Written by Ross Wolinsky

The rise of social media has made it easier than ever to keep in touch with friends, relatives and coworkers. With a few keystrokes you can reconnect with an old high school buddy, learn what your coworker’s favorite band is, or play Scrabble with a friend who lives on the other side of the globe.

But while increased connectivity is an undeniably good thing, you can just as easily use it to annoy the living hell out of everyone you know. This is the internet, after all, and if something on the internet can be used in an annoying way, you can safely assume that 99% of the population will proceed to do so (go try reading a comment on YouTube if you don’t believe me).

People need rules to tell them how to act. Luckily I went to the top of Mount Internet last night, and God handed me down these 10 Commandments of Facebook for all to obey. Follow them or you’ll go to hell.

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1. Thou Shalt Not List Every Movie, TV Show, Band and Book You Have Ever Heard Of In Your Profile

“You like The Office? I like The Office!!!”

Do you like Radiohead, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? Do you enjoy watching The Office and Family Guy? Of course you do – everyone likes those things. Why make it a point to express your enthusiasm for things that everyone likes?

Maybe you’re cooler than that. Maybe you’re into cool, obscure bands like Fela Kuti and Einstürzende Neubauten. Awesome, dude – you have impeccable taste in shit that nobody has ever heard of. Congratulations.

Everyone knows that a person is only as good as their taste in books, movies, bands and TV shows, but what exactly do you hope to accomplish by posting a 5,000-item laundry list? Are you going to forge deep and meaningful new relationships with people based on a mutual appreciation of Entourage, or sever ties with good friends because they AREN’T into Fela Kuti? If you feel the need to share this information with the world (and I know that you do), keep it as short as possible. Remember: You’re not going to impress anyone. It’s the Internet. Nobody is impressed by ANYTHING on the Internet.

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2. Thou Shalt Not “Poke” Indiscriminately

This guy was into “the poke.” He’s dead now (probably).

Maybe I’m missing something here, but as far as I can tell, “poking” people serves absolutely no purpose other than prompting the person on the other side to “poke” you back, sparking off a potentially infinite spiral of pointlessness that makes everyone involved just a little bit dumber than they were when it started. Before you know it you’re installing apps that offer “pro” pokes, “office” pokes, and “sexy” pokes. “Indiscriminately” might not even be the right word here. How about “Thou Shalt Not ‘Poke’ EVER” or “Thou Shalt Not ‘Poke’ Because That Shit Is Completely Retarded And Pointless”?

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3. Thou Shalt Not “Friend” People You Don’t Actually Know

This guy is Gladstone’s “friend.”

What does the word “friend” mean to you? It means different things to different people, but most would agree that a “friend” is someone that you actually know. Ideally someone you’ve met in real life. I know that’s not always going to be the case (Gladstone would have exactly ZERO friends on Facebook if he had to follow that rule), but I’m sure we can all agree that if someone is your friend, you should at least KNOW WHO THEY ARE.

If you vaguely remember someone from high school but you don’t remember how you actually knew them, then chances are you guys weren’t very good friends to begin with. Of course, it’s also entirely possible that you guys were total besties and you’re going through some sort of Memento-like amnesia. If so, disregard this commandment, add everyone you possibly can as a friend, and send them all messages that say, “WHO AM I? DEAR GOD, PLEASE TELL ME WHO I AM!”

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4. Thou Shalt Not Use A Wall As A Private Messaging Function

The “Wall” is one of Facebook’s most popular features. That being said, there are times when it might be a good idea to move your conversation to a private venue. Here’s a handly little chart to help illustrate when it’s appropriate to communicate on a public Facebook wall, and when it’s INAPPROPRIATE to do so:

Hopefully that clears up some confusion.

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5. Thou Shalt Not Join A Billion Groups

While it may very well be true that Dave Coulier shaves his balls, what more is there to say about it?

If you’re a black lesbian with a severe wheat allergy who also happens to be into Philip K. Dick and astrology, then you’re in luck: there are tons of groups on Facebook, and there’s sure to be at least one of them out there that caters to you. But with so many groups available, you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. You might like chicken noodle soup quite a bit, but do you really need to join the Chicken Noodle Soup Group? Maybe you prefer sponges to forks, but do you really feel so strongly about it that you need to join SPONGES RULE – FORKS DONT!? If you think Gladstone is funny (and yes, I know that’s a big “if”), do you really want to join his group and announce it to the world? Of course not.

There’s nothing wrong with joining a few groups, but don’t go crazy. Oh – and don’t join Gladstone’s. Seriously. It will only encourage him.

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6. Thou Shalt Not Use Stupid Apps

With so many fart-related apps to choose from, how do I know which one is right for me?

The other day I got a notification on Facebook letting me know that someone had “bought” me. Then someone else challenged me to a “race” where this crappy little car came up, I hit “Go!,” and a message popped up that said “YOU LOST THE RACE.” Then another notification popped up informing me that someone had “thrown a sheep” at me, asking if I’d like to install some sort of app to “throw a sheep” back at them. Then another notification popped up, but instead of clicking it I closed my laptop, walked down to the nearest highway overpass, and proceeded to get as drunk as a human being possibly can without dying.

There are thousands of apps available on Facebook, and although there are a few worth checking out, about 99.9% of them suck. A reasonably intelligent person should be able to tell the difference. If you can’t figure out which is which, maybe Facebook isn’t the place for you. Perhaps another social networking site would suit you better?

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7. Thou Shalt Not Give “Gifts”

Q: What does all this crap have in common?
A: I don’t want any of it. (Except that Chinese paper lantern. That looks nice.)

I know this goes with the whole not-using-stupid-apps thing, but “gifts” are so stupid that they deserve their own commandment.

If you want to give me a “gift” of some kind – like a butterfly, a pink striped thong, or an adorable panda – give it to me in real life.

Yes, you heard me: give me a panda in real life.

I will raise it in my apartment, it will quickly become enormous and unmanageable, and then yes, it will most likely go on a rampage in my building and kill several people before being put down by a team of animal control specialists. Do I want all this senseless carnage? No, but given the choice, I’ll take a building full of dead neighbors over receiving a tiny picture of a pair of socks as a “gift” on Facebook.

Am I being too harsh? Maybe. Just give me that Chinese paper lantern and we’ll call it even.

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8. Thou Shalt Not Contact People From Your Distant Past While Intoxicated

If you had a relatively normal childhood, you probably have some nice memories of the people you grew up with. Assuming those people feel the same way about you, Facebook creates a tinderbox-like atmosphere – all it takes is a few booze-soaked swipes at the keyboard to send off an incoherent missive that can easily shatter even the fondest of childhood memories.

It’s nice to let old friends know what you’ve been up to, but mixing Facebook with alcohol can be a potentially deadly combination.

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9. Thou Shalt Not Update Thy Status Message If Thine Status Hath Not Changed (Or If You Have Nothing Clever To Say)

Status Update: Still watching the copy machine.

You have a full-time job, Monday through Friday, 9-5. We have a pretty good idea of what you’re doing when you’re at work – sitting at your desk, typing stuff, maybe talking on the phone every once in a while. Your weekdays are pretty predictable; your friends could use your routine to set their watches. You’re at work. We get it.

So here’s a tip: Wait until you either have something clever to say or – godforbid – something happens before you update your status message. A sandwich (good or bad), an observation about the upcoming election, a funny encounter in the hallway – it doesn’t have to be much, but it has to be something. Here’s what I don’t need to know: that you’re still at your desk. I KNOW you’re at your desk. It’s a weekday during normal business hours. If your status hasn’t changed, why do you feel the need to “update” it?

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10. Thou Shalt Not Act Like You’re On MySpace

Facebook: Not nearly enough glitter.

Welcome to Facebook – you’re all grown up now and it’s time to start acting like it. What does that mean? It means no more “pimping” out your page, no more “glitter” pictures, and no more crashing peoples’ browsers with tons of annoying embedded junk in your profile. Are you okay with that? Does the idea of a social networking site that is actually USABLE appeal to you? Even if it means you can’t make your page display blinking purple text on an animated rainbow background with Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” playing every time the page loads?

