Link Banana

I heard about this site a while ago (and had the idea before that), but I just noticed that it actually launched.

stickK is a web-based company that helps you achieve your personal goals through “Commitment Contracts.” You create a contract obliging you to achieve a specific goal within a specific time-frame. By doing so, you put your reputation at stake. You may also choose to wager money to give yourself added incentive to succeed. If you do succeed, you get your money back. If you fail, the money is forfeited to charity, or to one of several causes, or to a person of your choosing. stickK’s services are absolutely free.

I think the charity donation aspect could also be used like the mythic SnūzNLūz so that you really feel motivated.

 Nuclear power’s — I hope — coming back. In The American Duncan Currie says so. And though this isn’t new news (The Economist put it on the cover months ago), Currie does a good job rounding up opinions and facts on the issue. That does not, however, make the piece a breeze to read.

The Whitman-Moore coalition supports fur­ther research into renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal power. But it counsels a realistic assessment: geothermal is often impractical and capital-intensive, while wind and solar remain “intermittent and unre­liable.” According to CASEnergy, “A wind farm would need 235 square miles to produce the same amount of electricity as a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant. The nuclear plant would occupy less than one-half of 1 percent of that area. A 1,000-megawatt power plant can meet the needs of a city the size of Boston or Seattle.”

A new song for the new year:

Twinkle, twinkle, E-F-G
How I wonder LMNOP
Up above the T-U-V
W-X-Y in the sky
Now I know my little star
Next time won’t you what you are.

A perfectly good question. And the answer is: I don’t know.

But I do know that Link Banana is my just-born link blog. I also know that the name was chosen because I have a penchant for odd and off-the-wall names for otherwise serious thing. Probably the clearest — though certainly not only — example of this is that my longer-form blog which is called “Frozen Toothpaste.”

And as that name came like a random shot of lightning at sometime in the past (I don’t remember the moment or day), this one did too. Though I would say that this time I was holding the longest metal rod I could get my hands on. If I had to guess I would say the name came while I made banana bread on this first day of 2008. And it’s coming saved my from naming this “Worth a Link” — an accurate but boring title for this link blog.

I should probably explain what I mean by “link blog,” as the term has little pedigree or precedent. To me, a link blog is not unlike a “tumblelog,” but it is less varied in look and content. The chief content of a “link blog” is, well, the links. Hence, they’re in the title of each “entry.” Probably the purest example of what aesthetic and content you’ll see here is a look at Daring Fireball’s Linked List, though the content will be rather different than that. After all, we’ll be playing with my preferences and sensitivities, not John Gruber’s.

In any case, because Link Banana is a nascent and untraditional blog, some things don’t work quite right yet. This site’s RSS feed is still formatted like the WordPress default, which mean you’ll have to click through to follow any link I proffer. So too is the archive and commenting system not quite as I’d like. And the look will probably be see revision sometime soon.

But if you can accept all those flaws (and I hope you will) please enjoy the content that will soon be on offer from Link Banana. And I wish you a beautiful 2008.