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Really Fab Links!
| The Thinkologist's top websites all promote self improvement by fueling your curiosity! |
Places on the 'net worth a second look!
(If you came in the back door to Brain Me Up,
be sure to visit our home page before you leave!)
Bioephemera
Jessica Palmer is talented, keen-eyed, intellectually restless—and weird. She’s a scientist and artist and a lover of beauty, strange juxtapositions and whimsy. Her eye-catching blog mixes all that and serves it with the house dressing on the side.
Chronicles of a Cruise Ship Musician
Keyboardist Dave started blogging during his first gig (2004). How good do you need to be? “Pretty good.” What does it pay? “From peanuts to a bunch.” What are sleeping quarters like? “A submariner’s.“ Stuff like that.
Dishant.com
India loves its music, and aficionados say this is the best listening site: easy to use, superb buffering, fabulous oldies, the latest in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam songs. Everything we played sounded absolutely exotic. Book us an elephant!
NYPL Digital Gallery
Say you'd like to view photos of Chevrolets built between 1912 and 1931. Open Sesame! Photos for all but the 1914 model are viewable in the Big Apple Library’s digitalized collection. With over 700,000 images, it’s a little like a still life YouTube.
Crikey
Apparently Australians say this when they can’t use the s*** word. But this is more than just great Aussie-oriented journalism. Readers are as likely to learn about inside-the-beltway shenanigans as why the PM thinks ocker sound bites are fair dinkum.
Letters of Note
Exactly! Noteworthy letters, telegrams, faxes and memos. The day I first visited, the featured scribe was Mary Stuart, who six hours later (in 1587) was beheaded. A sister site—www.letterheady.com—features letterheads noteworthy for their design. Exactly!
Chowhound
The Thinkologist eats out … a lot! And will walk out of restaurants on a dime that don’t deserve a nickel. So we are always hungry for good tips on where to eat. And we always check with the chowheads on Chowhound first, before Yahoo! Food, Yelp or ZAGAT.
Georgian London
Wanna know where 18th Century Londoners looked for a cure for a mad dog’s bite? Well, hath I got a website for you! Lucy Inglis says look in Hannah Glasse’s famous “Art of Cookery,” published in 1747. Inglis specializes in 18th Century trivia.
Taco Town
I love tacos. And Austin, TX. So I was immediately hooked by this blog about taco-chasing in the Texas capital. The 2 gringos, Chappy and Cabeza de Taco (uh-huh), who run the site share tips, ratings, recipes and other (often in bad taste) observations.
Psyblog
Psych websites are a dime a dozen. This one sparkles, though. Operator Jeremy Dean resembles James Dean, but he’s a lot smarter. Combines a pickiness with an eye for funky stuff like why it is so hard to tell if a woman really wants to be picked up.
Tomorrow Happens
Futurist/scifi writer David Brin loves to think aloud, especially about himself. But wade through the hubris and the hoopla, and you'll often savor his habanero-spiced views, outsized memory, writing skills and spot-on analysis of possibilities.
DanceJam
Shall we dance? Then let’s hip hop, pop, willie bounce, turf, krump, break, jerk, wave, bugaloo, house, tut, crunk, kuduro, whoop rico, ratchet, aunt jackie, jumpstyle, A-town stomp or any of the 43 other underground-originated dances featured here.
Cafebabel.com
A babel it is! The site where the first truly euro-generation is working out its persona publishes in 6 languages. The young voices at Cafebabel burble on about everything pan-European from gastronomy to economics to phraseology. It’s a deafening din!
BellaOnline
I’m no expert on what women like. But clearly, a lot of women like this site. Claims 20m pageviews monthly, 2nd only to NBC’s iVillage. Runs few ads. Sensitive to ethics. Fiercely independent. Run by women, for women. Content ranges the waterfront.
Kottke.org
Jason Kottke surfs the net for things that might change the world—or end it. He's forever recommending stuff that you know you'll never get around to, then hate yourself because you didn't. (That's something people who live in NYC do a lot, you know.)