Yes, you can probably add some “pimp” apps or something if you really want to, but to do so you’re missing the point: Facebook and MySpace are completely different beasts. If you think a website with a white background looks “boring,” if you can’t go a day without filling out a survey and posting it as a bulletin, and if you can’t stand the idea of only being friends with actual people on a social networking website (as opposed to inanimate objects, abstract concepts and Tila Tequila), well, then maybe Facebook isn’t the place for you.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Feel free to throw a sheep at me and let me know.

Post by brown3218

Written by Phil Plait

Look up, look down, look out, look around.

– Yes, “It Can Happen”

Good advice from the 60s acid band. Look around you. Unless you’re one of the Apollo astronauts, you’ve lived your entire life within a few hundred kilometers of the surface of the Earth. There’s a whole planet beneath your feet, 6.6 sextillion tons of it, one trillion cubic kilometers of it. But how well do you know it?

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Below are ten facts about the Earth – the second in my series of Ten Things You Don’t Know (the first was on the Milky Way). Some things I already knew (and probably you do, too), some I had ideas about and had to do some research to check, and others I totally made up. Wait! No! Kidding. They’re all real. But how many of them do you know? Be honest.

1) The Earth is smoother than a billiard ball.

Maybe you’ve heard this statement: if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a billiard ball, it would actually be smoother than one. When I was in third grade, my teacher said basketball, but it’s the same concept. But is it true? Let’s see. Strap in, there’s a wee bit of math (like, a really wee bit).

OK, first, how smooth is a billiard ball? According to the World Pool-Billiard Association, a pool ball is 2.25 inches in diameter, and has a tolerance of +/- 0.005 inches. In other words, it must have no pits or bumps more than 0.005 inches in height. That’s pretty smooth. The ratio of the size of an allowable bump to the size of the ball is 0.005/2.25 = about 0.002.

The Earth has a diameter of about 12,735 kilometers (on average, see below for more on this). Using the smoothness ratio from above, the Earth would be an acceptable pool ball if it had no bumps (mountains) or pits (trenches) more than 12,735 km x 0.00222 = about 28 km in size.

The highest point on Earth is the top of Mt. Everest, at 8.85 km. The deepest point on Earth is the Marianas Trench, at about 11 km deep.

Hey, those are within the tolerances! So for once, an urban legend is correct. If you shrank the Earth down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be smoother.

But would it be round enough to qualify?

2) The Earth is an oblate spheroid

The Earth is round! Despite common knowledge, people knew that the Earth was spherical thousands of years ago. Eratosthenes even calculated the circumference to very good accuracy!

But it’s not a perfect sphere. It spins, and because it spins, it bulges due to centrifugal force (yes, dagnappit, I said centrifugal). That is an outwards-directed force, the same thing that makes you lean to the right when turning left in a car. Since the Earth spins, there is a force outward that is a maximum at the Earth’s equator, making our Blue Marble bulge out, like a basketball with a guy sitting on it. This type of shape is called an oblate spheroid.

If you measure between the north and south poles, the Earth’s diameter is 12,713.6 km. If you measure across the Equator it’s 12,756.2 km, a difference of about 42.6 kilometers. Uh-oh! That’s more than our tolerance for a billiard ball. So the Earth is smooth enough, but not round enough, to qualify as a billiard ball.

Bummer. Of course, that’s assuming the tolerance for being out-of-round for a billiard ball is the same as it is for pits and bumps. The WPA site doesn’t say. I guess some things remain a mystery.

3) The Earth isn’t an oblate spheroid.

But we’re not done. The Earth is more complicated than an oblate spheroid. The Moon is out there too, and the Sun. They have gravity, and pull on us. The details are complicated (sate yourself here), but gravity (in the form of tides) raises bulges in the Earth’s surface as well. The tides from the Moon have an amplitude (height) of roughly a meter in the water, and maybe 30 cm in the solid Earth. The Sun is more massive than the Moon, but much farther away, and so its tides are only about half as high.

This is much smaller than the distortion due to the Earth’s spin, but it’s still there.

Other forces are at work as well, including pressure caused by the weight of the continents, upheaval due to tectonic forces, and so on. The Earth is actually a bit of a lumpy mess, but if you were to say it’s a sphere, you’d be pretty close. If you held the billiard-ball-sized Earth in your hand, I doubt you’d notice it isn’t a perfect sphere.

A professional pool player sure would though. I won’t tell Allison Fisher if you won’t.

4) OK, one more surfacey thing: the Earth is not exactly aligned with its geoid

If the Earth were infinitely elastic, then it would respond freely to all these different forces, and take on a weird, distorted shape called a geoid. For example, if the Earth’s surface were completely deluged with water (give it a few decades) then the surface shape would be a geoid. But the continents are not infinitely ductile, so the Earth’s surface is only approximately a geoid. It’s pretty close, though.

Precise measurements of the Earth’s surface are calibrated against this geoid, but the geoid itself is hard to measure. The best we can do right now is to model it using complicated mathematical functions. That’s why ESA is launching a satellite called GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) in the next few months, to directly determine the geoid’s shape.

Who knew just getting the shape of the Earth would be such a pain?

5) Jumping into hole through the Earth is like orbiting it.

I grew up thinking that if you dug a hole through the Earth (for those in the US) you’d wind up in China. Turns out that’s not true; in fact note that the US and China are both entirely in the northern hemisphere which makes it impossible, so as a kid I guess I was pretty stupid.

You can prove it to yourself with this cool but otherwise worthless mapping tool.

But what if you did dig a hole through the Earth and jump in? What would happen?

Where my own hole through the Earth ends up.

Well, you’d die (see below). But if you had some magic material coating the walls of your 13,000 km deep well, you’d have quite a trip. You’d accelerate all the way down to the center, taking about 20 minutes to get there. Then, when you passed the center, you’d start falling up for another 20 minutes, slowing the whole way. You’d just reach the surface, then you’d fall again. Assuming you evacuated the air and compensated for Coriolis forces, you’d repeat the trip over and over again, much to your enjoyment and/or terror. Actually, this would go on forever, with you bouncing up and down. I hope you remember to pack a lunch.

Note that as you fell, you accelerate all the way down, but the acceleration itself would decrease as you fell: there is less mass between you and the center of the Earth as you head down, so the acceleration due to gravity decreases as you approach the center. However, the speed with which you pass the center is considerable: about 7.7 km/sec (5 miles/second).

In fact, the math driving your motion is the same as for an orbiting object. It takes the same amount of time to fall all the way through the Earth and back as it does to orbit it, if your orbit were right at the Earth’s surface (orbits slow down as the orbital radius increases). Even weirder, it doesn’t matter where your hole goes: a straight line through the Earth from any point to any other (shallow chord, through the diameter, or whatever) gives you the same travel time of 42 or so minutes.

Gravity is bizarre. But there you go. And if you do go take the long jump, well, your trip may be a wee bit unpleasant.

6) The Earth’s interior is hot due to impacts, shrinkage, sinkage, and radioactive decay.

A long time ago, you, me, and everything else on Earth was scattered in a disk around the Sun several billion kilometers across. Over time, this aggregated into tiny bodies called planetesimals, like dinky asteroids. These would smack together, and some would stick, forming a larger body. Eventually, this object got massive enough that its gravity actively drew in more bodies. As these impacted, they released their energy of motion (kinetic energy) as heat, and the young Earth became a molten ball. Ding! One source of heat.

As the gravity increased, its force tried to crush the Earth into a more compact ball. When you squeeze an object it heats up. Ding ding! The second heat source.

Since the Earth was mostly liquid, heavy stuff fell to the center and lighter stuff rose to the top. So the core of the Earth has lots of iron, nickel, osmium, and the like. As this stuff falls, heat is generated (ding ding ding!) because the potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, which in turn is converted to thermal energy due to friction.

And hey, some of those heavy elements are radioactive, like uranium. As they decay, they release heat (ding ding ding ding!). This accounts for probably more than half of the heat inside the planet.

So the Earth is hot in the inside due to at least four sources. But it’s still hot after all this time because the crust is a decent insulator. It prevents the heat from escaping efficiently, so even after 4.55 billion years, the Earth’s interior is still an unpleasantly warm place to be.

Incidentally, the amount of heat flowing out from the Earth’s surface due to internal sources is about 45 trillion Watts. That’s about three times the total global human energy consumption. If we could capture all that heat and convert it with 100% efficiency into electricity, it would literally power all of humanity. Too bad that’s an insurmountable if.

