Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html

Ten Ways Space Travel Isn’t Like Television or the Movies
http://www.satelliteinternet.com/news/ten-ways-space-travel-isnt-like-television-or-the-movies/

The Funniest Reasons Customers Reject Books
http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/660000266/post/210048821.html
“I don’t do books about elephants set during the Depression.”
If you look in the comments, you’ll also find this gem:
“You know books that expand your mind, make you want to think, make you question the nature of humanity and wonder why and how we do the things we do? Yeah, I hate that s**t. Gimme something with dinosaurs or a war.”

Hospital study shows full moons werewolf effect
http://www.theage.com.au/national/hospital-study-shows-full-moons-werewolf-effect-20091213-kpwl.html

Che: the graphic biography
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/10/che-the-graphic-biog.html

A Day in the Internet

http://www.onlineeducation.net/internet/

Monkey calls give clues to language origins
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8405806.stm

The Language of Avatar (Creating an Alien Language)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8408245.stm

The Link Between the Transgender Community & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
http://andy-social.blogspot.com/2009/12/huff.html

50 Beautiful Watercolor Paintings
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/09/50-beautiful-watercolor-paintings/

20 Best SF Books of the Decade
http://io9.com/5423847/20-best-science-fiction-books-of-the-decade

Japanese ladies long for date with brutal men of history
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6954029.ece

The Longest Way: Walking Across China
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1945171_1945161,00.html

Deadline: Stop Motion

One of the fun things about having your own web site is that you can have a look at the logs that record the search terms that people used to find your web page.

Unsurprisingly the most common search term used to reach my web site is “Aidan Doyle”.  I also get a lot of visitors who are looking for maps of Eastern Europe.  My travel entries mean that I get people searching for some odd information about Eastern Europe.  My spam filter also blocks a lot of Russian spam.

Here is a selection of some of the more unusual topics that Google & Co apparently consider me a reliable source of information on:

immortal solarizing boots (if you put this into google, I’m the number one search result)
mongolian wrestling
stone museum of ekaterinburg
pacman porn edition
markets for teen novelettes
oriental pearl tv tower ragamuffins
czars crowns photos
forbidden kung fu
russian gravestones
estonian sword
monkey bookcase
fiction stories about pandas
anime pirate dog
the economics of drug dealing
world’s drunkest person
jonathan dimbleby russia meteor

transnistria travel advice
photos of people of moldova
pirate estonia restaurant
mongolian+wedding rituals
walls of palace of versailles
lunacy of werewolves
“from milan to minsk” “get out of my face”

the last surviving – magritte
collective noun yeti
a name of a country that doesnt exist
stone monkey of south america
stone monkey t-shirt
forget everything you’ve read about vampires
nouns to describe werewolves
why do samurai blacken their teeth?
form rejection letter fiction examples
atm greenland

ukraine’s annual budgets for people
japanese pornographic video games
llama express, bolivia
sweet women minsk
estonian independence day
moldova army onion
supernatural beasties

the negligible effects of good parenting on education
shimajiro toilet training system
transsiberian january train -orchestra

No surprises.  Japan is#1 and Australia doesn’t make the top 20.

http://www.joshuazimmerman.com/blog/?p=3674