Friday Collection of the WorldWide Internet

The founding principle of this blog remained just as true yesterday as it was nearly 20 months ago when this blog was founded. And it continued to be true during the frequent four-month hiatuses. The principle I'm referring to, of course, is: This blog suffers from a serious lack of direction.

But today marks a hesitant baby-step towards a modicum of internal structuring. For today witnesses the beginning of a new feature at TDS. And it's the first ever recurring feature at TDS. I proudly present the inaugural Friday Collection of the WorldWide Internet. Every Friday that this blog, the internet, and the universe exist, you'll receive a smattering of the things that I found interesting from the week that was. Most of these things will be collected from either deadspin.com or kottke.org because they most consistently deliver the goods. You should probably just read those sites instead of mine. And judging by their daily hits, you probably are doing that already. But only here, at TDS, will you be able to find my pithy remarks on the stuff I find cool. Sorry, joseph, for the blue, underlined words.

Let's get right to it.

• A kid I went to high-school with is a big NY Giants (American Football) fan, was planning a trip to Nicaragua, and decided to search out the Patriots Super Bowl Champions (they lost) paraphernalia which was sent to Central America to clothe the naked. He found one. And wrote about it for the Boston Herald. Which was reported by Deadspin. I'm not at all surprised by this: he had one of the best jump-shots in the Yeshiva League. Speaking of bitter Boston sports memories, I have a pennant at home proclaiming the Red Sox to be the 1986 World Series Champs, which they, famously, were not. I didn't have to go so far to get that, but I did have to spend time in Boston.
  
• My favorite of the hundreds of reports being filed by American reporters on the utter weird- and gross-ness of China.
• Thorstein Veblen wrote this awesome book in 1899 called The Theory of the Leisure Class. He talks about how in cities, where residents are surrounded by strangers, objects which communicate economic and social stature grow in importance. He calls this conspicuous consumption. Here's the best example I've ever seen of that.
• This article is nothing so special, but, my God, look at the comments. I never knew there were that many possible donut puns.
• Didn't Ennismore do this for a color-war breakout once?
• I'm sick of Favre already--SportsCenter this morning devoted the opening twenty minutes of their hour to only Favre--so it's good that the NY media tends to be a laid-back bunch.
  

That's enough for now, I believe.

One last FYI tidbit--I'm leaving Denver on Sunday after having a raucously good time. This may affect my blogging, since I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with myself come Monday morning. If I find gainful employment, there's a chance I won't be able to continue the every-weekday blogging schedule. But if I remain unemployed for a bit, I might accelerate the pace. But I might pick up some other hobbies--like origami--which will take me away from TDS. In short, don't be surprised if there are a whole bunch more origami-themed posts coming your way.

Enjoy the weekend.