Livius
You come here if you have been lying awake wondering what's on King Darius’ headstone. You'll learn that the king’s inscription modestly begins, ”I am Darius the great king….” Livius has been called “a veritable encyclopedia of the ancient world."
Museum of Hoaxes
You’ll have to guess what is true and what is hoax-y. Is there really a Swedish father who uses a breast pump in hopes of feeding his future kids? Supposedly there’s a real hoaxes museum in San Diego, but no street address is provided. (Get it!?)
Information is Beautiful
Examples here from David MacCandless and other infographics artisans. His “mountains into mole hills” graphic turns data on global media scare stories since 2000 into colorful mountains drawn to scale. Do statisticians dream this way?
KevinMD
Dr. Kevin Pho, a Nashua, NH internist, runs this award-winning blog. His shtick is offering his RSS subscribers and drop-ins a behind-the-scene look at how medicine is practiced today. The comments suggest a lot of docs read this, too.
Firefighter Spot
Fire is a) unbelievably hot, b) unforgiving and c) unpredictable. Every fire scene is unique, and how fires are fought is often open to criticism. Watch a few firefighting videos here, and you’ll quickly become a Monday morning quarterback yourself.
eating out in Bombay
I know, I know … you don’t get to Bombay as often as you used to. All the more reason to keep up with things gustatory through the eyes and gullet of Gaurav Jain. He’s an animator whose blog design, food photos and commentary are first rate.
Strange Maps
We know. Connoisseur of fab links that you are, the first thing you’ll want to know is JUST HOW STRANGE ARE THESE MAPS? Well, how about one that shows you exactly where each of the Golden Gate’s 1,200+ suicide victims leapt off the bridge. Mercy!
Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind
D.C.-based researcher Arnab Ray’s goofy blog on Indian popular culture will help you see just how little you understand about this complicated country. But then, Indians may not understand most of it either, and that may be the crux of many of the jokes.
CIA
(Yes, that one.) Call this site: “Everything you ever wanted to ask a spook and hoped to get an answer.” Often, it’s boring. But reading declassified secret reports has its moments. What strange things spies and their hangers-on/wannabes/dupes do.
Mozart’s Official Weblog
The letter-perfect ripoff of the Blogger profile page says that the blogger’s age is 253. You don’t have to look much further to appreciate just how clever the blog answers, historical takeoffs and contemporary-looking flashbacks really are.
The Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT
That’s not Millhopper Intermediate & Tutorial. That’s THE M-I-T! And these are audio tapes and lecture notes for about 100 courses on brain and psychology stuff. So saddle up your neurons. There's serious learning to do.
live-radio.net
We could promise you bil'yons and bil'yons of radio stations, but, not being politicians, we cannot tell a lie. However, just listening to a sample of the thousands of stations worldwide you can dial up here will still make your earlobes sag.
Air War College
The U.S. Air Force has assembled a mind-boggling collection of info and resources on how to be a better warrior. Being a better thinker is high on the list of skills encouraged. You can spend days clicking around in here.
Generacion Y
This is Cuba, Fidel’s place. Yoani Sánchez, 38, trained in IT and philosophy, posts things like a photo of the huge rear-view mirror her taxi driver uses to hide the meter LED. Padding fares is the only way to take any pesos home. Pure poetry—and pathos.
Lost At E Minor
Where else can you expect to learn about Hong Kong’s new mozzarella bar, the cardboard shoe rage in footwear or the new Japanese toy that interprets your dog’s barks? LAEM’s team covers the world in search of contemporary pop culture icons.
1stheadlines
Some news junkies prefer HeadlinesGlobe.com because it posts in real time. But the eye-poppin’ variety of worldwide news sources and categories available to check for (almost) the latest happenings easily puts 1stheadlines in a class of its own.
SONGFACTS
This might get my nod for best source out there for just foolin' around information. It’s part gossip, trivia, history, shill (for ringtones, CDs, sheet music, karaoke backing tracks), lyrics library, etc.. What more does a foolin' around fool need?!
