Ooh, new trailer for Brave! More of a clip, really, but looks great (Flash-based site, so there’ll be some other content that comes up before the clip starts to fade in and play automatically).

I like the case Nicholas Carr makes here: why publishers should give away eBooks. My family, even the kids, like paper books, so that’s what we buy, but it would be awfully nice to have copies of the books I buy for the bedside table on my phone too so I could grab a few pages here and there (but not nice enough to buy them twice, which is why we have no eBooks here). So what’s the incentive for publishers to let me get more while paying the same price? With more opportunities to read a page or two on the road, I will get through books faster, and therefore buy more. Plus all the arguments Carr makes in his piece.

Kirby Ferguson finishes his great series with part 4 of Everything is a Remix.

The Central Institute of Technology in Australia has created what may very well be the greatest advertisement for a technical school, ever (warning, quite gory at the end):

Related: The Oatmeal on piracy and FlowingDate on quitting cable (not to mention this oldie but goodie).

How Companies Learn Your Secrets. "Because birth records are usually public, the moment a couple have a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies. Which means that the key is to reach them earlier, before any other retailers know a baby is on the way. Specifically, the marketers said they wanted to send specially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things, like prenatal vitamins and maternity clothing. “Can you give us a list?” the marketers asked."

Two Jeremy Lin links for you: Knicks Doctors Continue Carefully Reinjuring Carmelo Anthony’s Groin and Drew Housman’s story. Housman played Carmelo Anthony to Jeremy Lin’s, um, Jeremy Lin during their Harvard days.

The Hacker is Watching. "A month passed. Suzy, Melissa, and Nila went about their lives online and off. They chatted with friends, posted pictures, and when they were tired, stretched out on their beds to rest. But at some point, each of them looked up and noticed the same strange thing: the tiny light beside their webcam glowing. At first they figured it was some kind of malfunction, but when it happened repeatedly—the light flicking on, then off—the girls felt a chill."

So we have pet rats, and they are fantastic. Affectionate, eager to come out of their cage and play, etc. But the purpose of this post is not to convince you what great pets rats make (or to convince you that we are craaa-zy), it is to share what awesome healing machines rats are. One of our rats had surgery to have a tumor removed and went from huge scar to almost completely healed in 10 days flat.

This is not the first time we’ve been able to witness what fast healers these guys are. Of course, it is a double-edged sword: heal like mad, produce tumors like mad. Usually with rats it’ll be one of two things that do ‘em in: tumors or respiratory issues.

(An aside: there are a million sentences I never would have thought I’d write in my life, only to have parenthood produce a ton of them. The sentence above is a good example. Not only does it contain “our rats”, but also “one of our rats” and “had surgery.” So many unexpected pieces!)

Did This Man Really Cut Michael Jordan. "He was still Mike Jordan then, not Michael Jordan, just another sophomore guard among 50 eager boys competing for 15 spots on the varsity and 15 more on the junior varsity. There was no doubt that Mike Jordan could handle the ball, but his shooting was merely good and his defense mediocre. Mike Jordan was seven or eight inches shorter than Michael Jordan would be, only 5'10" at age 15, and at least one assistant coach had never heard of him before that day. If Jordan distinguished himself at all during the tryout, it was through his supreme effort. He was first in line for the conditioning drills, and he ran them as hard as anyone, and when they were over he wanted to run some more."

Valentine Dilemma:

Wow, love this interactive animation of Starry Night. I’d embed it, but you really should click through and watch it full-screen. Here are some technical details.