The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon whereby people who have little knowledge systematically think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.

See also: Lake Wobegon effect

List of oldest continuously inhabited cities My favorite: Crocodilopolis

Deep-fried Mars Bar. Surprisingly detailed.

Longest articles on Wikipedia. Also known as: The Museum of Misguided Merges.

The most familiar examples of states of matter are solids, liquids, and gases; the most common state of matter in the universe is plasma. Less familiar states of matter include: quark-gluon plasma, Bose-Einstein condensates, strange matter, and superfluids.

List of states of matter.

The death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849 has some element of mystery to it. The circumstances behind his being found semi-conscious in a Baltimore gutter are uncertain, as are his final days leading up to his death; some questions even exist surrounding his burial.

The Poe Toaster is the unofficial nickname given to a mysterious figure who pays an annual tribute to American author Edgar Allan Poe by visiting the author's original grave marker on his birthday. The unexplained tradition began in 1949 and has occurred on the author's birthday (January 19) of every year since

"All your base are belong to us" was actually pretty interesting writing in the original Japanese.

Wikigroaning: A nondestructive Wikipedia game.

The premise is quite simple. First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created. Are you looking yet? Get a good, long look. Yeah.

There are a bunch of article pairs at that link -- it's pretty hilarious, actually, and I don't often say that about somethingawful.

List of (modern) proposals for succession of U.S. states

Typowiki is a wiki devoted to typography. It is, of course, in German. But the list of fonts used in corporate logos is pretty great, and comprehensible even to anglophone monoglots like me.

Litesum: instant Wikipedia summaries. It's just an ajaxy tool that retrieves the first paragraph of any article, but it's got that relaxing minimalist ethos going.

The best part is that you can type a word, then keep deleting characters from the end and see each article in turn. For example, Food → Foo → FO (disamguation page) → F (the letter).

I think j.w. missed an opportunity to counter some of Colbert's points (though the Report is treacherous waters -- it's possible Wales was desperately pulling on the rigging, trying to steer away from a mock confrontation that would launch hundreds of revert wars).

"Colbert" is, of course, a character, but sometimes the real Colbert uses him as a mouthpiece for his actual ideas -- the last time he mentioned wikipedia, he was genuinely critical of it (for, among other things, not having enough of a sense of humor).

It's been a bit morbid around here the past few posts, but still -- you should really read about the Emerald cockroach wasp, which reproduces by controlling the behavior of a cockroach.

One of George Lawrence's world renowned photographs is of the ruins of San Francisco, California after the 1906 earthquake. It is a 160 degree panorama from a kite taken 2000 feet (600 m) in the air above the San Francisco Bay that showed the entire city on a single 17 by 48 inch contact print made from a single piece of film (Click through to the picture -- it's utterly stunning and about 100 times as large as you expect.)

Also, William Huskisson was the first person in world history to be killed by a railway accident, but not the first person to be killed by a train. In 1815, sixteen people died after a train's boiler exploded.

Crush, Texas was a temporary "city" established as a one-day publicity stunt in 1896. That year, William G. Crush, general passenger agent of the Katy Railroad, conceived the idea to demonstrate a train wreck as a spectacle. No admission was charged, and train fares to the crash site were at the reduced rate of $5 from any location in Texas. As a result between 30,000 and 50,000 people showed up on September 15, 1896 making the new town of Crush, Texas the second largest city in the state.

Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. Update: fixed the link. Argh.

Cool wikipedia visualization