Fatbirder’s Top 1,000
Bo Beolens is outnumbered by the world’s No. 1 birder, fellow Brit Tom Gullick, 8725 sightings to 2340. But nobody can steer you to more birding websites, currently 1,028. Go here if for no other reason than to say that you’ve been spotted going here.
boingboing
If you enjoy the offbeat and the coincidental, the rare and the wondrous, then this “directory of wonderful things” is going once, going twice … sold to the questing spirit in front of the computer screen.
Obsolete
Want to be reminded of some of those things that went by so fast you forgot to forget them? Then this website’s for you. (Anna Jane Grossman’s book probably is, too.) Example: Remember how much of an issue privacy online was, like, five years ago?
Thinkologist
We interrupt our regular programming for this bulletin: During the night, Really Fab Links!'s editor had a thought. Naturally, he rushed to blog about it. Check "The Dudley Lynch Blog" regularly for things that go think in the night.
halfbakery
Post your fictitious inventions here. But they can be quickly X-ed by readers or moderators for things like being bad science, too philosophic, a real recipe (that could actually be enjoyed), a sci-fi staple. Picky pointy-heads but then that’s the idea.
POW! Right Between the Eyes!
We’ll readily admit that Andy Nulman's blog about surprise may push some readers' barf limits. Nulman can be a pretty crude dude. But his knack for shaking up conventional expectations anywhere he finds them ranks high in the stack.
Culture24
You probably missed the story. So did I. A worker digging near an outside privy at Britain’s historic Peckover House found a hidden room filled with archeological treasures. This site brings all the news about UK cultural happenings together in one place.
Zen Habits
Leo Babauta decided to take a tip from Aristotle: develop good habits. And found his passion: helping people live more simply. Now he has 2 high-profile blogs, 2 best-selling books, a worldwide following. Is a drive-through meditation franchise next?
Omni Brain
The unnamed Ph. D. (in psychology) student who runs this site surveils the net regularly for “the silly, sublime and serious infiltration of the brain sciences into popular culture.” That, of course, is a buyer’s market, so watch where you step.
Wayback Machine
We dunno. What is archiving the internet like—assembling a jigsaw puzzle the size of China? So far, the Internet Archive has cataloged 150 billion pages. Type in a URL (your own, maybe?) and, with luck, you can walk down a digital memory lane.
Newsmericks
Like it says, it’s the news in limericks. Here’s one about that peace prize: Asked Inkspot, "Obama, pray tell/what made them give you the Nobel?"/Said the President, "Old boy,/Can't you see it's a ploy/To vanquish my peace, give me hell?"
Understanding Uncertainty
Stat brats at Cambridge U. explain to us doofuses such things as how every Brit is just 3 steps removed from sex with a celebrity (statistically speaking, of course). The blog’s stat star is Dr. David Spiegelhalter, a world expert in understanding risk.
Cybertimes Navigator
As in the one-traffic-light town, you’ll mostly just be passing through. But that’s the whole idea. The “All the News That’s Fit to Print” folks put this site together to hurry their reporters on to needed web sources. The rest of us get to piggyback.
Corante
It’s pronounced core-AUNT (as in haunt) and named after the first English newspaper (1621). The site hosts ten blogs that track the emergence of blogging as a business. One is called “Brave Waves,” edited by Zack Lynch, the neurotechnology promoter.
Memeorandum
Nothing clever about this site (including its dumb name), but it’s good at being quick and eclectic. Indexes political blogs & news bulletins as quickly as they are posted. Even gives you a reverse chronology to show who was first with developments.
common sense media
The folks behind this not-for-profit outfit’s reviews of movies, TV shows, books, websites, games and music for children believe that “media has truly become ‘the other parent’ in our kids' lives.” They want you to know who else is raising your offspring!
Snopes.com
This may be the Internet's best-known resource for myth-busting and truth-confirming. Barbara and David Mikkelson even have names for the wacko things they research, like glurge (stories too sugary to believe) and fauxtographs (digital manipulations).
Sacred texts
Largest freely available source of e-texts about religion, mythology, folklore and occult/esoteric topics. 78 categories, from African to Zoroastrianism. “Miscellaneous” includes “The Book of Noodles,” traditional stories about simpletons, fools, idiots.
