Q: New Cuil the Next Google?

A: No.

We Cuiled Notions' Oceans and got diddly.

Cool Online Games

Pandemic lets you build a virus that will destroy the world. More at CrazyMonkeyGames.com.

It's gonna take more than that

NBC is primping Jimmy Fallon to replace Conan O'Brien by giving him a series of webisodes to try out his chops. Memo to NBC: It will take more than a webiseries to make Jimmy Fallon funny.

Coupon codes for online shopping

From the BugMeNot people: RetailMeNot.com.

Drop and give me a hundred!

Gonna try this: one hundred push ups. via.

Most Wanted Paintings

The Dia Center for Art did surveys of people in 18 countries, and based on their tastes, compiled universally likable and universally unlikable paintings for each country. Both extremes look pretty bland.

I don't know if it's art, but I like it

Hot stuff from Meera Thompson, BU alumna:


*Actually, we do know. We just love the way Jack Nicholson delivered the line in Batman.

BU Successfully Recruits World's Most Pre-Eminent Profiteer to Faculty

From the BU Daily Free Press: Lawyer who defended Sudan investments to take teaching job

Wal-Mart Infection

Sadly, there is no War of the Worlds-type ending. The invader just destroys us.

Jhumpa Lahiri Watch

Interview in Bostonia, the BU Alumni mag.

Dr Michael E DeBakey, heart surgeon and ambassador to the world, dead at 99

Dr Debakey, the surgeon who invented a technique to repair a ruptured thoracic aorta with Dacron, as well as performing the first carotid endarterectomy, the first coronary artery bypass graft (there is some debate about that one), the first heart transplant, and designing the first artificial heart--the man was the heart surgeon of heart surgeons to the point that you can't diagnose an aortic aneurysm without describing its DeBakey classification or operate on the heart or aorta without asking for a DeBakey clamp--died Friday night at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. The number of lives this man touched is truly, simply humbling: he operated on 60,000 patients himself, and every heart surgeon in the world trained with him or with someone he trained, a family tree of surgical training.

Last spring, Esquire interviewed him for a "What I've Learned" column. His wisdom, in his own words, is the most eloquent obituary.

Pandora

Feed it a band you like, it plays similar music, for free. Based on the Music Genome Project.

Hot Canadian Photo Blog

J R Photoblog, Montreal.

If you like, check out Cool Photoblogs, where voting for the 2008 awards is underway. We'd also like to plug Kathleen Connally's photoblog, A Walk Through Durham Township, again.

How do you expect to die?

Geriatrician Joanne Lynn to an assembly of health policy makers:

“How many of you expect to die?” she asked. The audience fell silent, laughed nervously and only then, looking one to the other, slowly raised their hands. “Would you prefer to be old when it happens?” she then asked. This time the response was swift and sure, given the alternative. Then Dr. Lynn, who describes herself as an “old person in training,” offered three options to the room. Who would choose cancer as the way to go? Just a few. Chronic heart failure, or emphysema? A few more. “So all the rest of you are up for frailty and dementia?” Dr. Lynn asked.

The answer of most Americans, by default, is of course Yes, I'll take the slow decline and a feeding tube with as little dignity as possible, please. Disturbing, isn't it?

MacBook Air is Best Notebook Out There.

Computerworld agrees, just in case you were wondering. 

Christopher Hitchens gets a taste of his own medicine.

And it don't taste too good. Believe Me, It’s Torture:

What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience.