I was just looking through the usage statistics for this site, and once again the most popular search phrases are hilarious:

* “the terminal true story”:http://www.google.com/search?q=the+terminal+true+story
* “donald trump toupee”:http://www.google.com/search?q=donald+trump+toupee
* “she turned me into a newt”:http://www.google.com/search?q=she+turned+me+into+a+newt

I swear I’m not making this up. People actually come here specifically to find these things. Oh, to peer into the complex mind of a Global Spin reader…

I just accidentally found a new blog that I really liked called Gray Matters. It’s a bit more Christian-oriented than the blogs I normally go to, but I have to love this guy as he describes his utter frustration of being told not to quote Deepok Chopra at his Bible study group (“He’s not Christian, is he?”) and eventually leaving that church. Smart stuff from an interesting perspective.

As a guy who spends 3 hours a day schlepping to work and back, I’m interested in anything that makes transit faster or more convenient. According to J.H. Crawford’s wonderful book “Carfree Cities”:http://www.carfree.com/book/, designing cities around people instead of cars doesn’t just reduce the time we spend getting from point A to point B, it improves quality of life.

“!/images/sticker-carfree.png!”:http://www.carfree.com/

Like the book, the site is a great mix of human-scale observations and engineering ideas. Crawford has a way of blending photos, designs, and description to make it compelling reading. Be sure to check out the photo tour of Venice at the very least.

I’m reading “Fafblog!”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/ Are you reading Fafblog? No? Look closer. There! You were reading Fafblog all along.

“!/images/sticker-fafblog.png 80×15!”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/

_[This is part of a new series showcasing the sidebar links. I know I'm repeating myself, but isn't it better than ranting about the elections? -Ed.]_

…against blog spam, at least. Thanks to “MT-Blacklist”:http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/ and diligent spam-swatting by our authors, this site has sucessfully repelled thousands of attempts to hijack comments pages. Good job!

Now if I could just get something that effective for my e-mail…