Have you ever been stuck looking for a retro music sample reminiscent of that peppy 1950s film style? Ask MeFi to the rescue. That is all.

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Blink, has inspired two name-alike books mocking his argument (as it’s commonly understood) — Think! and Blank. The second comment in the MetaFilter thread on Gladwell’s latest essay called him “collossally overrated.” And although Rachel Donaldio doesn’t come right out and say it in her NYTBR profile of Gladwell, I suspect she might agree with the MeFi poster. With a Blink movie in pre-production, are we at the tipping point of the Gladwell backlash yet?

Gladwell’s response to the two books (e-mailed to FishBowlNY) is the best: “i’m slightly gratified that it took two writers to parody me. i’d hate to think i could be parodied by just one. :-)”

To ignite the public imagination with the possibilities of life on other planets, a group of researchers from NASA and SETI have created an elaborate scientific vision of what alien worlds might look like. Their projections appeared in a National Geographic special last fall, and are currently on display at the London Science Museum.

The scientists started out by imagining two Earth-like planets — “Aurelia” and “Blue Moon” — with some key differences in atmospheric density, orbit, etc. Then they performed some crazy advanced computer simulations and came up with super-detailed visions of the types of lifeforms that would inhabit these alternate worlds.

For example, the incredible denseness of the atmosphere on Blue Moon makes the evolutionary leap from sea animals to flying animals much more straightforward, producing a species of airborne whale-like creatures. Aurelia’s synchronous rotation means sunlight is a precious commodity, so trees become tree-animals, moving slowly on tentacles to maximize their exposure to the sun.

Tentacular tree-animals? Flying whales? Crazy, right?

Ha. Probe the Internet a little and you’ll find all sorts of folks criticizing the NASA/SETI scientists for being too conservative in imagining other planets. Carbon-based life forms are so boring, says the Fortean Times. Why not silicon, like on that one Star Trek episode? (Wikipedia’s rather critical entry on the project tells us the tendency for scientists to assume all life must be carbon-based is often called “carbon chauvinism.” New favorite thing.)

OK, I know I said I wasn’t generally a fan of science fiction, but if sci-fi SF authors all had hott interactive Flash applications (and a blog, no less!) to illustrate their visions, I think I could dig it.

An article in this month’s Wired about the project piqued my interest, which led me to the Nat’l Geo presentation, which is the main attraction. Make sure you watch the movies and listen to the audio commentaries.

In case any of you haven’t seen this link yet, enjoy. It’s the top 65 music videos of 2005, and all the selections I’ve seen really are brilliant. A few are available for watching without downloading the torrent; def. avail yourself of that opportunity. And watch “Mushaboom.” (Waxtastic, and side note: If Feist comes to your city, make every effort to see her perform; she’s wonderful in concert. Her voice really is as deliciously birdlike as it sounds on tape. And she’s great at banter. And she plays some mean drums. And she’s Canadian.)

PS: Gondry + Kanye = Yay. (fimoculicious)

I am all for the Blink Don’t Wink™ campaign. As The Assimilated Negro says:

There is no situation where a wink is appropriate. There

A bunch of folks, Google tells us, have studied thousands of Web pages to see what (X)HTML authoring techniques are most prevalent. Well, Google just completed another study like this, with a sample size of just over a billion pages, giving us a pretty definitive guide to what’s going on in the world of Web markup. Their writeup of the study’s conclusions is highly snarky and readable, and rather fascinating if you, too, are geeky beyond redemption (or if you have a hand in deciding what Web standards should be).

The heaviest snark comes into play in the writeup of how people use the meta element, which usually contains the stuff they’re trying to highlight for the search engines. Saddest fact: a totally useless HTML expression (<meta name="revisit-after">), invented for a defunct search engine nobody ever used, is more popular than the standards-beloved <em> tag. Fun fact: The New York Times uses its very own HTML element, <NYT_COPYRIGHT>.

Um, </geek>. (Waxtastic.)

The astonishing thing about these maps of video game worlds is how much smaller and less complicated they look when you see them this way. (Kottkettish.)

In case you haven’t seen it, make sure to catch this Salon article that’s making the rounds about Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, 61 (pictured at right, photo by Tom Tavee / Salon). It’s the best article I’ve read about A&F since reading this one in college.

I have always hated A&F. During high school, on trips to the mall with my best friend, he always wanted to go in, and I’d usually oblige him. I remember the layout of the store, the lighting. I’d wait for my friend to be helped by one of the employees so he could make his purchase and we could leave. I’d watch the employee stand lamely by a pile of t-shirts, unfolding and refolding them to look busy, until someone else walked into the store. And if that someone was a decent facsimile of the models grinning in the store windows, the employee would spring into action, asking if he could be of any assistance, pointing out the items on sale.

I got the message, even if my friend ignored it or didn’t care, always buying something anyway. The employees were there to help A&F Boys, and we were clearly not a pair of those. A&F Boys were athletic. They were outdoorsy. They were young. They were maybe a little gay. But they were definitely, definitely white. My blackness (and the half-Asianness of my best friend) was rarely as palpable as it was in Abercrombie & Fitch.

I think what A&F offered — belonging, assimilation — was a dear enticement to my friend. The girls were all swooning over Abercrombie’s “Woods” cologne. And the clothes definitely drew compliments for him. Why I ever followed him in, I can’t tell you.

But after high school, I don’t believe I ever set foot in one again, even though the A&F Boy aesthetic gradually became less racially coded. (Partly due to lawsuits, although the store in uber-liberal Cambridge, MA, employed at least a few people of color.)

The tragic insight at the core of the Salon article is how the man who created and enforced this ideal — Mike Jeffries — cannot attain it himself, no matter how much he wants to. The article suggests that Mike Jeffries feels every bit as excluded as I did when standing in an Abercrombie store. He created a heaven so perfect even he could not gain entrance. And who knows if this is true? But it’s a sad, powerful story.

Best ever. Adrian H has recorded a gypsy jazz version of the Super Mario Bros. 2 main theme, and it’s crazy delicious, much like the game itself.

SMB2 was the unsung Super Mario Bros. game, and I could never figure out why. The feminist in me always appreciated that the Princess in SMB2 was finally given some agency beyond being the helpless, fainting damsel in distress that drives the plot in most Mario games. And she had the power of levitation, which was much cooler than Mario’s janky raccoon tail in SMB3. (Although his cape in Super Mario World was excellent.) The game also had a very cool, cute, recognizably Japanese aesthetic about it. And something about plucking and chucking vegetables was oddly comforting. Two thumbs up, to the game, and its gypsy jazz revival.

But this one’s free! Someone try out Enemy Nations and tell us if it’s any good. According to TRFJ, it’s “billed as