I can't stop watching this video (and singing the song long after watching it)...

The season's not (officially) over yet, but it's never too soon to begin the countdown to pitchers and catchers reporting...

The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld (Slate)

Until now, the secretary's poetry has found only a small and skeptical audience: the Pentagon press corps. Every day, Rumsfeld regales reporters with his jazzy, impromptu riffs. Few of them seem to appreciate it. But we should all be listening. Rumsfeld's poetry is paradoxical: It uses playful language to address the most somber subjects.

For example:

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

Rapping to the Oldies (NY Times)

Peter J. Nash, a baseball author, historian and filmmaker ... knows exhaustive details about the earliest days of baseball, endless specifics about when the game was born.

With passion in his voice, he mentions ancient clubs like the Brooklyn Excelsiors and the New York Gothams. But something else about Nash’s cool, gritty voice makes him distinctive, something that he divulges if anyone bothers to ask. Peter J. Nash was once known as Prime Minister Pete Nice [of the rap group 3rd Bass].

"Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you're about as likely to find someone else interested in it." -- The Ultimate Blog Post (Lore Sjöberg @ Wired)

From Ridiculent:

[The Perry Bible Fellowship online comic] frequently makes use of jokes that take precisely 2.5 seconds for the punchline to sink in (such as this Voltron take-off).

I haven't checked out the site at all, but I found that Voltron comic hilarious.

Flickr has added a pretty cool feature to their site: geotags let you can point out on a map exactly where you took a photo. (FlickrBlog has all the details.)

For example, take my photo of the Zakim Bridge: Under "Additional Information" in the right part of the page it says "Taken in East Cambridge, Massachusetts" and clicking the "map" link shows you where I shot it (from the Museum of Science). You can also explore photos other people have taken near that photo to see what other people shot.

This might get kind of messy (and possibly unusable) for very popular sites -- especially touristy destinations -- but might be fun for less popular locations and/or your hometown.

You might already know that I'm a fan of sidearm & submarine pitchers. Yesterday Jill & I took Amelia to Fenway Park (for her first time) to see "Futures at Fenway": a doubleheader of Sox minor league teams Lowell Spinners and Pawtucket Red Sox.

We only stayed for the Spinners game (who won 3-1), but it was cool to see (a) Jonathan Papelbon's younger brother Joshua close out the game with a 1-2-3 ninth inning for the save, and (b) that Joshua is a submariner. Check the photo of him above: people's arms just shouldn't bend that way. Anyway, I'll dig it if he makes it to the Red Sox someday.

I can't stand Dan Shaughnessy (so why do I occasionally read his column? I don't know). His recent bit of sarcastic crap really got on my nerves, and somehow (OK, I Googled "Dan Shaughnessy is an asshole") I stumbled upon a site: Dan Shaughnessy Watch (motto: "We read him so you don't have to"). Entertaining, especially with things like pointing out that

[Shaughnessy was] the same guy on June 26, 2005 [who] wrote that the Red Sox would win the AL East in a walk; the same guy who named Josh Beckett the heir to Roger Clemens only to reverse course and practically slander him in the process; the same guy who called David Ortiz "a giant sack of you-know-what"; the same guy who on Dec. 13, 2000, wrote that the signing of Manny Ramirez boosted Dan Duquette "from doofus to genius in less than 24 hours."

Nick Hornby on How to Read (Telegraph.co.uk)

I would never attempt to dissuade anyone from reading a book. But please, if you're reading a book that's killing you, put it down and read something else, just as you would reach for the remote if you weren't enjoying a television programme.

(via kottke)