Completely random things I have found interesting lately and don't want to forget about.

The Edge Annual Question for 2008: What have you changed your mind about? Edge is a nonprofit group that "promote[s] inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society," according to their website. The site includes answers from such diverse thinkers as Stephen Pinker and Alan Alda. 2007's question sounds interesting too: what are you optimistic about?

The Holiday Yule Log book and DVD. We had a big laugh over this at my parents' belated Christmas celebration last night. You can either play the DVD with Christmas songs or without Christmas songs playing in the background. The best part is it comes with four little singalong books. Nobody would sing along with me. (I think that's the first time in my entire life that I actually wanted to sing in a group. I honestly don't know what came over me.) All I wanted to sing was Good King Wenceslas.

Who is the voice at MSP airport? We had a long conversation at work today about how ridiculous it is that voice of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is that of a British woman. You know, the "please step off the moving walkway" voice. Turns out she actually is a Minnesotan.

FreeRice.com. This is a site that gives 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program for every vocabulary word you can answer correctly. I can't remember where I first saw this, but it's become a dangerous time suck. If you go to the Options button you can set it to put a cookie on your computer so it remembers your vocab level and amount of rice donated. The highest I've gotten to is level 47, and I'm determined to beat it eventually. I really think this is a brilliant idea; feed people and learn something and have fun at the same time.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I've been watching this lately on Netflix's "watch instantly" feature. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. And I love the way Alfred Hitchcock introduces each episode and gives his pithy moral of the story at the end (the Wikipedia entry describes him as "droll" -- an apt description, I thought). I've always been drawn to these kinds of stories, which is why I own an anthology of original Twilight Zone stories and must re-read it one of these days.