7) The Earth has at least five natural moons. But not really.

Most people think the Earth has one natural moon, which is why we call it the Moon. These people are right. But there are four other objects – at least – that stick near the Earth in the solar system. They’re not really moons, but they’re cool.

The biggest is called Cruithne (pronounced MRPH-mmmph-glug, or something similar). It’s about 5 kilometers across, and has an elliptical orbit that takes it inside and outside Earth’s solar orbit. The orbital period of Cruithne is about the same as the Earth’s, and due to the peculiarities of orbits, this means it is always on the same side of the Sun we are. From our perspective, it makes a weird bean-shaped orbit, sometimes closer, sometimes farther from the Earth, but never really far away.

That’s why some people say it’s a moon of the Earth. But it actually orbits the Sun, so it’s not a moon of ours. Same goes for the other three objects discovered, too.

Oh- these guys can’t hit the Earth. Although they stick near us, more or less, their orbits don’t physically cross ours. So we’re safe. From them.

8) The Earth is getting more massive.

Sure, we’re safe from Cruithne. But space is littered with detritus, and the Earth cuts a wide path (125 million square km in area, actually). As we plow through this material, we accumulate on average 20-40 tons of it per day! [Note: your mileage may vary; this number is difficult to determine, but it’s probably good within a factor of 2 or so.] Most of it is in the form of teeny dust particles which burn up in our atmosphere, what we call meteors (or shooting stars, but doesn’t “meteor” sound more sciencey?). These eventually fall to the ground (generally transported by rain drops) and pile up. They probably mostly wash down streams and rivers and then go into the oceans.

40 tons per day may sound like a lot, but it’s only 0.000000000000000000000002% the mass of the Earth (in case I miscounted zeroes, that’s 2×10-26 times the Earth’s mass). It would take 140,000 million trillion years to double the mass of the Earth this way, so again, you might want to pack a lunch. In a year, it’s enough cosmic junk to fill a six-story office building, if that’s a more palatable analogy.

I’ll note the Earth is losing mass, too: the atmosphere is leaking away due to a number of different processes. But this is far slower than the rate of mass accumulation, so the net affect is a gain of mass.

9) Mt. Everest isn’t the biggest mountain.

The height of a mountain may have an actual definition, but I think it’s fair to say that it should be measured from the base to the apex. Mt. Everest stretches 8850 meters above sea level, but it has a head start due to the general uplift from the Himalayas. The Hawaiian volcano Mauna Kea is 10,314 meters from stem to stern (um, OK, bad word usagement, but you get my point), so even though it only reaches to 4205 meters above sea level, it’s a bigger mountain than Everest.

Plus, Mauna Kea has telescopes on top of it, so that makes it cooler.

10) Destroying the Earth is hard.

Considering I wrote a book about destroying the Earth a dozen different ways (available for pre-order on amazon.com!), it turns out the phrase “destroying the Earth” is a bit misleading. I actually write about wiping out life, which is easy. Physically destroying the Earth is hard.

What would it take to vaporize the planet? Let’s define vaporization as blowing it up so hard that it disperses and cannot recollect due to gravity. How much energy would that take?

Think of it this way: take a rock. Throw it up so hard it escapes from the Earth. That takes quite a bit of energy! Now do it again. And again. Lather, rinse, repeat… a quadrillion times, until the Earth is gone. That’s a lot of energy! But we have one advantage: every rock we get rid of decreases the gravity of the Earth a little bit (because the mass of the Earth is smaller by the mass of the rock). As gravity decreases, it gets easier to remove rocks.

You can use math to calculate this; how much energy it takes to remove a rock and simultaneously account for the lowering of gravity. If you make some basic assumptions, it takes roughly 2 x 1032 Joules, or 200 million trillion trillion Joules. That’s a lot. For comparison, that’s the total amount of energy the Sun emits in a week. It’s also about a trillion times the destructive energy yield of detonating every nuclear weapon on Earth.

If you want to vaporize the Earth by nuking it, you’d better have quite an arsenal, and time on your hands. If you blew up every nuclear weapon on the planet once every second, it would take 160,000 years to turn the Earth into a cloud of expanding gas.

And this is only if you account for gravity! There are chemical bonds holding the Earth’s matter together as well, so it takes even more energy.

This is why Star Wars is not science fiction, it’s fantasy. The Death Star wouldn’t be able to have a weapon that powerful. The energy storage alone is a bit much, even for the power of the Dark Side.

Even giant collisions can’t vaporize the planet. An object roughly the size of Mars impacted the Earth more than 4.5 billion years ago, and the ejected debris formed the Moon (the rest of the collider merged with the Earth). But the Earth wasn’t vaporized. Even smacking a whole planet into another one doesn’t destroy them!

Of course, the collision melted the Earth all the way down to the core, so the damage is, um, considerable. But the Earth is still around.

The Sun will eventually become a red giant (Chapter 7!), and while it probably won’t consume the Earth, it’ll put the hurt on us for sure. But even then, total vaporization is unlikely (though Mercury is doomed).

Planets tend to be sturdy. Good thing, too. We live on one.

Conclusion

Well, that cheery thought brings us to the end of my list of things you may or may not have known about the Earth. I had lots more. How much does the atmosphere weigh? What’s the average mass of a cloud? Stuff like that, but these are the ten I liked best. If you’ve got more, feel free to leave them in the comments!

But remember the main point here: you live on a planet, and you may not know all that much about it. The only cure for that is learning, and that’s driven by wonder. Keep wondering, and keep learning. And don’t forget to look around.

Credits:

Original billiards images from Fictures.

GOCE image courtesy ESA.

Cruithne animation from Wikipedia.

Mt. Everest original from Joe Hastings.

The nuked Earth image was created by me for my second Q&BA episode.

Written by Zen Habits

Photo courtesy of ePi.Longo

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” – Henry David Thoreau

If you’re trying to simplify your life, it’s best to follow the four simple steps I’ve outlined before – it’s just the simplest method.

But sometimes life gets in the way, and you need a workaround, some way to get past your usual obstacles and to trick yourself into keeping things simple.

I use these “hacks” myself (in this case, “hacks” refers to workarounds or tricks to reach your goal), and I’ve found them to be effective in many cases. Please note that you might have read some of these once or twice (or thrice) on this blog before, but I thought it would be a useful resource to gather them all into one post.

Also, don’t try to implement all of them – that would be far from simple. Not all of them will apply to your life anyway. Pick one or two and try them out.

Simple tricks to simplify your life:

