an interesting article on birthrates and population trends

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

A bit longish, but definitely worth reading. (Among other things,
they talk about the different kinds of trends in Europe that are
leading (or not) to declining birthrates.)

where the hell is matt?

All sorts of places, apparently:

http://wherethehellismatt.com

(Yes, I know that at least the first two of these videos have been around for a while. I still bet you won't watch the most recent one, at the very least, without smiling.)

"science made stupid"

http://www.besse.at/sms/smsintro.html

Put most simply, science is a way of dealing with the world around us. It is a way of baffling the uninitiated with incomprehensible jargon. It is a way of obtaining fat government grants. It is a way of achieving mastery over the physical world by threatening it with destruction.

and don't miss the tables and charts: http://www.besse.at/sms/tables.html

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but it looks promising. (And apparently won the Hugo in 1986. Heh.)

Google's daily data in terms of grains of rice

http://blog.managednetworks.co.uk/it-support/googles-20-petabytes/

In a sense, what this is really doing is underlining just how little space a byte takes up these days...but it's still pretty impressive, and funny in spots.