The thagomizer is the arrangement of four to ten spikes on the tail of particular dinosaurs, like the famous Stegosaurus, in the clade Stegosauria. (See also: Horrendous Space Kablooie.)

The next version of Apple's word processor (iWork) is rumored to integrate with Wikipedia. It would be nice if it plopped wikipedia text into the document and encouraged people to use it (god, I wish people would unlearn the draconian copyright rules they're taught to refexively apply: you can use wikipedia text anywhere -- even tweak it for style and accuracy, and use it for profit -- as long as you say where it's from). But more likely it's just a search tool.

The Vermont Republic was a North American independent republic that lasted from 1777 to 1791

Yasunori Mitsuda (born January 21, 1972) is a Japanese composer and musician best known for his soundtracks for various video games.

Long interview about how wikipedia works. Some interesting stuff about differences between language versions.

A Hollow Earth theory posits that the planet Earth has a hollow interior and probably a habitable inner surface.

Wikimedia WYSIWYG interface by August 4th? (Update: nope. But it's coming.)

Apparently, Wikia (Wales's wiki company) is throwing a lot of money at getting a WYSIWYG interface into mediawiki, and they want to unveil a demo at the beginning of August, at Wikimania.

The "sort of" is tacked on because (1) it's just a demo and (2) I'm taking Ender's word.

(Just FYI: I'll be at Wikimania, which will be awesome. I have enough frequent flier miles accumulated from bi-annual childhood trips to my grandparents' in Melbourne to land a free ticket to Boston. I'll be blogging. Also, I designed the Wikimania logo. If you like it, tell Wikimania to get around to putting it in the bloody corner.)

If it's a crime for a man to love his country then I'm guilty of that. And if it's a crime to steal a trillion dollars, well, then I'm guilty of that, too! (See also: Fake denominations of United States currency.)

Jimmy Wales's open letter to the political blogosphere. "I am launching today a new Wikia website aimed at being a central meeting ground for people on all sides of the political spectrum who think that it is time for politics to become more participatory, and more intelligent."

Amazing photo of MLK's march on washington.

Category Tree is a cool Thingy that lets you browse wikipedia categories hierarchically. For example: Military Conflicts (which contains Wars and Battles and Fictional WWI Characters, among other things), or Cheeses (which is a part of Dairy products which is a part of Foods which is a part of Food and drink which is a part of Personal life).

Fallen Astronaut is an 8.5 cm aluminum sculpture of an astronaut in a spacesuit. It is the only piece of art on the Moon.

The Tetris effect refers to the ability of any activity to which people devote sufficient time and attention to begin to dominate their thoughts, images, and dreams.

Dog monuments

Wikimapia is getting really cool. (Google maps + wiki -- you draw a square around something and tag it with a paragraph of text.) Are you listening, Digital Universe?

Space burial is a burial procedure in which a small sample of the cremated ashes of the deceased in a lipstick-sized capsule are launched into space using a rocket.

A white elephant is a valuable possession whose upkeep is excessively expensive, and may be useless apart from its value to the gifter and giftee. List.

Musical comebacks gone awry

The deadliest conflict since World War II

(Sidenote: I've made a grand total of $3 in the year I've had the google ads up (that's roughly $0.0002 per visitor), so I think I'll take them down. I was going to leave them until I had, at least symbolically, enough to replace the pack of cigs I smoked writing the Wikipedia/Linux article, but I should really quit.)

Text Mode demos are real-time calculated computer animations which make use of the native text graphic mode(s) common on the IBM PC. (See Demoscene)