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kottke.org posts about best of

Speak Up critiques the covers on the

Speak Up critiques the covers on the recently released list of the 40 best magazine covers of the last 40 years. Chock full of snarky designy goodness. (thx armin)


Select one-star reviews from Amazon of books

Select one-star reviews from Amazon of books on Time magazine’s list of the 100 best English language novels since 1923 (discussion).


Time magazine has a list of the “100

Time magazine has a list of the “100 best English language novels from 1923 to the present”. I’m not much for novels, but I’ve read 11 of the works on the list.


Best burgers in NYC

A list of excellent hamburgers to be found in NYC. For more on NYC burgers, check out A Hamburger Today. I still maintain that NYC isn’t a burger town, although with all the recent activity, it may be one soon.


Esquire jumps the gun on the whole

Esquire jumps the gun on the whole end of the year best-of lists thing and names their favorite new restaurants of 2005, with Danny Meyer’s The Modern taking the top spot. Worth reading if only for the sidebar item on “wired and tired” dining trends.


Forbes has a list of 10 chef “tastemakers”,

Forbes has a list of 10 chef “tastemakers”, including Thomas Keller, Alain Ducasse, and Grant Achatz.


Patrick Pittman makes a good case for

Patrick Pittman makes a good case for Homicide: Life on the Streets being the best TV show ever. I loved Homicide and am convinced it would have found a great audience in this age of TiVo and quick-to-DVD (it was a difficult show to catch on Friday nights). Re: best TV ever, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and M*A*S*H have to be near the top of the list…what are your favorites?


The list of the 100 greatest theorems in

The list of the 100 greatest theorems in mathematics is topped by The Irrationality of the Square Root of 2 from that nutball Pythagoras. Jesus, who does Godel have to sleep with to get higher on this list…I mean, all the man did was destroy math! (I know, I know, oversimplification, please don’t send me any email….) (via cyn-c)


You’ve got to love an article called

You’ve got to love an article called The Ten Stupidest Utopias. In regard to the Internet, he says “utopia is never more than what we are; the people in them will always be just like us”.


Top 10 cheap marketing ploys to increase sales

Top 10 cheap marketing ploys to increase sales of comic books, but as noted in the comments, a sufficiently generalized version of this list would work in many instances.


Plastic recently considered the question of perfect

Plastic recently considered the question of perfect albums, those where every song is great and you never want to skip over them. Philip compiled a list of the responses; Radiohead’s OK Computer and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue came out on top.


Art experts choose 10 of the worst paintings hanging in Britain.

Art experts choose 10 of the worst paintings hanging in Britain.


Only three inches of eyebrow hair gets

Only three inches of eyebrow hair gets you a world record? I think most of my dad’s eyebrow hair is at least that long and I could probably beat the record given a little growing time. And unibrow Josh Hartnett probably has a few long ones in that sucker as well.


Among Roger Ebert’s most hated films are

Among Roger Ebert’s most hated films are Catwoman, Baby Geniuses, Battlefield Earth, and The Usual Suspects(?!?). About North, he says: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie.”


A list of the NBA’s most overrated

A list of the NBA’s most overrated players, including Karl Malone, David Robinson, Charles Barkley, and Patrick Ewing. (via truehoop)


Billboard is now tracking the top-selling ringtones.

Billboard is now tracking the top-selling ringtones. The list seems to track pretty close to the top singles list. Well, except for the Super Mario Bros theme song ringtone. (via rw)


NYC’s best off-the-menu items from an Eater

NYC’s best off-the-menu items from an Eater contest. The winning entry? Spaghetti Bolognese at Peter Luger.


New York magazine’s annual cheap eats in NYC issue

New York magazine’s annual cheap eats in NYC issue.


MUG rounds up some sweet treats in Manhattan

MUG rounds up some sweet treats in Manhattan.


New bookmark: interesting Flickr photos from the

New bookmark: interesting Flickr photos from the last 24 hours, automagically determined. PageRank for photos, sorta.


The NY Times picks some good bottles

The NY Times picks some good bottles of wine for under $10. For those of you who want to move up from the Two Buck Chuck a little.


20 hamburgers you must eat before you die

20 hamburgers you must eat before you die. That In-N-Out isn’t on here almost got this link disqualified from posting, but since they don’t seem to have any other chains on here, I’ll let it slide.


The top ten web memes from the past ten years

The top ten web memes from the past ten years.


More philosopher ratings, this time from Crispin Sartwell

More philosopher ratings, this time from Crispin Sartwell. “jacques derrida: there’s something to be said for the deconstructuive method, a tool which i’ve been known to throw around myself. otherwise, this is so, so, so full of shit. obviously, it’s intentionally obscurantist, which is i guess supposed to be part of the profound game of defamiliarizing language etc. fuck you.’