1. Three-box decluttering. If you’re trying to declutter a room, drawer, shelf, desk … use three boxes to quickly sort everything. Just quickly go through each shelf or drawer or flat surface at once, putting things into three separate boxes: Trash, Donate, Maybe. The first two boxes are obvious … the Maybe box is for stuff you’re not too sure about – you can put this in storage for a few months and decide later. Put everything else – the stuff you love and use – back neatly.
2. Create a no-distractions zone. This is great for when you want to do some focused work – which is just about every day for most of us. Create a zone with no distractions – no phones, no email, no co-workers or kids or spouses, nothing on the walls, no IM or Twitter, no web surfing. Just the tools you need to do your work and nothing else. You could also create a time within your schedule for this distraction-free zone – say 8-10 a.m., for example. No distractions within that block of time. You can do email and phone calls before and after, but not during. I like this hack for when I need to do some writing but have a hard time concentrating.
3. Create a short-list. This is for the big-picture simplifying. If you’re having a hard time getting your life to something truly simple, create a short list of things you love doing most. This should be 4-5 things. For me, that’s writing, reading, running and spending time with my family. Your short list will be different. Then, try to eliminate everything in your life that’s not on the short list, to make room for the things you love.
4. Deflect all requests for a week. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, make the decision that you will not say “yes” to any new requests this week. If you get a new request, politely decline. If it’s a request you can’t decline, tell them you’ll get to it next week because you have some projects you need to finish this week. Then pick one or two or even three projects (depending on their sizes) and focus on finishing them this week. You can worry about new stuff next week. Repeat this hack when needed.
5. Go schedule-less. This works well if you’ve been over-packing your schedule. Try this: set a policy that you won’t schedule any appointments. This won’t work for some people who have mandatory meetings, but if you control your schedule, you can tell people, “I’m sorry, I don’t make appointments anymore. Call me on that day and we’ll see how things are going.” Leave your day wide open. At the beginning of the day, pick a few things to focus on and try to get them done. If you need to meet with someone, call them and meet.
6. Single-task. This is good for those who tend to be all over the place. I’ve talked about it many times before: don’t allow yourself to switch between tasks. When you’re working on a report or writing an article, don’t do anything else. When you’re processing email, get to empty and do nothing else. One task at a time … finish the task … move on to the next. Try this for one day, focusing on it completely for that day. If it works for you, try it again the next day.
7. Start your day with peace. I love this one, because it’s so easy to implement and yet it can have such a powerful effect on your day. When you first rise, do something that is calming and peaceful. That might be running or walking, having a quiet cup of coffee with a book, watching the sunrise, meditating or yoga … whatever works well for you. It can be 10 minutes or an hour, but find some peace in the morning and use it to calm you throughout your entire day. Read more.
8. Eat only 7 things. If you’re trying to be healthful, but are having a hard time navigating complicated diets, try this hack to simplify things. Limit yourself to non-packaged foods. Eat only seven things: fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean protein, lean calcium, beans, nuts, good fats. Nothing from a box. This will require that you cook your food, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Read more.
9. Go paperless. This works great for certain types of jobs – mine, for example. It won’t work for other jobs. But if you can do it, you can save time filing, save time searching for stuff, save space, simplify your office, and save a few trees to boot. First, insist that everything be sent via email or through online documents. Then create a filing system that works for you. Personally, I like to keep things online, and just archive and search rather than creating a complicated hierarchy of folders, but you might prefer a more traditional system on your hard drive. Do what works best for you. For those things that can only be sent via paper, scan and toss. Try to limit the scanning, and request that things be sent electronically.
10. Go media free. If your life is filled with information overload, and you find little time to do the things you love to do, consider eliminating media from your life, at least temporarily. This includes cable TV, DVDs, newspapers and magazines, Internet news and the like. Now, I’m not saying you should eliminate the things you love. For myself, I would never eliminate reading books, for example. You might love a certain TV show – in that case, eliminate everything else. You can go media free for a week to see if it improves your life, and then consider extending it for longer. This hack won’t work for everyone, but I enjoy it.
11. Limit yourself to 3 tasks. If your to-do list is long and overwhelming, pick three tasks you want to do today – important tasks that aren’t just urgent but actually have a long-lasting impact on your life. Focus on getting these three tasks done before anything else. If you finish early, you can either call it a day or get some bonus tasks done. Read more.
12. Limit yourself to one project. How many projects are you juggling right now? If there are too many, you might be limiting your effectiveness. Instead, focus on one project right now, and put the others on the back-burner. Try to get that one project done as quickly as possible, and then work on the next one. Read more.
13. 5-sentence emails. This works well if you spend too much time writing emails. I got the idea from Mike Davidson, who advocates limiting each email to five sentences or fewer. This forces you to keep your emails brief and to the point. It limits the amount of time you use doing email. And it forces you to decide what’s important in each email. I generally follow this rule (though I break it from time to time) … and if you get short emails from me, you now understand why.
14. 30-day rule. This is a fantastic hack for those (like me) who have trouble with impulse buying – that great enemy of simplifying. The rule is that if you want to buy something, you have to write it on your 30-day list, with the date that it was added to the list. After 30 days, if you still want it, you can buy it. This doesn’t apply to necessities such as groceries … which helps you distinguish between wants and needs, a great skill for simplifying.
15. Only wear a few colors. I actually do this, and it helps me simplify my wardrobe. I basically wear only black, blue, grey and green, with some browns thrown in now and then. This means that it’s very easy for me to match my clothes, and I don’t need a lot of clothes. You’ll have other colors you love to wear – build your wardrobe around them. This won’t work for people who love having lots of clothes in a wide range of colors, but for myself, it keeps things nice and simple – and I don’t like thinking about clothes anyway.
16. One in, two out. When you bring something into your house, you have to get rid of two things. The normal rule is one in, one out, but somehow that never seems to work – things still accumulate. Instead, get rid of two things and things will stay simple.
17. Work four days a week. Of course not everyone can set their own schedule, but if you have that luxury, limit yourself to four days a week – 8 hours or less. You might even set it to 6 hours if you can manage that. And then make it three days. But how can you work only four days if you currently work 5 and are overloaded as it is? It’s funny, but you can somehow make it work. It’s a well-known law that our work expands to fit the time we give it … and the flip side of that is if you shrink the time, you will shrink the work to fit the time. If you only have four days in a work week, you will pick the most important tasks. You will get the work done that needs to be done, and you’ll naturally eliminate the rest. You’ll set a schedule that works. You’ll delegate and outsource and automate and eliminate. And you’ll have an extra day off. Try it and see – I bet you can manage it.
18. Retire early. This is a radical hack, but it can work for some people. In fact, it’s worked for many. Simply set an early retirement date (maybe even next year!) and force yourself to save up the money you need. Take a mini-retirement if necessary. Then go back to work and save up for your next mini-retirement. Or set your early retirement in five or 10 years, and then never go back to work. It sounds unrealistic, but if you look at it this way, you can save the money you need to retire. It means forcing yourself to make choices – do you want to spend impulsively now, or retire early? If you cut back on spending you can save more. Live simply and frugally and invest the difference. Make more money in the short term so you don’t need to work as much later.
19. Limit storage space. Do you tend to save everything? Have tons of stuff in storage, in closets or attics or garages or cupboards? The less storage you have, the less stuff you’ll save – which will save you the stress of having to go through all that storage to find stuff, to organize stuff, to maintain stuff, to get rid of old stuff. A good example is my desk – I work on a table with no drawers. This means I don’t have all the usual stuff in a desk, and forces me to keep things simple. You can apply this to all areas of life if you like.
20. Staunch your information flow. Similar to the media fast, you can cut back on the amount of information coming into your life. Do you currently have tons of emails coming in? Find ways to reduce them – unsubscribe to mailing lists, ask people to stop sending you joke or chain emails (or block them from your inbox), automatically filter things you don’t really need to read, pre-empt common questions with an FAQ. Do you read a lot of blog feeds? Unsubscribe to those that don’t give you value. Do you read a lot of news? Pick one news source instead of five.
21. Send only five emails a day. I did this for a little while and loved it. I would pick five important emails to respond to, and that was it. The rest would be delayed or deleted. I ended up prioritizing, and while some people didn’t get a response, I also didn’t spend all my time in email. It freed me, and made me realize that I don’t have to respond to every email – people will make do.

“Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.” – Edwin Way Teale

Collected by Digital Picture Zone

Applied carefully, High Dynamic Range-technique (HDR) can create incredibly stunning pictures which blur our sense of the difference between reality and illusion.

“In computer graphics and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques.

Here are 25 stunningly beautiful HDR photographs.

( photo by klados25 )

( photo by Rickydavid )

( photo by raycollister )

( photo by t.beauchemin)

( photo by Compound Eye )

( photo by cloudzilla )

( photo by stevacek )

( photo by blakelipthratt )

( photo by blakelipthratt )

( photo by Bartek Kuzia )

( photo by Dubtastic )

( photo by Kris Kros )

( photo by NymphoBrainiac )

( photo by Altus )

( photo by Oblivius Dude )

( photo by svf1972 )

( photo by antiguan_life )

( photo by raymondluijbregts )

( photo by Asoner )

( photo by James Neeley )

( photo by Fort Photo )

( photo by NY_Doll )

( photo by Franck )

( photo by g.s.george )

( photo by Jeff Clow )

Collected by Aaron Burgess

From “Star Wars Kid” to Bill O’Reilly’s meltdown, a gallery of YouTube’s greatest hits.

Fat Kid on Rollercoaster

Poached from Australia’s Funniest Home Videos, this viral classic finds a rotund kid losing his shit – and nearly his seat – on a coaster while the woman next to him obliviously yuks it up.

Highlight: 0:16-:24 – from thrilling to scary to hilarious in seconds.

