In the late 90's "pop-culture historian" Bill Geerhart wrote to infamous serial killers, posing as a friendly kid. 10-year-old Billy was thinking about dropping out of school and wanted advice. The replies range from amusing to unsettling to depressing (via Boing Boing).

Apparently, it's pretty difficult to get the Canadian Post to not deliver a letter (via Freakonomics). Though you probably couldn't get away with what you could on credit card receipts.

Jared Diamond writes in the New Yorker about New Guinea's culture of revenge wars. The matter-of-fact tone of Diamond's former guide and the absurdly convulated rules for fighting make the story read almost like a dark comedy. But then you realize that it's all real, and it's so much more disturbing. It would be easy to look down on the New Guinea Highlanders as a primitive group, but Diamond argues, just as he does so often in Guns, Germs and Steel, that there's a rational basis behind their seemingly inefficient behavior.

This Damn Interesting article about Operation Pastorius is a great reminder that the United States has always been royally screwing people over for its own interests.

I expect that we'll be eating vat-grown steaks sometime in the near future, but I really hope that the road there doesn't include brainless, quivering meat-creatures. But then again, that's probably still much less horrifying than what happens in the industry today.

KayakPaddling.net is a perfect example of how to make an interactive instruction manual. It's truly a fantastic piece of design. Now if only I had the desire to go kayaking...

It seems like whip-making would be an interesting trade to learn. I wish I'd known about this book back when I wanted to be a dashing archaeologist-adventurer. Now that there's no rush, I guess I'll just wait for the interactive flash version.