The Best Links 2005
Compiling a list of the best links of the year was a little more difficult than last year. I put more effort this year into selecting quality links for kottke.org, so there wasn’t a lot of chaff to be found in the archives. I also posted a lot more links this year, over half again as many as in 2004. I’m not sure this year’s installment is any better than last year’s list, but if you’ve got a little time to waste at work as 2005 winds down, there’s probably something here to keep you occupied.
The Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager.
The Selling of the Last Savage. Adventure travel to view Stone Age tribes in West Papua, Indonesia.
I Ate iPod Shuffle. A poem by Scott David Herman.
McDonald’s Bathroom Attendant. Improv Everywhere stations an attendant in the bathroom of the Times Square McDonald’s.
An Interview With David Foster Wallace.
Architecture of Density. Michael Wolf photographs the buildings of Hong Kong.
parking garages. Lots of diagrams of parking garages.
Escape from the Universe. How to get out when the Big Crunch comes.
Banksy Hits New York’s Most Famous Museums. The installation of unauthorized art into some of the top museums in NYC.
Dot-Con Job. A Seattle Times investigation into InfoSpace, a high-flying dot com that bilked investors out of millions.
13 things that do not make sense. A list of open scientific questions.
Life on the Scales. About the quarter-power scaling laws.
eFile for free! Free version of TurboTax Online.
Transformational geometry and iteration in cornrow hairstyles.
Stand clear of the closing doors. Lots of links about the London Tube.
Coffee and Workprints: A Workshop With Garry Winogrand. Photography how-to.
Rocky, recreated. Hilarious.
Swim boy, Swim! Man buys fish from Chinese market, sets him free in the river.
The Long Emergency. What’s going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle?
How to destroy the Earth and How to move the Earth.
I was going to link to Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent series on global warming from the New Yorker, but the articles have been removed from the New Yorker site. Kolbert is working on a book maybe?
Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes.
God is Great, by which I mean, Very Very Large. Calculating the size of Jesus based on the quantities of Communion wine and wafers consumed.
Absolutely, Power Corrupts. Michael Lewis explores how power hitting has changed the game of baseball.
Capturing the Unicorn. Mathematicians help the Met restore a precious tapestry.
The Choirboy. Larry Lessig confronts a childhood abuser.
A photo of a tuxedoed man holding a sewing machine in front of a crashed UPS truck.
The Big Fish. Ten years later, the story of Suck.com, the first great website.
Why I Am Not A Christian. By Bertrand Russell.
Open letter of the Kansas School Board. Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.
Transcript of Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University.
How To Avoid The Exhausting Planning And Preparation That Goes Into Making A Second Date.
Devolution. Why intelligent design isn’t.
Why Are Movies So Bad? or, The Numbers
40 Things That Only Happen In Movies.
The Candy Man. Why children love Roald Dahl’s stories — and many adults don’t.
Photography of Edward Burtynsky.
A Rocket To Nowhere. On NASA and the Shuttle program.
Tipped Off. A call for the abolishment of tipping in restaurants.
Film Titles Designed by Saul Bass.
One side can be wrong. Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne on intelligent design.
7 Habits of Highly Successful People.
Minimiam. Food photos with little people on them.
May We Tell You Our Specials This Evening?
Kdunk on pink blanket. Wonderful photography.
Chip Kidd talks with Milton Glaser
Hello, My Name Is… Celebrity signature art project.
Panoramic photograph of suburban sprawl near San Ramon, California.
Star Wars: Episodes I-VI. The greatest postmodern art film ever.
Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep. Profile of Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach.
Interactive Transit Map. For commuting in NYC.
Mark Foo’s Last Ride. The death of a big wave surfer.
PARK(ing). A temporary urban park.
What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
Neal Stephenson’s Past, Present, and Future. An interview with the author.
The Food Detective. Interview with Michael Pollan.
David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech at Kenyon College.
The Moral-Hazard Myth. About the US healthcare system.
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