McDonald’s Rap

In 2006, two amateur MCs from Indiana beatboxed their order into a Mickey D’s drive-thru speaker, inadvertently launching a thousand lame viral-marketing campaigns in the process.

Hightlight: 0:42 – a cashier asks, “Can you throw that down again?” and inspires the boys to chop, screw and speed up their order in real time.

Toilet Prank

Visitors to a port-a-potty fall prey to one of the better pranks on YouTube when their john door magically transforms into the entryway of a corporate boardroom.

Highlight: The polite older gentleman who, at 0:47, apologizes before retreating back into the crapper.

Cop Eats Pot Brownies and Freaks Out!!!

On this May 2007 MSNBC clip, a Michigan cop unwisely calls 911 after eating brownies made from stolen evidence. The dispatcher asks what we’re all thinking: “Do you guys do this on a regular basis?”

Highlight: “I think we’re dead, I really do. Time is going by really, really, really slow.” Dude, in some circles, that’s called peaking.

Zombie Kid Likes Turtles

Cornered for a live on-air chat about how he’s enjoying the day’s festival, a face-painted grade-schooler renders his interviewer hapless with the retarded equivalent of a Zen riddle: “I like turtles!”

Highlight: That pause at 0:10 – you can practically hear the tires screeching.

Crazy Frog Bros

German production crew Bass Bumpers once knocked Coldplay down the U.K. charts with their version of the ’80s synth hit “Axel F” – a.k.a. the “Crazy Frog Song.” In this 2006 clip, however, it took just two lip-syncing dorks in a basement to crush them all.

Highlight: 2:08 – where the hell did that rope swing come from?

Whistle Tips with Bubb Rubb

Oakland, California, whistle-tip aficionados Bub Rubb and Lil’ Sis became Internet celebrities after this 2003 TV-news segment on the annoyingly high-pitched muffler mods hit YouTube. All together now, y’all: “Whoo-whoo!”

Highlight: 1:35 – Bubb Rubb nearly crashes his car while showing off his tips on the open road.

Dramatic Lemur

This literally eye-popping primate footage would find itself paired up with all sorts of ridiculous soundtracks, but for sheer dramatic effect (and big, dumb laughs), nothing beats hearing it with the THX theme. Dramatic Chipmunk, consider yourself pwned.

Highlight: Wait… for… it.

Grape Stomping Lady Falls!

Fox 5 Atlanta reporter Melissa Sander takes a massive, gruesomely audible faceplant while stomping grapes during a live segment. One of Howard Stern’s most memorable sound effects is born.

Highlight: 0:55-:57 is the reason YouTube’s pause button exists.

What Really Happened to the Life Size X-Wing

This 2007 clip is even funnier if you know the back story, in which a crew of California geeks spent months readying their own life-sized, rocket-powered X-Wing Fighter for launch. At least until the Empire gets wind of their plans…

Highlight: 0:12-:13 – a Lucasfilm résumé in YouTube form.

Bill O’Reilly Flips Out – Dance Remix

O’Reilly’s Inside Edition-era meltdown over a malfunctioning TelePrompTer had barely gotten cold on YouTube when this dance remix surfaced in May of 2008. It’s since graduated to the iTunes store.

Highlight: The whole thing is priceless – as creator levmyshkin says, “Everyone who turns this song into a ringtone is my hero.”

Sesame Street Casino – Elmo and De Niro

The synchronization may be a little wonky, but just imagine a 5-year-old stumbling across this mashup of Elmo (as Joe Pesci), De Niro and a particularly NSFW scene from Casino – you mudderfucker, you.

Highlight: 0:6-:11 – Pesci’s F-bomb syncs perfectly with Elmo’s mouth.

Grindcore Wedding

In this 2006 mashup, the squarest-looking wedding dance in history gets a welcome shot of heavy-metal adrenaline, while low-rent grindcore band Cock and Ball Torture actually gets over a million people to pay attention to one of its tunes.

Highlight: The way the riff syncs up with those dancers at 0:19 is just uncanny.

Benny Lava

YouTube user buffalax specializes in rendering non-English music videos absurd via subtitles. In this 2007 clip, buffalax also manages to catapult Indian choreographer/actor/director Prabhu Deva (rechristened “Benny Lava,” after a misheard lyric) into global Internet-meme status.

Highlight: 3:35-3:40 – “I fought a barber man / We know what’s in butter rum.” Us, too!

Scary “Mary Poppins” Recut Trailer

In 2006, Georgia film student Chris Rule recut the Disney classic into a trailer whose sheer terror rivals The Exorcist. But is it funny? That depends – when was the last time you watched Mary Poppins without wishing bad things on Julie Andrews?

Highlight: Mary’s joyful head-spin horribly recontextualized at 0:41.

Guinea Pigs “Highway Star” Video

In a rare moment of cuteness, the acid-fried Clevelanders behind the underground party-tape series The Crazy Dave Tape pull their editing bay away from porn and gore long enough to sync Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” to some idiotic footage of driving rodents.

Highlight: The last five seconds – wha?

Barack Roll

A meme poking fun at a meme. Aussie lawyer and Internet jokester Hugh Atkin’s August 2008 parody of the bait-and-switch clip Rickroll is just as notable for the sheer amount of campaign speeches (not to mention all that Ellen footage) Atkin had to wade through to splice it together.

Highlight: 0:20-1:00 – those are some quick changes we can believe in.

Bar Mitzvah That’s What Friends Are For

This monsterpiece of found footage from a 1993 bar mitzvah casts newly crowned man “Seth’s” family in a karaoke disaster filled with so many amazing audio and video non-sequiturs (pay attention to that blue screen), you’ll swear you were watching a 1960s surrealist happening.

Highlight: Watch the heads start floating at 1:08.

Flea Market Montgomery Commercial

Alabama flea-market proprietor Sammy Stephens found his empire of one thrust into Internet stardom after this low-budget, so-bad-it’s-genius rap hit YouTube in 2007. Once Ellen got hold of it, the whole world would follow.

Highlight: 0:11-:12 – Andre and Big Boi got nothin’ on Stephens’ delivery of his immortal tag line: “It’s just like a mini-mall!”

Kid Impersonates Napoleon Dynamite During Spelling Bee

Dominic Ranz Ebarle Errazo may not have won the 2005 Scripps National Spelling Bee, but after his completely out-of-context Napoleon Dynamite reference hit YouTube, the kid became an overnight sensation.

Highlight: 0:33, when the announcer asks the TV audience, “Was that a secret message?”

Porn Call to QVC

Calling in live on-air to QVC for the company’s 18th anniversary, proud Dell computer owner “Randy” (fitting name, that) makes no bones about all the boners that new system has him popping.

Highlight: 0:47 – Randy manages to squeeze in one more “porno” before hanging up.

Dildo on the News

Covering a major cocaine bust in Maplewood, Minnesota, a Channel 5 Eyewitness News reporter prefigures Andy Samberg’s viral work with this rather impressive, if accidental, “Dick in a Box.” Pay attention to that door.

Highlight: 0:19 – he seriously has no idea.

Boom Goes the Dynamite

In this 2007 clip, Ball State freshman Brian Collins proves he’s no great improviser, but after accidentally spawning an Internet meme while calling a play-by-play out of sheer frustration, the dude would still go on to David Letterman and a full-time TV gig.

Highlight: 2:30 – a catch phrase is born.

Top 10 Angry On-Camera Meltdowns

YouTube is a veritable treasure trove of short-circuiting TV-news-anchor footage, but from Chris Berman’s freakout to Sue Simmons’ F-bomb, this 2008 clip gathers the best of the worst in a (well-coifed) hair under two minutes.

Highlight: 0:25-:43 – the on-air pissing match between WYNY-TV’s Jim Ryan and Dick Oliver.

Star Wars Kid

In 2002, a 14-year-old dork films himself on school equipment doing his best/worst Darth Maul, only to have sinister schoolmates lift the footage and make Internet history at his expense. Even as the Web?s most popular video (nearly 1 billion views and counting), it’s still painful to watch.

Highlight: That painful close-up at 0:43 – he really means it.

