Through the Looking Glass – washingtonpost.com:

“Every hair is being numbered — eBay has every grain of sand. EBay is serving this very, very powerful function which nobody ever intended for it. EBay in the hands of humanity is sorting every last Dick Tracy wrist radio cereal premium sticker that ever existed. It’s like some sort of vast unconscious curatorial movement.

“Every toy I had as a child that haunted me, I’ve been able to see on eBay. The soft squeezy rubber frog with red shorts that made ‘eek eek’ noise until that part fell out. I found Froggy after some effort on eBay, and I found out that Froggy was made in 1948 and where he was made and what he was made of. I saw his box, which I’d long forgotten. I didn’t have to buy Froggy, but I saved the jpegs. So I’ve got Froggy in my computer.

via BoingBoing.

I wondered if that was true, about obscure little toys being out there on ebay. I thought back to my childhood, and remembered a little wind-up robot I bought at Meijer’s.

It’s there.

The one on the right, in silver and orange.

Wow.

Opelika-Auburn News | Professor makes case for existence of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers:

Securing a small grant, Hill and several of his colleagues traveled to the Florida Panhandle in January 2007. Once there, the small group set up a number of listening stations and remote cameras that recorded the distinctive double-knocking sound and Kent calls the Ivory-billed Woodpecker makes.

During their time in Florida, Hill and his colleagues were able to record both photo and video of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers.

I want to see pictures!!

Crooks and Liars » Countdown Special Comment: You have no remaining credibility about Iraq, sir.:

OK, here’s the story: Bush appears in a surprise visit to Iraq and tells the soldiers and everyone else he just might maybe be reducing forces there soon.

Meanwhile, a quote comes out from an authorized biography of the president, where he says “I’m playing for October or November… to get us in a position where the presidential candidates, will be comfortable about sustaining a presence” — far from reducing our presence, he’s all about making sure it’s sustained even after his departure, by the next president.

Olbermann gets as angry as I’ve ever seen him about this, and that’s saying something.

The Müller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences) (Livelygrey)

This site suggests that an amazingly simple rule governs what color combinations most people will perceive as harmonious or pleasing. I’ve been experimenting with it a bit in a paint program and subjectively it seems to hold. To give it away in a few words: in a combination of colors the colors which are darker in value should be closer to purple in hue, and the ones lighter in value should be closer to yellow in hue. Or more precisely, the colors with a darker value should be of a hue which has less natural brightness to it.

(Via Reddit.)