Gone Too Soon
If this site is legit, it's fascinating. If it is part scam, it's still fascinating. As Americans, we are not qualified to know when a British online memorial site has gone too far. But it’s all fascinating. (The page for memorializing dead pets is too.)
Edge
These opinionated folks questioning each other about the future of humankind are mostly clients of literary superagent John Brockman. But if you like eavesdropping on high-octane, high-brow cocktail party-type patter, Edge is not a bad listen.
Alert Map
Hey, you gotta allow Really Fab Links a little kinkiness. So I’m a sucker for BREAKING NEWS! This site, originating in Hungary, fascinates me. Every one of the world’s current disasters is flagged. Breaking disasters get flashing red circles. Mesmerizing!
Ethics
Pick a peck of pickled principles! (I’d have said “pickled ethics,” but that doesn’t rhyme.) Who better to run a prolifically useful site on ethics than the Jesuits at Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara University? Articles, cases and links on how to be moral.
TED
Pay $6,000 a year and go to its conferences. Or watch 450 of the best TEDTalks here. These are 18-minute-long disquisitions on “ideas worth spreading.” TED’s big-idea theatricality is spreading, too. Its best shows are being translated into 40 languages.
Kevin Kelly's Lifestream
Wired's co-founder still calls himself the magazine's Senior Maverick. Kelly sees himself as kind of an early-warning "startleperson" for all things technological. This is his uber-blog for his future-cast, kitchen-sink writings.
Waiter Rant
Not sure that seminary dropout and laid-off psychiatric worker Steve Dublanica waits tables anymore. His “Waiter Rant” book seems to have given him new options. But its cynical author's MO for dishing life back at you is as instructive as ever.
Weird Asian News
The late Billy Lee Riley sang, “My gal is red hot, your gal ain’t doodly squat.” Get news here of both the red hot and doodly squat: monster rats (China), oversexed insect robots (Japan), Kim Jong Il’s first burger joint, etc. You sort it out.
Jena Pincott
Good reporting on love, sex, attraction. No activity off-limits (is porn good for marriages?). No nationality ignored (Slovenian women lead in “emotional investment”). No time of day slighted (“early evening types may get the worm but not the chicks”).
Gillray's Printshop of Historical Absurdities
If you don’t keep up the semi-mysterious amateur historian Elyse, you’ll go unaware of things like her choice for stupidest monarch of the 18th/19th centuries. (Okay, I’ll rat this once: Queen Marie-Caroline of Naples.)
Gapminder
Google now owns the magical software that makes bubble graphs out of complex statistics tracked over time. The sustainability roadies who created it still promote smart global growth. And you can make your own bubbles if you ask nicely.
English Russia
Peter the Great’s bio left us doubting our skill at judging anything Mother Russian. There’s so little context left for tears. Does only laughter fit? Maybe that’s what this is about. Not even Russians are sure it works, but it is surely a piece of work.
Seth Godin's Main Blog
Don't know who Seth Godin is? Well, it's not his fault. He's Numero Uno Ego in a field he pretty much created, that is, viral marketing. He's a Sneezer himself (people good at spreading their own buzz). Fun, often insightful, instructional.
All-Africa.com
For all Africa all the time, this award-winning website is pretty much all you’ll need. Claims to be among the Internet's largest content sites—and it probably is. Select from 100s of news stories daily (Anglais and French) from 130 African publishers.
3 Quarks Daily
What one frequent visitor calls a rare "literary/scientific site with muscularity", this can be a bizarre bazaar. But it's a place you'll return to if you like geopolitics, science, the arts and colorful local reporting on new ideas.
September 11 attacks
There are larger sites (911digitalarchive.org), but the most efficient is Wikipedia’s. No American was prepared for this tragedy, and the more people tried to make it right, the more died—or lied. It all started on Afghanistan's plains, long, long ago.
WritersCafe.org
Sub-heads on the home page tell you everything about WritersCafe.org. Click on them and you shall receive: Create Your Profile. Share Your Writing. Get Reviews. Befriend Other Writers. Join Writing Groups. Enter Writing Contests. May the muse be with you.