Written by Drew Byrd-Smith

Most people endure their fair share of tough times – the poverty of college life, relationship problems, a bad car accident, a woeful flirtation with the crack pipe, or any other equally awful experience. But film is constantly there to remind us that there are others out there who are suffering exponentially more than we could ever hope to. Watching them overcome their challenges or ultimately be swallowed by them create two very different types of movies, but in the end, there’s a certain set of films that show us an exceptionally brutal set of circumstances.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead…

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THE pING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

His problem: Suffered an unpredicted stroke, resulting in complete paralysis except for his left eye, and died two years later.

Your problem: Alone on Valentine’s Day.

By all accounts, French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby led a pretty great life. He had found success and fame as the editor of Elle magazine, was a father to two kids, and certainly wasn’t lacking in female companionship. Wealth, family and romance – the rest of us could only be so lucky. But on December 8th, 1995, Jean-Do had a debilitating stroke, leaving him with someone called “locked in syndrome.” Paralyzed everywhere except for his left eye, he could still see and hear but was totally unable to reply to his surroundings in any way.

The ping Bell and the Butterfly is a very subdued film about hope and inspiration, in that it doesn’t go for the typical “do your best!” platitudes, but instead subjects you to very difficult circumstances and allows the main character to accomplish incredible things in them. The movie is shot primarily in first person, which does a superb job at making you feel really fucking frustrated for Jean-Do as he lolls around without an ounce of control of his own body. The aforementioned inspiration comes from that, even in this state, he managed to write a book by blinking it out one letter at a time. And now he’s got a pretty damn good film about him, too. Kind of makes you feel unaccomplished, huh?

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REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

Their problems:

1) Developed a speed addiction after going on a futile diet in order to lose weight, all in the name of going on a TV show she would never be on. Eventually had to be electroshocked into sanity.

2) Developed a heroin addiction along with his girlfriend and, in a bout of hazed indiscretion, repeatedly injected into a suppurating vein, wounding the arm irreversibly. Amputation ensues.

3) Developed a heroin addiction along with her boyfriend to cope with the perpetual feeling of being ignored by her parents in favor of their money. Addiction deepens while money dries up after her boyfriend stops paying attention to her and, concurrently, she turns to prostitution as a means for filling both needs.

4) Developed a heroin addiction and runs a few ill-fated drug deals in order to fuel this addiction. After taking his wounded friend (see 2) to the hospital, he is then apprehended by police and thrown in the slammer for an indeterminate amount of miserable years.

Your problem: Someone ate the last slice of cake.

The omnibus piece is a great way to involve a viewer with a whole bunch of fucked-up, miserable characters, and Requiem for a Dream is the top of the pops. Darren Aronofsky’s magnum opus is a scathing indictment of not just drugs, but addiction and need in general. Though I’ve never plumbed the depths of a heroin habit, I can safely say that it looks like the repercussions surely aren’t worth it; sensationalized though it may be, Aronofsky does a great job making the stuff look thoroughly unappealing. If something can go wrong for the four characters in the film, it does, be it their attempts to score more drugs (or more money for drugs) or the out-of-control pill popping in order to lose weight and regain youthful energy.

I’m hesitant to make the claim that Requiem for a Dream will scare everyone away from a potential drug binge. The sensationalized editing and pacing tricks will either take the viewer on a nightmarish trip or turn them off from the movie totally, based on whether they can suspend disbelief or resist the theatrics, respectively. Those willing, however, will be exposed to four people who become entangled with a drug and a culture that they simply can’t get above. It eats them alive and spits out their bones. The one thing Aronofsky seems to beg of his viewers is “run for your lives.”

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BOOGIE NIGHTS

Their problems: Being talentless, vaguely attractive losers with nice tits and big penises, using their sexuality to support themselves both emotionally and financially. Everyone ends up miserable, addicted to drugs or dead.

Your problem: Hot Topic ran out of TMNT hoodies the other day.

Boogie Nights is just about the polar opposite of Requiem for a Dream. It presents a spiritual dead-end like the porn industry as a place of unending fun, friends and dubious fame, a (figurative) orgy of bright colors and great drugs and bumpin’ tunes. Dirk Diggler, Rollergirl, Amber Waves and all these other pornographers are living a fantastic life, but a lot can change in the span of a two and a half hour movie, and change it does. Once the golden boy of the porn world, Diggler loses his place to a bunch of young upstarts. He turns to showing off his penis for random men in parking lots and being complicit in dangerous heists to fuel his cocaine habit. Amber Waves loses her child, the one thing in her world that she really cares about, to her husband in a porce settlement. Rollergirl is humiliated and degraded in front of people from her old high school. William H. Macy shoots himself. Philip Seymour Hoffman tries to make out with Diggler and is awkward. The list goes on and on and on…

But at the end of it all, you know what the saddest part of it is? Dirk Diggler goes BACK. His old producer sees him in a sad state and offers him the opportunity to return to the porn world, and he does it without a hesitation. That initial allure is so overwhelming that, even with knowledge of its seedy underbelly, he chooses to relive it again. Is this a happy ending or the beginning of a new disaster for Dirk? Considering how well he did the first time around, I’m inclined to think the latter. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with sexuality or the human body, but being so openly appreciated for nothing but your sex organs is surely damaging to many. Whether that’s because of our deep-rooted feelings about sex is a matter best left to a psychologist, but Paul Thomas Anderson suggests that most people simply aren’t strong enough to make a wholesome career out of it.

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APOCALYPSE NOW

His problem: Received a government ultimatum that basically amounted to a suicide mision. Spent hellish weeks sailing down a river populated with hostile Vietnamese soldiers. Upon reaching his destination, got his mind blown and his universe tweaked beyond recognition.

Your problem: Can’t afford an iPhone.

If I had to pick, I’d probably choose Apocalypse Now as the most horrifying film I’ve ever seen. I had to go out and get ice cream afterwards because I felt sick to my stomach sitting through something so nightmarish. If there is one film that can bring you to understand the sacrifices our soldiers have made for our benefit, it’s this one – and it’s widely argued that we had very little to do in Vietnam anyway. So is all the suffering we see on display in Apocalypse Now for naught? To me, that’s one of the most depressing parts of the whole affair.

This isn’t the place for political punditry, though; instead, I’m here to tell you why Captain Benjamin L. Willard had a really bad month. He is sent into the heart of the Vietnamese jungles by his superiors to find and eliminate one Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a US expatriate playing God with the natives. On his way, he suffers through horrific conditions, fights numerous bloody battles, and watches the few men he could call friends die horrific deaths all around him. Upon finally reaching his target, he had everything he knew about the institution he worked for undermined and sullied, is forced to kill Colonel Kurtz with a machete, and returned to the USA with almost certain psychological damage. I am almost certainly not doing justice to the movie, because the oppression and pain is just as audio-visual as it is narrative. Everything Francis Ford Coppola films and records is used to further the chaos that is this mission. The screams of innocent Vietnamese as the Americans firebomb their village; enemies on the embankment hollering and spraying the gunboat with spears; the burning, angry atmosphere of Colonel Kurtz’s camp of brainwashed locals and fellow expatriates. Even the tiniest bits of reprieve – a Playboy show, a puppy found in an enemy’s boat – are ripped away from these soldiers savagely. The movie simply doesn’t give you a break. It is a harrowing cinematic experience, one that will move you and deepen your perspective of both war and film. And if you can’t appreciate what you have after you’ve watched it, then you don’t deserve any of it.

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LILYA 4-EVER

Her problem: Abandoned by her mother in a poor country and forced to turn to prostitution to support herself. Her best friend dies, her boyfriend sells her to a sex slavery ring, she contracts a disease and then ends the movie by killing herself.

Your problem: Finding new excuses to bitch about gas prices.

Lilya 4-Ever is one of the more extreme examples on this list, simply because poor Lilya never really stands a chance. Her life is such a negative, hopeless torrent of pain that the viewer automatically learns to parse “happy things that happen to Lilya” into “happy things that will soon go horribly wrong for Lilya.” Her mother flees to America, leaving her in an Estonian slum to die. To make ends meet, a girl from her school takes her to a nightclub, where she learns the prostitution trade. She loses her only friend to malnutrition. When a boy comes into her life and promises to take her away from Estonia, she soon discovers that he’s working for a sex trade, rendering her a prisoner and shuttling her out to several clients a day. Between tricks, she’s locked in an apartment with very little food. Her death seems the most fitting conclusion to this macabre chain of events.

