Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings

Website Wednesday

I thought about changing my banner from time to time but I decided that like "Carthage must be destroyed" which Cato (from memory, have to check that name again) said in every Roman Senate speech till it was, it will probably take a very long time before the Western world takes a long, hard look at the downside of capitalism.

Enough of the soap box. No Movie Monday because it was a traveling day and almost a "being wiped out on the Garden State Parkway because the guy is the right lane was texting, driving and swerving" day. I did learn that when you see a guy in the slow lane going a really, really "this guy must be passed" slow it is not necessarily that Pops is driving but rather some asshole who thinks that slow driving means you can text on the device you hold on your lap. What a putz!

I do have some good websites today. First, an easy one, just for fun:

http://blastr.com/

This is a product of the SyFy Network which has changed from a great Saturday Mystery Science Theater morning network to a parade of original movies which should really be parodied on the now defunct MST.

Blastr seems to be mainly movie news (like articles about The Hobbit - a movie about short people (hobbits) and even shorter people (dwarfs) which is going to take all the magic of Peter Jackson to "stand tall." There are also some games on this site, some of which don't need registration.

Take a look at it for fun, and movie information.

Now, with my second choice I'm returning to my "happy place" - lists:

http://www.smashinglists.com/

OK, you say: Lists, that should be the fun pick. But Smashing Lists isn't. There are some of your typical lists like best movies or cars but even those come with interesting blurbs. If they think Die Hard is the best action movie, they'll tell you why.

Once you get beyond the easy stuff, it really gets interesting: the oldest photographs, flowers that bloom on at night, the first timekeeping devices, or amazing tricks to play with your brain (you may be interested in downloading the 18000 Hz Sine Wave - I have no idea what I just wrote!)

That last item triggered the thought: Who's writing this stuff? How accurate are their facts?

Unfortunately, my feeble detective skills could find no "About Us" on the site so I engaged my Google skills and this is what I discovered:

From Alexa at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/smashinglists.com:

Smashinglists.com's three-month global Alexa traffic rank is 24,739. The site's visitors view 1.3 unique pages each day on average. Relative to the overall population of internet users, the site's users tend to be under the age of 35, and they tend to be childless Caucasians and men browsing from home who have no postgraduate education. Visitors to the site spend about 85 seconds on each pageview and a total of two minutes on the site during each visit, and Smashinglists.com has a bounce rate of approximately 78% (i.e., 78% of visits consist of only one pageview).

How do they find out this stuff? I'm a childless, Caucasian male apparently. Or I have the tastes of a childless, Caucasian male. You learn something new every day.

Technorati at http://technorati.com/blogs/www.smashinglists.com says:

Smashing Lists is an entertainment as well as educational blog compiling the top 10 lists on various topics ranging from lifestyle to entertainment, science and technology.

But outside of one site saying they are located in Texas, I'm not getting a handle on "who makes them." (There are a few hyperlinks of "Source" with some of their lists.) However, I know I'm impressed with the Sine Wave blurb and their Flesch reading ease score seems about a senior in high school level.

So take a look at my two choices this week and plan to spend some time with Smashing Lists; it can be addictive.