Was it just me, or was tonight's Lakers - Pistons game the most poorly and one-sidedly officiated game you have ever seen?  I don't want to imply it was the only reason the Lakers lost, but man, that was terrible.  Let's hope a different crew shows up for game 5 Tuesday night.

Another wildfire photo - of the Korean peninsula.  Many more in the North than in the South.  Amazing.

Dave Winer has started a site for RSS users: Really Simple Syndication.  If you're interested in RSS but have questions, this is the place to start.  You might also check out my RSS cookbook for a quick way to get started.

Speaking of RSS, Robert Scoble comments on the politics of RSS vs. Atom, and Microsoft's role.  You might also check out the comment thread on his blog - some great discussion (and some minor flaming, too :)

Blogging.la reports LA's Cultural Affairs Department has scraped together enough money to keep the guided tours of the Watts towers going.  These towers, built by Simon Rodia between 1921 and 1954 from whatever junk was lying around, are unique and amazing.  If you're ever in L.A. check 'em out - and it looks like you can still take a guided tour.

The other day Halley posted about album covers - you know, the packaging for those one-foot round plastic discs called "records" we used to play music.  Anyway it reminded me of the great Yes album cover art from Roger Dean - a perfect combination of Fantasy and Heavy Metal, best viewed when under chemically altered conditions.  So I decided to see if Roger was on the web, and he is!  Check out this Flash presentation for a great flavor of the Yes albums...  I only wish they were higher resolution.

Here's an interesting theory from FuturePundit: Beauty and Brains often come together.  "Brainy men use their greater intellectual abilities to achieve economic status to enable them to mate with beautiful women and this is selecting for beauty-brain hybrids."  I believe this, in fact, I think beauty may be a genetic marker which physically indicates brains for purposes of sexual selection.  No wonder I'm attracted to beautiful women :)

Check this out!  Amazing photographs from R. Todd King taken from the ice festival in Harbin, China.  "The temperature in Harbin reaches forty below zero, both farenheit and centigrade, and stays below freezing nearly half the year.  The city is actually further north than notoriously cold Vladivostok, Russia, just 300 miles away.  So what does one do here every winter?  Hold an outdoor festival, of course!  Rather than suffer the cold, the residents of Harbin celebrate it, with an annual festival of snow and ice sculptures and competitions." 
Sorry but I have to say it; this is cool.