Stick Magnetic Ribbons On Your SUV

A great song and even better video from local (Austin) heroes The Asylum Street Spankers: Stick Magnetic Ribbons On Your SUV, sung to the tune of Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree. (Note - I rate Magnetic Ribbon "R" for violence and language).

This Modern World's 2006 Year In Review

Nice end-of-year review in Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World comics. See both Part One and Part Two.

Salon's Person of the Year

Via Slashdot, I see that Time's "Person of the Year" is, "you". Apart from some jokes about putting "Time Person of the Year, 2006" on one's resume, I agree with what the consensus of the Slashdot commenters that this is totally lame.

And I commend to you a much more interesting "Person of the Year" bit on Salon, in which they pick S.R. Sidarth (aka, macaca).

[T]he same voters may also have recognized Sidarth, born and raised in northern Virginia, a straight-A student at a state college and a member of the local Hindu temple, as their neighbor. Allen was just a California transplant with dip and cowboy boots who had glommed on to the ancient racial quirks of his adopted home. Sidarth was the kid next door. He, not Allen, was the real Virginian. He was proof that every hour his native commonwealth drifts further from the orbit of the GOP's solid South and toward a day when Allen's act will be a tacky antique. Allen was the past, Sidarth is the wired, diverse future -- of Virginia, the political process and the country.

JPG Magazine

Via an ad on Daring Fireball (and subsequently written about there, as well), a cool new magazine: JPG.

It's a photography magazine, but light on stuff like technical reviews of the eight newest, most expensive cameras. Instead, the majority of it is just beautiful pictures, all of which were submitted by photographers around the world, voted on and selected by the JPG online community, and finally edited and laid out by Derek Powazek and Heather Champ.

You can download a PDF copy of the entire current issue for free, or use their Flash doohickey to view every page of it on their site. You might think these digital versions give you the whole enchilada, but they really don't. I overcame my own "why-buy-it-since-the-PDF-is-free?" inhibition and bought a copy of the real, dead-tree physical magazine at Barnes & Noble, and I couldn't be happier about my decision. The high resolution of the printed pictures on large format, heavy-stock paper - it's really nice. It's like, Art, man.

I thought that my current magazine subscriptions were all I wanted; I can barely keep up with what I get now. But JPG is just six issues a year, and anyway, it's mostly pictures, right? Sign me up!