Stone and McSweeney's reprint of a 1987 profile of Wallace both capture who Wallace was and how much he gave of himself to his family, friends, and the world.

Test your visual geometric accuracy with the eyeballing game.

Michael Pollan's letter to the next President of the United States: "we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine".

Filip Dujardin stitches together parts of different photographs of buildings to make pictures of new and sometimes crazy & impossible buildings. This one of those "I wish I'd thought of that" projects.

A segment from the This American Life TV show about a Chicago restaurant called The Wieners Circle which turns into a sexually and racially charged free-for-all on weekend nights, much to the delight of the patrons, the heavily tipped workers, and the owners.

Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: The Art of the Title blog obsesses over the increasingly elaborate and celebrated craft of movie title sequences.

Steward Brand posted the entirety of How Buildings Learn online. The 1997 BBC documentary was based on Brand's excellent book of the same name.

Charles Mann on the Earth's soil for National Geographic Magazine.

Google's archive of millions of photographs from Life magazine.

Barack Obama (and the other guy): Since meeting him more than four years ago, photojournalist Callie Shell has taken a number of great photos of Obama. Just after the election, Newsweek posted an epic seven-part series about the Obama, McCain, and Clinton campaigns resulting from a year of behind-the-scenes reporting. David Remnick weighed in on Obama and race in America. And a March 2008 interview with rapper DMX reveals that he has no idea who Barack Obama is. "The nigga's name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain't his fuckin' name."

An exploration of the link between the 2008 Presidential election results and the rich loamy soils left by the shallow seas of the late Cretaceous period some 85 million years ago.

The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway.

Video showing how to build an igloo, a must-see for those interested in architecture.

William Langewiesche tells the story of the midair collision in Brazil that resulted in the deaths of 154 people on Gol Flight 1907 in September 2006.

Sites/blogs of the year, cont.: I couldn't leave this one off. Christoph Niemann doesn't post to his NY Times blog very often, but each entry is a gem. I love his kids' obsession with the NYC subway.

Vanity Fair constructs several menus for George W. Bush's final days in the White House. Includes such dishes as Gored hearts of Palm Beach, with hanging chad; Deep-fried Halliburton, in Saddam Hoisin Sauce; and New Orleans flounder.

If you're still information deprived after all that, you can check out the lists from 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.

A short letter from Steve Jobs reveals that he's receiving treatment for a health problem and will continue as Apple's CEO in full capacity for the foreseeable future. I love the last line:

So now I've said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.