Broadway World.com
Dickens wrote, “It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.” But he never saw a website like this. Tickets for Broadway, Off-B, Foreign Theatres, Tours and much more!
Daytrotter
Okay, so I’m not really qualified to comment on the hinterland band scene. But this sounds like a great idea: bands passing through Rock Island, IL, are invited to spend 2 hours recording at The Horseshack. What you hear is exactly what they begot.
Babelgum
If the Internet is history’s most prolific petri dish, then this site is one of its weird, fungus-like creations. Basically, it delivers original entertainment and other stuff via iPhones and others. It’s free, with advertising. Do not watch it and drive!
The Awl
Maybe you like theonion.com for its newsy satire, and if so, may the phlegm be with you! But I like The Awl because it (1) depends as much on irony as satire (2) is less likely to give your fairness tract hemorrhoids and (3) informs as it entertains.
WolframAlpha
Stephen Wolfram is brilliant, iconoclastic. Got his CalTech PhD at age 20. I typed my first name into his new gizmo and immediately learned it ranks 912th in the U.S., and that 1.59% of the Dudleys are Mestizo. Where else you gonna learn stuff like that?
2leep
This Lucy’s Wardrobe leads to more zany websites than you can shake a flea market parking ticket at. Simply click on a graphic and see where it goes. 2leep's editors they are looking for “interesting” blogs, and they are usually that.
Respectful Insolence
Probably Dr. Freud himself couldn’t explain why I keep recommending cranky bloggers. But here’s another one. A surgeon/scientist who goes by the “nom de blog” of Orac. Anything that strikes him as just plain stupid pushes his well-worn buttons.
Serious Games Portal
The operative word is "serious." As in "change the world" serious. In other words, this isn't standard Wii stuff. The creators of the games discussed here want to save something. Your hide, maybe. Fascinating!
Freakonomics
Initally, this was the title of a best-selling book. Its authors weren't kidding. They intended to freak us out. And wise us up. Example: Roe vs. Wade helped bring the violent crime rate down (fewer future criminals were born). Freak-on with "Freako"!
OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGIES
When next in Singapore, be sure to go to lunch with Lee Say Keng, "knowledge adventurer and technology explorer." Meanwhile, take a look at this guy's website. He isn't joshing about his incorrigible curiosity itch!
DailyLit
You pick a book (often oldies like Austen's or Twain's) and get it regularly by e-mail or RSS in small e-book chunks (675 for “War and Peace”). The site is being watched closely in the e-book delivery wars; already has 300,000 users, many freebies.
Cooking for Engineers
For example, an engineer at Boeing thoroughly explains (and diagrams!) the recipe that won the company’s chili-making contest. Site creator Michael Chu’s “Orthogonal Thought” blog is a hoot too. He post photos of every meal he eats, in-house or out-house.
Brain Rules
Dr. John Medina looks and sounds like, well, a harda**. But within seconds of accessing his website, you’ll realize that you’ve just crossed an important anti-bull-poop Rubicon. He’s a rara avis when it comes to plainspeak on improving your brain usage.
PostSecret
Secrets arrive anonymously on a postcard, many from young women. Some get posted here. Others end up in site creator Frank Warren’s books. There is no advertising. Wikipedia’s report on the site is intriguing.
Grasping Reality With Both Hands
Brad DeLong styles his blog, "A Fair, Balanced, Reality-Based, and More than Two-Handed Look at the World." Close enough. He offers a brainy economics prof's "take" on what's making headlines.
IdeaConnection
There's a gazillion blogs on innovating, or so it seems. What we like about this one is all the variety. If you can't find what you need to know about hatching new ideas here, your need is truly sui generis.
Metamodern
Eric Drexler coined the term "nanotechnology," and his observations on technological issues have been coins of the realm ever since. He's another smart Californian who, like the Cabots, let the rest of us listen as they speak only to God.
Technorati
When you need to search the blogosphere, this is the cornucopia of blog things itchy, kitchy, pitchy, glitchy—you pick your poison. Then ask Technorati to find it, rate it (top 100 blogs) and elevate its visibility for you.
