Joe Biden's Teeth is a silly website by 8 bit studios, whose purported aim is to "reduce our dependency on porcelain and metal fillings through the investment in clean and renewable enamel."
The disclaimer states that "Joe Biden is not affiliated with joebidensteeth.com, but we bet his teeth love it."
So it appears to be a mildly confusing publicity stunt by Trident... but then again, who knows. If you send in a picture of yourself smiling, Trident sends you a free pack.
The site is focused exclusively on Joe Biden's teeth. The tooth chronicles are especially cute, and have that mock-serious tone to it. You can play picture games guessing which set of teeth are Biden's. Or you can not bother. Whatever floats your boat.
Don't Judge Too Quickly is a brilliant ad campaign by Ameriquest Mortgage. I was looking for an embedable link and found this montage of 6 Ameriquest + 2 non-Ameriquest commercials tossed in. A+. Actually, someone translated "Don't Judge Too Quickly" into Portuguese, making this video an A++. (From Evan F.)
Welcome to TED Sundays. I think I'll make this a regular thing for a bit. //
A.J. Jacobs: My year of living biblically is a TED talk by A. J. Jacobs, a writer for Esquire magazine. He approaches his articles in a sort of method-actor manner, but for writers. He likes to dive right into the research.
So A. J. spent a year trying to take the Bible literally, and following over 700 rules from all the Bibles he could gather. Mainly the catalyst for this was that A. J. was concerned about the rise of religious fundamentalism in America.
It's a charming tale of him being fruitful and multiplying, not shaving and getting stuck at airport security, and failing to properly stone people.
I knew this topic would be a win when he introduced himself as such: "I'm Jewish in the same way The Olive Garden is Italian: not very." Win.
Megavideo is another of those watch-tv-on-the-web sites. The quality is pretty good, and I have yet to find a dead link. Besides the streaming option, there appears to be a download option (that I haven't tried).
The pesky thing about the site is, besides having to click through two ads to get to the content, it only lets you watch 72 minutes of continuous videos at a time. After that, it interrupts the video and tells you to sign up for their fee-service or come back 54 minutes later. No free lunches, I guess. Let me know what you think.
Isabel Allende: Tales of passion is a TED talk by Isabel Allende. I had never seen her talk prior to this, and she is very funny. I did not expect this. Isabel reminds me of my Aunt Godmother.
Between funny stories about flag-bearing, the Olympics, and Sophia Loren, Isabel tells tales of extraordinary strength and makes a very strong case for feminism today. She introduces herself as such:
"I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal, Catholic, and conservative family. No wonder that by age 5 I was a raging feminist. Although, the term had not reached Chile yet -- so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me. I would soon find out that there was a high price to pay for my freedom and for questioning the patriarchy, but I was happy to pay it because for every blow that I received I was able to deliver two."
Isabel's daughter Paula insisted once that feminism is dated. They had a fight. Isabel rebutted that feminism is dated for privileged women like her daughter, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world:
"Who are still forced into early marriage, into prostitution, into forced labor. They have children that they don't want or that they cannot feed. They have no control over their bodies or their lives. They have no education and no freedom. They are raped, beaten up, and sometimes killed with impunity. For most western young women of today, being called a feminist is an insult. Feminism has never been sexy. But let me assure you, it never stopped me from flirting. And I have seldom suffered from lack of men.
...
Feminism is not dead, by no means. It has evolved. If you don't like the term, change it... the name doesn't matter, as long as we understand what it is about, and we support it.
...
Although women do 2/3 of the world's labor, they own less than 1% of the world's assets. They are paid less than men for the same work, if they are paid at all, and they remain vulnerable because they have no economic independence and they are constantly threatened by exploitation, violence, and abuse. It is a fact that giving women education; work; the ability to control their own income, inherit, and own property benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If the family prospers, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country.
The poorest and most backwards societies are always those that put women down. Yet this obvious truth is ignored by governments and also by philanthropy. For every dollar given to women's programs, $20 are given to men's programs.
...
In this case, the trickle down effect which does not work in economics, works perfectly. Abuse trickles down from the top of the ladder to the bottom. Women and children, especially the poor, are at the bottom. Even the most destitute of men have someone they can abuse: a woman, or a child.
I'm fed up with the power that a few exert over the many through gender, income, race, or class... We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men. I'm talking about men with young minds, of course. Old guys are hopeless, we have to wait for them to die off."
Those are the weighty, hefty bits with statistics and fighting words. Isabel sprinkles those amongst human stories which are much more interesting, but which I'll leave up to the video. This is one of my new favorite talks.
"Over the years, I have observed an annoying tendency for people to bother the flies in my website. In order to prevent this from happening, I decided to keep an eye (actually, two eyes!) on your mouse. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I had no alternative." Right.
First of all, there's a gloat splash page from circa 2006. If you click through, you step into vintage web from the 1990s. Is this the personal web-page of your fourteen-old-cousin? No. A zebra-hide wearing pimp? No, but closer. It belongs to Xavier Sala-i-Martin, professor of economics at Columbia University.
According to wikipedia, Xavier "was recognized with a 'Distinguished Teacher in Graduate Economics' award 3 times, both at Columbia and at Yale, with the King Juan Carlos I prize 2004 (a biannual prize given to the best economist in Spain and Latin America), and the Lenfest Prize 2006 awarded to the best teacher at Columbia University." According to his site, he was also president of Fútbol Club Barcelona.
He is likely under consideration for a Nobel prize in economics, and also, for worst sustained use of gifs and layout on a professional web page. Congrats. Please hire someone to fix this, Xavier.
SideReel is the latest and best designed of the watch-TV-on-the-web variety of website.
According to the site, "here, you can be the guide, the critic, the expert, and of course a fan." They look all organized and such, with their company group picture and listed positions and such. And for once, the design doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out. Good work.
I have often maintained that Sandra Day O'Connor was the coolest modern judge, and this website proves why. // Our Courts is Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's vision, designed to, "teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy." She was concerned that students, "are not getting the information and tools they need for civic participation, and that civics teachers need better materials and support."
It includes web gamez to be rolled out this summer!!! With Robotzes and everything! O Sandy. You're too much, I love it.
Portia De Rossi's PSA is a parody Public Service Announcement by Portia de Rossi that aired on Jimmy Kimmel Live. In a mocking jab at the passage of California's Proposition 8, Portia apologizes for only thinking of her selfish self when getting married.
Way funnier than Arrested Development. There, I said it.
David is a "grunge typographer" whose magazine Ray Gun helped, "explode the possibilities of text on a page... Squishing, smashing, slanting and enchanting the words on a layout, Carson made the point, over and over, that letters on a page are art."
He is single-handedly responsible for thousands of crappy illegible rock-and-roll scribbles that you've seen countless skateboards and T-shirts.
The talk itself is extremely jumpy and jumbled, but high on laughs if you can keep up. David shows some examples of his work, and his mind seems to work much like his typography. He talks about design principles, his book: The End of Print, and what makes a job or career worth pursuing.
Every day, the interwebs is filled with an interminable supply of crap and one cool thing. Like a jet-powered bloodhound, this blog seeks out and posts that one thing.
On occasion, nothing interesting is added to the internets. In that case, something old is posted.
Have you found the best thing on the internet today? Contact the editor at: garbagestored [at] gmail.com
All links are read, not all links are published. If you made it yourself, it's probably not getting published. To make the hurt go away, I recommend printing it out and posting it on your mom's fridge.
Joe Biden's Teeth is a silly website by 8 bit studios, whose purported aim is to "reduce our dependency on porcelain and metal fillings through the investment in clean and renewable enamel." 
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