Apparently a number of scientists have determined what the world’s funiest joke is and there’s a story about it on icwales.com.
I still don’t really understand how they figured out that this (see below) was the very best of the world’s jokes based on 40,000 jokes submitted from people all over the world. The other winning jokes from other countries can be found here.
In case you’re pressed for time, here it is, the big jokuna, in all its shining armor:
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says: “Calm down, I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: “OK, now what?”

I’m reading a really good article by Jed Perl in this week’s (or last’s?) New Republic about the state of contemporary art.
I’m not sure I understand him correctly, but if I do, he’s arguing that the magic of art in the contemporary art world has not dissipated but the institutions and mechanisms that make art available to the public are completely corrupt and bankrupt. Perl doesn’t say this, but to me, this includes most galleries, museums, and art magazines as well as the vast majority of art critics, cultural theorists, and government bodies that niggly-piggly artists but often shower city cultural institutes. All this is to say, that, yes, I’m a disillusioned artist, and yes, the system is rigged to be unfair, which I’ve known for the past 18 years. What’s new about this is that for all of the 80s art hype about changing cultural mores and ideals and the 90s hype about changing the language of art organizations, we’re really worse off than we were in the 70s when galleries (at least in NYC) proliferated and art was ready, willing, and able. Maybe it’s time for conservatives to take art over from those rascally aesthetic “radicals.”
In any case, I’m the proud recipient of some mail art and I’m truly, truly thankful for it. It’s been a long time since anyone sent me an aesthetic item in the mail to work on and then send onward. I’m certainly not saying this is “good” art or the “future” of art, ’cause it ain’t. It’s collaborative, thoughtful, deliberative art. But it is also a kind of art that doesn’t get seen, doesn’t get critiqued, and doesn’t live in the currency of the art system and I’m grateful. In the pursuit of truth, here’s what it looks like before I screw it all up.

Okay here goes. I rarely work by cajoling, entreaties, or through the blunt force of optimism or politics, but there is a very powerful movement going on to Save Farscape. A good friend of mine, VS, is seemingly singlehandedly attempting to save Farscape, a uniquely interesting sci-fi show that the Sci-Fi Channel, in their infinite wisdom, wants to kill.
Now, I don’t go in much for saving shows generally. I was a bit sad that Seinfeld left the air but glad that they all went to jail in the end. This is different — look at the impassioned pleas in this article from SF Site.com. And take a look at part of a letter (which you can handily cut and paste and send to the appropriate media head) created by VS to get the ball rolling in the right direction. I don’t pretend to know the show but I believe in passion and if it’s anywhere outside the White House, it’s here in this letter. If Sex and the City (another sci-fi drama that takes place on planet-island Manhattan) were taken off the air tomorrow, you’d see similar passion with good cause.

I was on this year’s panel of the Web Marketing Association’s WebAward and they just announced the winners.
Many of these sites are models for what good Web sites should look and feel like. Unfortunately, as a judge, I feel an obligation to not reveal which sites I rated and loved. But take a look the big winner, the US Navy. Very Starship Troopers.

My wife, in all her brilliance, took Kiss and Make-Up out of the library. Gene Simmons, lead singer of the band, wrote the book to set the record straight and to, well, probably make yet a little more money. A wave of nostalgia has taken me over.
I was *HUGE* KISS fan between the ages of 8 and 12. The very first albums I bought were KISS ALIVE II and Peter Frampton’s Live album, thanks to my parents and Sam Goody in Philadelphia. (I think I thought that all the best albums were both live and came in twos.) I was in the KISS Army for a few months, sending them $6.00 to belong. I loved the band, the music, and the irony of the “SS” in their logo, as I knew that the band was started by two Jews from New York. I never saw them in concert but I also never ceased being interested in the way they took the world by storm — guys and girls, Americans and Japanese, fire breathers and fake-blood packet eaters. I was fascinated by the minutiae of their dress, the iconography of their albums, the mystique of their (at the time) raucous music.
I look forward to devouring the book.

Yes, it’s common knowledge that Christopher Hitchens has written his last Taking Sides after 20 years working for that old left charmer, The Nation.
But what’s interesting about this piece is how Hitchens frames his thoughts, explicating his views of Saddam Hussein (who he loathes) and of George Bush (who he distrusts) by arguing for war against Iraq and not the Iraqis.
On the subway today, I was sitting in a car probably 2/3 full with traditionally dressed Muslims all coming from some kind of large meeting in Manhattan. Forestalling any fetid kind of Orientialism, I felt incredible kinship with those folks in Baghdad, who will be riding the bus to work and watching buildings fall around them when the war begins soon.

According tot this German Web site, there are three Saddm Husseins. It’s hard to know if this is conspiracy theory or reality but I don’t put anything past the mustached man.
Alas, I’m not looking forward to “war” either.

An interesting conversation about Web logs, Web sites, and the rest amongst people with time on their hands. Nuff said:
kottke.org :: Susan Orlean dot com launches

O, the poor guy at ScaryDuck who was the Guardian’s winner for best Web log. Or maybe I should say the poor *server*, as it’s almost impossible to visit that Web site right now.
Congrats to all of the folks who won and recieved honorable mentions. This is a list worth watching and includes a group of people that work hard to write to the world.

Okay, I’m pretty consistently overwhelmed by the integrity of Apple’s products. No one seems to know what real integrity means anymore with regard to software and hardware but somehow Apple has figured it all out.
My four-year old Palm IIIx, which I rely upon, now works with OS X 10.2 (a.k.a. Jaguar) even though it took a while to figure it out and I’m using a serial port connector to sync. I signed up for Apple’s .Mac service which allows you to essentially hot sync your files to their server and to your backup CD-ROM. I now print photographs through iPhoto, which sends files directly to a Kodak processing plant nestled somewhere in the California Hills. And the software that allows iChat to talk with AOL Messenger folks is kind of amazing, plus the new Sherlock has “Web services,” allowing you to find places and things at the expense of the purveyor of places and things.
I know I sound like a shill and I am. Thank G-d I didn’t “switch” or I’d never be able to forgive myself.