Not since 1982 has an American won the New York City marathon. This all changed on Sunday morning when Meb Keflezighi crossed the line in a first place finish of 2 hours 9 minutes and 15 seconds. Donning his white United States team singlet, Keflezighi ran an inspired final 10,000 meters to break away from the field on the difficult Central Park section of the course. While some may debate the "American-ness" of Keflezighi, as he immigrated to this country as a twelve year old from Eritrea, I see no cause for this argument. Meb began his running career in the States, running track and field for his local high school (San Diego High School) and then going onto compete for the UCLA Bruins. This makes him a product of our American running system, and what a product he has become. Keflezighi is runner with heart and honor. As a fellow marathon runner, I couldn't be more proud to have him represent our sport and country.
Here is a funny take from David Letterman about the thoughts of Keflezighi during his victorious voyage through NYC.

One dress, 365 days. The Uniform Project is one woman’s commitment to giving back… through sustainable fashion! Sheena Matheiken will wear the same simple, black dress everyday, accessorizing it with an impressive array of donated, thrifted, and eBay-ed hats, vests, skirts, scarves, tights and shoes. Each outfit is a testament to her creativity through daring fashion sense. The Uniform Project will be manufacturing and selling the LBD as well as holding an auction for the mass amounts of accessories accumulated over the course of the year. After the 365th outfit, all money raised will be donated to The Akanksha Foundation - "a grassroots movement that is revolutionizing education in India." Check her website everyday for fashion forward examples and to acquire a fresh perspective on giving back.

Ever find yourself wondering exactly where federal dollars are spent, but lacking the ambition to read an encyclopedia-sized volume? "Death and taxes" is a wall-poster sized chart of where federal dollars are spent, with the emblems of programs and agencies sized proportionally to their spending, and annual %change shown for each program.

“Please call Stella.” How many ways are there to say this phrase? Did you guess 1,204? That’s how many differing voice samples the Speech Accent Archive has chronicled. They use an elicitation paragraph consisting of all English sounds and sound combinations to document the English accent as spoken all over the world. Want to compare a speaker from Brooklyn to another New Yorker? Or speakers from Brisbane and London? I’m no linguist, but I couldn’t hold my tongue over this gem of a website.

Ever find yourself overwhelmed by your search results? The Carrot search engine tries (and generally succeeds) to help alleviate this clutter by breaking down search results into thematic clusters. I've found this to be fairly helpful when my search phrases occur across a number of topics and I only want results from one of them.

Recently reinvented and redesigned, the How Stuff Works site is looking better than ever. As a lover of history, I wandered on over to their history section, and was excited to see new interactive features on "What Happened at Kent State?" and "How Prohibition Worked". Good stuff here!

WolframAlpha is a whole new type of search engine that can calculate any mathematical expression and compare any known data on the fly. From looking up information about a particular date to comparing two chemical compounds side by side to even calculating complex physics problems; it can do it all and more! While not perfect, it's a very powerful tool and either way, fun to play with and a great time-waster.

Follow the adventures of Beartato and Reginald at Nedroid.com, one of the funniest comic sites out there. The comic's creator, Anthony Clark, has a host of other stories (like Party Cat) and single-frame images in addition to the Beartato/Reginald line, and each has a fresh and surprisingly innocent vibe that is good for pure giggles. Like this and this and this.

This article entitled "People may be able to taste words" from BBC explores the phenomenon of synaesthesia - the "blending of sensory experiences" as it relates to taste. Previous research has shown that people associate low-pitch tones with rounder, bigger shapes and smaller, sharper images with higher pitches. This article explores the concept of "sharp and soft-sounding words." While brie is identified as "maluma," what food would you associate with "takete"? The answer is just an article away...

We live an increasingly large portion of our lives online. This buys us speed and ease of communication that allow connections to be maintained with people across oceans when in the past such things were impractical. However, it also means that larger and larger amounts of personal information leak into electronic records (ISP records, phone company records, etc). This guide from the Electronic Frontier Foundation goes into some detail on how much of that information-leakage is possible to mitigate, with a focus on avoiding government snooping.

Every wonder why your favorite baseball player flails at a curveball when it reaches the plate? The linked visual illusion, judged "best in the world" this year by the American Institute of Physics, may have something to do with explaining why a pitch seems to "break" when it reaches home. It may not put you in the batter's box, but it will leave you similarly confused.

Bram Stoker wrote his classic "Dracula" novel in the format of a diary and it has finally met its 21st century destiny, i.e., as a number of blog posts on the web. Each diary entry by Jonathan, Mina, Lucy, and others will be posted on the month and day that the entries were "written," putting a new twist to the presentation of a story so old that it's in public domain. In a way, it allows readers to feel as if the Dracula story were actually occuring in real-time, in 2009. The posts have already begun, so if this sounds interesting, get over to the site and start reading!

The phone rings: another telemarketer. Check your snail-mail box: another credit card offer. Check your e-mail box: another mountain of spam. When will it ever end?!??

Unfortunately, the flow of junk mail/calls/spam is unlikely to ever completely stop, but that doesn't mean you can't do something to cut down the influx. In this article the non-profit World Privacy Forum offers their wisdom on the ten most effective routes you can take to reduce these unwanted intrusions into your life. Some are obvious and direct (the national Do Not Call Registry) while others are pretty oblique (FERPA), but all represent steps toward gaining more control over your time and information.

These days, there's a search engine for everything. It's appropriate that Soungle offers interested parties access to high-quality, royalty-free animal sounds. Check out the melodic whale songs here and feel free to search for anything from the fruit bat to the common bear.

On April 20th I ran arguably the world's most historic road race, the Boston Marathon. It was a wonderfully chilly day in Boston. The crowds lined the route and were electric for the duration of the run. It was a wonderful day for American distance running. Two runners, Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher, both reached the award stand with a pair of third place finishes. These are collectively the best male and female American finishes at Boston since 1985. With distance running hardly in the limelight, most people cannot comprehend the type of effort these elite athletes put into their training. This video, created by FloTrack.org, can hopefully highlight the hard work done to accomplish these amazing feats. The video chronicles Goucher doing a 20-mile workout approximately three weeks before Boston.