• apophenia: reflections on Lori Drew, bullying, and solutions to helping kids
  "Stifling bullying online won't make bullying go away; it'll just send it back underground. The visibility gives us an advantage. If we see it, we can work with it to stop it."

• Google Code: AJAX Libraries API
  Google hosts several popular JavaScript libraries on their insane worldwide content distribution network. If you have faith in their uptime it could be a good way to speed up your site a bit.

• rc3.org: When everything is recorded
  "Indeed, these days posting words, photos, and videos online is sort of like getting tattoos. Think ahead, because they're going to be around forever whether you want them or not."
• Philip Greenspun: Citigroup Bailout: Socializing Loss after Privatizing Gains
  "It would have been a lot cheaper if we had a policy where the CEO of any sufficiently large investment bank was paid $100 million per year direct from the U.S. Treasury. In return for this guaranteed payout, he or she would forgo any numbers-based compensation..."

• Unit Structures: Fixing Google with Adblock Plus
  Here's another way to hide Google's awful SearchWiki images with Adblock Plus.
• userscripts: No SearchWiki
  This Greasemonkey script will hide the new Google SearchWiki buttons. Strange that Google doesn't offer a way to opt-out of this feature.
• jQuery UI: Datepicker
  Nice JavaScript date picker.
• The New York Review of Books: Frozen Scandal
  Scandal is our growth industry.

• NYT: What's the Point of Daylight Time?
  "While daylight time reduces demand for household lighting, it increases demand for heating in the early spring and late fall (in the mornings) and, even more important, for cooling on summer evenings. Benjamin Franklin was right about candles, in other words, but he did not consider air-conditioners."

• Webmonkey: Watch YouTube Movies in Full 720p HD Glory
  YouTube can play HD, but you have to hack the URL to make it happen.
• Derek Powazek: Ethics in Online Advertising

• Waxy.org: The Faces of Mechanical Turk
  Andy sets up a Mechanical Turk job: show yourself!

Do you have a bookmark you just mindlessly click all the time? I have at least one of those, and I found a way to make sure I really want to go to the site. I turned the bookmark into a bookmarklet with a JavaScript confirm before it loads. Now whenever I click a problem bookmark, I get a simple prompt: Are You Sure? If I really want to go to the site I click OK. If I was mindlessly clicking out of habit, Cancel.

If you too would like to create a time-saving mindful bookmarklet, here's how it works. Go in and edit any problem bookmark. Say for the sake of argument it's a bookmark for this URL:

http://www.google.com/reader

Add a tiny bit of JavaScript to the beginning and end of the URL, like this:

javascript:if(confirm('Are You Sure?')){document.location='http://www.google.com/reader';}

Save, and done. I'm tempted to write a Greasemonkey script to add this prompt to every link on the web because that simple barrier to entry is helping me break free from my mindless skinner box. And JavaScript prompts are less painful than classic operant conditioning with electric shocks.

• A Biblical Definition of Marriage
  If one were to construct an amendment to the Constitution based on a literal reading of the Bible it might well contain the following stipulations. [via lancearthur]
• Western Soundscape Archive
  Audio recordings of animals and environments throughout the western United States.

• CopyPasteCharacter
  Need to type an extended character? Just point and click the symbol you need at this single serving site.

• HarvardScience: Smoking is addictive but quitting is contagious
  "The culture of individualism is so strong that we sometimes forget how powerfully and silently social networks and those around us influence our health..." [via cshirky]
• Scientific American: Why Children Like to Share
  "Researchers are increasingly coming to understand that people are also 'programmed' to care about others." [via cshirky]

• The Big Picture: The next President of the United States
  "Here is a collection of some of the best photos of President-Elect Barack Obama over the past several months."

• Sound Tracker
  "Gordon Hempton is an international acoustic ecologist and Emmy Award-winning sound recordist." He uses a dummy head for binaurel field recordings and has dozens of albums on iTunes with no cheesy synth music.
• Wired: Shhh, Listen Rare Soundscapes of Vanishing Habitats
  Nice article about Bernie Krause, bioacoustician. [via MeFi]

• Wikipedia: Hong Kong skyline
  Amazing picture of Hong Kong at night. View at full resolution to see incredible detail.