Why would a viewer choose to subject himself to such a relentless film? Lilya 4-Ever is a sublime slice of socially conscious horror, illuminating the sex slave trade with unforgettable tenacity. There’s no way anyone could sit through this film and be able to set aside what Lilya goes through, which is apparently a common problem in underdeveloped Eastern European countries even today. This is just about the farthest thing away from escapist entertainment, but for those looking for a deep and harrowing emotional experience, this film is more than ready to provide.

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RESCUE DAWN

His problem: Stranded in a POW camp. Upon escape, he and a friend ventured through immensely dangerous terrain, only for that friend to be beheaded. At death’s door, he is rescued in perhaps the only happy ending on this list.

Your problem: Failed a class that you weren’t paying attention in anyway.

Rescue Dawn, or Christian Bale Undergoes a Radical Physical Transformation in the Name of Acting Part 38, is one of the sadly underseen gems of 2007. A Werner Herzog master-class in filmic restraint, the only extreme aspect of the movie is the punishment heaped upon poor Dieter Dengler. On a routine air mission over Laos, he is shot down and taken to a hostile POW camp where is he is tortured, starved and almost certain to not be rescued. After pulling off an against-all-odds retreat strategy, he and his friend Duane (Steve Zahn, surprisingly effective against type) wander the outlying jungles in the thick of monsoon season with no shoes, supplies or idea of where to go. Upon finding civilization, Duane is senselessly murdered, and Dieter narrowly escapes with his life, alone and forced to hide and forage. He manages to flag down two passing helicopters, however, and escapes with his life intact.

This is definitely a less arduous viewing experience than fellow Vietnam flick Apocalypse Now, but some viewers might empathize with it more since this is the account of a real man. Dieter Dengler, also the subject of Herzog-helmed documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, spent approximately six months in Laotian captivity, in addition to 23 days wandering the jungles; this account of his steadfastness and insistence on escaping makes for a genuinely inspiring ending. Herzog is careful never to manipulate the viewer for sympathy, letting only the film remind you that this war actually happened and the people in it actually suffered. And if the ending seems a little overblown, it’s because a man like Dieter deserves the hero’s welcome he received.

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FUNNY GAMES

Their problem: A family experiences ceaseless brutality at the hands of two psychotic young men and are then picked off one by one.

Your problem: Actually, seeing this movie is your problem.

I’ve only seen Michael Haneke’s original Funny Games. That was enough for me, and to the best of my knowledge his USA retreatment with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth is a shot-for-shot remake, so I don’t think I’m missing much. It is a deplorable film that posits itself as an attack against violence as entertainment and our society’s brainless consumption thereof, but fails spectacularly at remedying the problem or even saying anything insightful.

Watts and Roth are a married couple held hostage by a pair of completely incorrigible psychopaths, totally immune to reason or pleading of any kind. After countless “funny games,” they are forced to watch their son get shot; after a long, blood-soaked scene of quiet introspection, the couple makes a failed attempt to escape. The husband is then brutalized for ages with a knife and eventually put out of his misery. The wife is able to seize their gun and shoot one of her captors but the other REWINDS THE MOVIE and cuts her off at the pass. Eventually, they take her aboard a boat and kill her as well (after one more futile, maddening attempt at resistance).

Haneke’s problem in telegraphing Funny Games and its corresponding message is that the delivery of the film is completely at odds with what it’s trying to say. At absolute best, Funny Games may have made you feel uncomfortable. Is that going to stop you from watching any violent films ever again? Not bloody likely; Haneke fails here. At worst, you admired the filmmaking, the brutality and the sheer insanity of the antagonists, in which case the movie is completely lost on you and Haneke fails again. Someone who watches movies like Saw without irony is not going to see this and experience a sudden change of heart about movie violence. They’ll just think it’s either badass or boring (because sadly, this film is tame these days). So basically, Haneke shoots himself in the foot, and then films it without cuts for seven minutes. So what’s more horrifying: the movie, or the fact that the movie has probably done far more harm than good?

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KIDS

Their problem: A bunch of children who don’t know any better living in a world of sex, drugs and hate, with barely a speck of remorse for their choices.

Your problem: You’re living in the same world.

So we all know Larry Clark is kind of creepy, the kind of old guy who coaches Little League and gives you that really funny feeling in the pit of your stomach, but it doesn’t make his movie offerings any less resonant. Kids chronicles a collection of youths trapped in the heat of insurmountable inner-city poverty, choosing hedonism to avoid their circumstances. This world comes crashing to a halt for one girl who learns that, after just one sexual encounter, that she’s contracted HIV, and her attempts to warn everyone about the promiscuous boy who gives it to her ultimately fail. In fact, they fail spectacularly, because she gets drugged and date-raped, thus spreading the disease to yet more unknowing kids.

Of all the films on this list, Kids is the farthest away from entertainment of any form. It is ugly, oppressive, generally poorly acted and full of sketchy, half-done characters. It’s hard to get behind this movie for any reason. Its best purpose is as a polemic, demonstrating what ignorant youth is truly capable of doing to itself and others. Children are quickly trivialized and belittled, but it doesn’t make them any less destructive. The challenging question the film offers is that, as detestable as their activities might seem, this may not really be their fault. Are behaviors like theirs a product of their environment? Are all poor youths doomed to waste away like the ones we see here?

Get tested, stay in school and don’t do drugs.

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Now it’s your turn! Tell us what films remind YOU that life actually isn’t so bad after all, and if your selections are good, we’ll add them to the list.

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USER UPDATES!

City of God

(Suggested by: like half the people who read the article, Contributed by: Drew Byrd-Smith)

I would be remiss if I excluded City of God from this list in some capacity, though I already did in the first go-around so basically I fail. Besides being an absolutely fantastic movie, it is notable for immortalizing one of the most hostile, dynamic settings in cinema: the City of God itself, a real-life Brazilian slum where violence and crime reign supreme. Spanning a period of several years, City of God introduces a slew of fascinating characters to us, only to kill them all in drug deals gone awry or horrific gang wars. Though a challenging watch, it is also well worth seeing for any cinephile.

Dancer in the Dark

(Suggested & Contributed by: CoreyTamas)

Her problem: Musical-loving woman who is going blind is going to lose her job if anyone finds out. Naturally, she lives in scrunting poverty as it is. She has a rotten son and, of course, the father is nowhere around. This is the cheeriest part of the story, btw. Later, the small bit of money she has been saving in a tin is stolen by the guy from Hill Street Blues and she has to kill him when he attacks her. Then she ends up on death row and hung by the neck. To music, no less.

Your problem: Beer you put in the fridge 10 minutes ago is still warm.

Bad Lieutenant

(Suggested & Contributed by: Lurky_Mysterioso)

I really expected to see Bad Lieutenant on this list, which really made me appreciate how much worse my own life could be when I first saw it.. however, I felt great as a consequence, not bad at all. The film’s a huge downer, but seriously cheered me up.

It’s not as slickly commercial as something like Requiem for a Dream, harder to watch all the way through and doesn’t spoon-feed messages to you, but was much more convincing for me because of that.

Irreversible

(Suggested & Contributed by: Jeremiah)

A dude starts out in jail, and then we discover why. He beats a guy’s head in with a fire extinguisher, someone rapes his wife in a subway tunnel for 10 UNINTERRUPTED MINUTES, and the rest is a blur to me, but the fact is, this film is told in reverse. So basically, you know the horrible stuff before seeing the happy stuff, but even when you see the happy stuff, you know it’s not meant to last. Did I mention the rape scene is 10 minutes long? Oh, and midway through, some other person walks in on it, but instead of helping her, he watches for a few moments, then leaves the woman to be brutalized some more. Eeesh.

Dark Days

(Suggested by: Anonymous)

IMDB Synopsis: Near Penn Station, next to the Amtrak tracks, squatters have been living for years. Marc Singer goes underground to live with them, and films this “family.” A dozen or so men and one woman talk about their lives: horrors of childhood, jail time, losing children, being coke-heads. They scavenge, they’ve built themselves sturdy one-room shacks; they have pets, cook, chat, argue, give each other haircuts. A bucket is their toilet. Leaky overhead pipes are a source of water for showers. They live in virtual darkness. During the filming, Amtrak gives a 30-day eviction notice.