WIKISKY
Konstantin Lysenko and friend, Sergei Goshko, couldn’t find a decent website to show their children just how big the sky is, so they built one. Want your mind to boggle? Take a gander at this. For sure, Wikisky shows that the heavens are very big, indeed.
SimonSeeks.com
With air travel gone to Hades, my idea of a swinging good time these days is sitting in one of those porch rockers at Cracker Barrel. But if you hanker for more, go here. This new concept travel info site was named Britain’s 2009 Website of the Year.
lifeboat foundation
Like to think about the unthinkable? Like saving humanity from invading aliens and black holes and runaway nano matter and other existential risks BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE? Some of the world's most erudite "what if" players congregate and marinate here.
neurodudes
For the non-scientist, this blog ("at the intersection of neuroscience and AI") is likely an acquired taste. It sometimes is simply too specialized. But usually we find something to enjoy in its mix of offbeat stuff and the scientifically trendy.
Kiva
Kiva is easily one of the most imaginative applicators of the peer-to-peer microlending to the poor idea. When you follow the money here, you see a lot of social networking—atheists pooling money with atheists, scuba divers with scuba divers and so forth.
YaleGlobal Online
This eggheaded site says globalization started when our kinfolk hiked out of Africa. So anything after that—the good, the bad and the ugly—concerning our growing global interconnectedness is fair game for the Yallies, including today's headlines.
Video Cafe
If your politics are right of center or even right of 2/3s, this is not your mother’s website. But if you enjoy videos of (mostly) high-profile cerebral dust-ups by icons and lesser lights on the American right, John Amato has the best blog going.
AProudCloud
Well, to be honest, this isn't a real link. No, that’s not right. It IS a real link, but it’s not a link that goes to a new website. It’s actually a "plant" by Really Fab Link's editor to direct you to his tags page. Make him happy! Bag a tag!
WonderHowTo
Sure, you could just head straight to YouTube—and go blind, die of boredom, etc. But if you seek quality video instruction by SOMEONE WHO INTENDED TO INSTRUCT YOU (that’s the rule), then you want the king of "how to do anything" video indexing sites.
all about jazz
Don’t like jazz? Well, get your ears cleaned out, your soul tuned up and this website visible on your screen, clickety-click! Otherwise, you may never know exactly why fanatics like those at all about jazz are such zealots about the music and its moods.
Hunch
Thinking about becoming a dominatrix pro? Ask Hutch, which quizzes, “Have any of your past personal relationships included BDSM play?” Hunch has the goods on 2,500 topics so far—on its users, too. E.g., its bacon/cheese burger eaters can do more pushups.
someecards
No nekked ladies here. Most card graphics are as chaste as Presbyterian clipart (and might be). But the captions can be as irreverent as Daily Show jokes. You can think about telling someone deserving how much they incomplete you even if you don't.
Ignatia Webs
Curious about using eLearning technologies in extreme low-budget, low-skills places like Senegal, Peru, South Africa? Let Ignatia help you. She's a Belgian expert in using social media in low resource and mobile settings.
Eide Neurolearning Blog
Fernette and Brock Eide are physicians in Edmonds, WA, especially interested in children's visual issues but even more so, in brain-based learning styles. Their doe-eyed blog's gaze wanders widely, wonderfully!
Chileno
Maybe you don’t really care to know how Victor Jara was killed? Or even know who Victor Jara was? (Murdered Chilean poet and folksinger). Blogger Will Sherman serves other varieties of chile. Like some riveting photos of the incomparable Andes Mountains.
io9
This gal-oriented science fiction blog reports on the silly to ultra-realistic. Want silly? How about Star Wars-themed confections at George Lucas’ Big Rock Ranch? Want ultra-realistic? How about Australia’s Armageddon-class sandstorm? Pictures galore.
Overcoming Bias
The technical gets mixed with the highly practical here. But economist Robin Hanson doggedly keeps encouraging us to, as he puts it, "move our beliefs closer to reality, in the face of our natural biases such as overconfidence and wishful thinking."