BBC Radio 4 poll results for Greatest Philosopher Ever!!

BBC Radio 4 poll results for Greatest Philosopher Ever!!. 1. Karl “Boom Boom” Marx; 2. David “The Kid” Hume; 3. Ludwig “Van” Wittgenstein; 4. Friedrich “Freddie” Nietzsche; 5. Plato “Johnson”


Thirteen favorite albums of the last twenty years

Spin magazine’s recent list of the best albums from the last twenty years (as well as MSNBC’s alternate list) got me thinking about what my favorites list from that era might look like. Since I’m not Spin and my musical opinion doesn’t carry any weight, I felt free to list what I like, influenced me, continue to find enjoyable, and will still listen to in the future instead of what’s actually good…whatever good means.

In rough chronological order and briefly annotated:

  • Nevermind, Nirvana - As I’ve mentioned before, I was a late bloomer musically. Nothing outside of Casey Kasem and his Top 40 countdown existed for me when I was a kid. And when you’re listening to music like that, it’s hard to get excited about music in general…I was pretty much apathetic about the whole thing. My freshman year in college, a guy on my floor got a nice stereo system for Christmas and when he threw on Smells Like Teen Spirit, that was it. I’m sure the bands and songs that opened your mind to the possibilities of music and life were a lot better, but you can’t really choose how/why/when/where that happens.
  • Rave ‘Til Dawn, Various - This is the worst album on the list but may be the most influential in terms of my future listening habits. For a kid who grew up in the country and went to college in a small Iowa city, hearing rave music for the first time was a complete revelation for me. I had no idea people were making music like this, so fast, so joyous, so unlike anything that anyone I knew would enjoy listening to. I loved it immediately and have been a huge fan of electronica ever since.
  • The Chronic, Dr. Dre - Introducing Snoop Doggy Dogg, probably my favorite rapper. So smooth. And Dre’s beats are among the best in the business.
  • Siamese Dream, Smashing Pumpkins - College junior, couldn’t get laid…isn’t this what I was supposed to be listening to?
  • The Downward Spiral, Nine Inch Nails - I still tell anyone who will listen that Closer is one of the best pop songs ever made. Pretty Hate Machine was probably the better album, but I fell in like with this one first.
  • Entroducing…, DJ Shadow - One of the most solid debut albums in the past 20 years.
  • Orblivion, The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds is my favorite song from The Orb, but Orblivion is the album I’ll never get tired of. Saw them spin/play live in Minneapolis once and when Toxygene came on, it was almost religion.
  • Homework, Daft Punk - Around the World is my answer to the question, “if you were stranded on a desert island and could only take one song with you, what would it be?” I’ve probably listened to it about a thousand times in the past 8 years and I’m still not sick of it.
  • OK Computer, Radiohead - Somehow it wasn’t until mid-2000 that I heard this album (old habits die hard), but it didn’t take long to become a favorite. Still their best…although I haven’t given their earlier stuff the attention everyone I know says it deserves. Radiohead = favorite band.
  • Bedrock, John Digweed - Cheesy trance music, but I love it. This album reminds me of my (then) new Jetta and fine times in Minneapolis.
  • Agaetis Byrjun, Sigur Ros - I found Sigur Ros while poking around on Napster looking for an advanced copy of Radiohead’s Amnesiac. Boy, I thought, this Amnesiac album is going to be fantastic, but what happened to the vocals? Oh, heh.
  • Boards of Canada, Geogaddi - I can’t remember how I found out about Boards of Canada. Online somewhere probably, downloading mp3s off of Limewire or something. After hearing a few songs, I immediately procured Geogaddi and Music Has The Right To Children from my nearest CD shop. Fantastic stuff…they make me wish I could make music.
  • Give Up, The Postal Service - Might be too early to tell, but I think this is a classic.

Conclusions: I seem to like all sorts of music, but the common thread is the mainstream-ness of these albums; they’re typically the most popular examples of a particular genre, style, or time period. Gangsta rap wasn’t that mainstream at the time, but The Chronic went multi-platinum. Nevermind was grunge for the mainstream, and The Downward Spiral was one of the few industrial albums to make it big. The same for Rave ‘Til Dawn, Daft Punk, DJ Shadow, Smashing Pumpkins, and Sigur Ros, if to a lesser extent.


Some film directors’ top ten movies lists

Some film directors’ top ten movies lists. Directors Michael Mann, Sam Mendes, Cameron Crowe, Quentin Tarantino, and others choose their favorite films.


BusinessWeek Design Award winners for 2005

BusinessWeek Design Award winners for 2005.


Food and Wine magazine’s list of the

Food and Wine magazine’s list of the ten best new chefs in America.


Spin names Radiohead’s OK Computer the best

Spin names Radiohead’s OK Computer the best album from the last 20 years.