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

(Suggested & Contributed by: Anonymous)

‘Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom’ makes the films on this list seem as uplifting as ‘it’s A Wonderful Life’. Very, very disturbing. See it – but be warned – it will change you.

Written by Adam Pash

The internet is atwitter with Google Chrome’s innovative new features, but there was no clear winner in our speed test comparing Firefox and Chrome-which means your choice of browser may depend solely on features. Apart from a few specific issues (namely process management), many of Chrome’s best features are already available in Firefox 3, proving yet again the power of extensibility. From incognito browsing and the streamlined download manager to URL highlighting and improved search, let’s take a look at how you can bring some of Google Chrome’s best features to Firefox.

Stealther Turns On Incognito Browsing

Chrome’s Incognito browsing allows you to shop for your significant other look at porn without keeping any history of that browsing session anywhere on your computer. In Firefox, the Stealther extension does the same thing. The main difference: In Chrome, a single window can enter Incognito mode, whereas in Firefox it’s enabled globally (this is probably possible in Chrome because of how it manages each tab as a separate process). But let’s be honest, are your multi-tasking skills really that good? (Original post)

Download Statusbar Puts Downloads in Your Status Bar (Surprise!)

Chrome is all about saving space, so files you download don’t break out into a separate window. Instead, they live in your status bar. Not bad, but guess what: The Download Statusbar Firefox extension has been doing this for five years, and it offers lots of additional options and wastes even less screen real estate. (Original post)

Speed Dial and Auto Dial Power Up Your Empty Tabs

Chrome’s empty tab page-which displays your most visited sites, most used search boxes, and even your recently closed tabs-is awesome. There isn’t currently anything quite as full featured for Firefox, however there are a couple of options that are very close. The Speed Dial extension (which itself is a ripoff of the Speed Dial feature in Opera) provides a very similar thumbnail-based new tab page, but you decide which sites you want in your speed dial and you can quickly access any of them from your keyboard with shortcuts. (Original post)

Locationbar2 Adds Domain-Highlighting to the Address Bar

Google Chrome’s “omni bar” sports root domain highlighting, a cool feature that doubles as a nice anti-phishing device (if you see the root domain more easily, you are less likely to give your information to an imposter domain). That sort of domain highlighting isn’t new by any means, though; the Locationbar2 Firefox extension has been boasting this same highlighting-in addition to several other excellent features-for well over a year.

Prism Extension Turns Any Site into a Separate Application

If you want to break out a webapp you use all day long into a separate window and desktop shortcut, Chrome makes it easy on you. Just click x and do y. The concept of separating webapps into their own application isn’t new, though. At Mozilla, they’ve been cooking up Prism to do just that for quite some time. With Prism and the Prism for Firefox extension installed, just go to Tools -> Convert Website to Application to break a webapp into a separate window and application. Right now this extension is Windows only, but hey-so is Chrome.

Keyword Search Bookmarks Integrate Site-Specific Search with the Address Bar

Chrome boasts that after using a site’s search engine once, you can perform that same search from the address bar the next time. For example, after you search Amazon once, the next time you may just be able to go to your address bar, type ‘a’, press Tab, and then perform your search. That’s pretty saucy, but it’s also not much of an innovation over keyword searches in Firefox. Granted, you have to manually add a search box (here are 15 of our favorite Firefox quick searches), but you can also define exactly what you want that shortcut to be. Chrome also doesn’t currently support keyword bookmarking in general, which is one of the most time-saving features in Firefox.

On the other hand, previously mentioned Auto Dial automatically populates the new tab page with your most frequently visited sites. It’s not as attractive as Speed Dial or Chrome’s new tab page, though. Either way, give Firefox extension developers some time. We’ll have an even better alternative before you know it.

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Got a Firefox extension or feature you use that gives you the same goods as Chrome? Let’s hear about it in the comments. For a similar take, check out how to get Safari’s best features in Firefox.

Written by Lee Mathews

Thanks to customers who can’t avoid spyware and trojans to save their lives, I’ve gotten pretty quick at backing up, reformatting, and finishing off Windows installs. I’ve got five core tools that I use to get the job done, and here they are.

1. DriverMax. After going through the install process, the first thing I shoot for is a complete set of functional drivers. Running DriverMax before the format lets you back up all the drivers on a system. It’s a great app, and it even loads drivers for non-present devices – meaning my customers don’t have to fight with a printer or webcam install CD when they get their computer home.
2. Migwiz. Oh god, I can hear the screams. Truth be told, I’ve only had three problems with migwiz, and they were all my fault. Microsoft’s file and settings transfer utility works extremely well, and I’ve never had a problem since changing my method.

   Copy the USMT folder from the computer’s c:\windows\system32\ and save it to a USB drive. Alternatively, do what the wizard wants you do and create a wizard disk. Run the exe from there both before and after the reformat. It’s critical to use the exact same version of the executable to avoid problems.

3. Nlite. I don’t like being forced to babysit a Windows install, so I’m a big fan of NLite (or VLite for Vista). Extract your CD’s contents to a folder, run N/VLite on it, fill in the blanks, and grab some application addons from Winaddons. Burn your disc and presto, you’ve got a silent Windows install!
4. WPI. The Windows post install makes post-reformat application installs a breeze. Throw your favorite apps in a folder and set up their silent switches in the WPI configuration page. Reinstalling them is as easy as checking some boxes and clicking a button.

   The tutorial at the WPIW site is excellent, and will guide you through setting up your first Wizard.

5. PING (Parition Image is Not Ghost). Now that you’ve got a nice, clean install, create an image so you don’t have to go through that garbage again. Imaging saves all kinds of hassles and massive external hard drives are dirt cheap. Pick one up and reimage instead of reformatting again next time.

What about you? What apps help you get from a crapped up install back to a nice, clean OS?

Written by Sasha R. Lahijania

Firefox is a fastest growing popular web browser. There are lots of ease provided by the firefox and this is the main reason for its popularity. There are lots of free download able extensions and add-ons available on the internet for firefox and there demands are increasing every day. In this post, I am listing down 9 Amazing Firefox Add-Ons That Will Save Your Time.

You are welcome to share if you know more amazing firefox add-ons that will save time which our readers/viewers may like.

Read It Later

It lets you save articles and webpages so you can read them later, even when you’re offline. Now the internet is your bitch. Firefox add-on

Chunkit

This add-on is so badass, that if search engines made a superhero movie, this would be the Batman. Basically, you get to search any website with sonar vision and see through all the links at once. Firefox add-on

Remove Cookie(s) From Site

So, you visited a website you’re not too proud of, but you don’t want to delete your cookies or you will lose your progress on Defend Your Castle. Well now you can have your cookie and eat it too. Firefox add-on

YourWebsiteValue

This is your childhood cardboard fort of Firefox add-ons. Absolutely useless, but very… very cool. Basically this shows you the estimated worth of most websites. Who knows how accurate and useful it really is, but hey, did you really think your cool fort could actually keep the girls out? Firefox add-on

TryAgain

This is the Drunk Uncle at the bar that won’t stop hitting on the ladies of Firefox add-ons. TryAgain will keep trying to load a webpage when the server is not found, and it won’t stop till it gets what it wants. Firefox add-on

IMDb Preview

IMDb suffers from Wikipedia syndrome. How many times have you started on Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and ended up on The Shining? Too many damn times. However, with this add-on you get to preview links on IMDb and see snip-bits of information without leaving the page. Wait, why doesn’t Wiki have this?

Aging Tabs

What’s your record? 20 tabs open at once? Well Aging tabs will help you realize your laziness by making unused tabs fade and change colors with age. Although, it would be cooler if they made the tabs blow up in a fiery explosion instead.

Tab Mix Plus

This is the ultimate tab collection, greatest hits volume, 0.3.6. It has such classics as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, and many of your other favorite hits. And if you download in the next 15 minutes we will throw in “undo closed tabs and windows!” Firefox add-on

CoolPreviews

Preview how a webpage page looks like before you actually click on the link. So now you can see how unorganized, useless, and ugly the website is before you commit your precious time to it. Dating really needs a tool like this. Firefox add-on

You can also take a look at 5 must have firefox add-ons for social media addicts I found interesting on the other website.