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Alright, folks: time for another edition of Le Linkage, the incidental series chronicling some of the more interesting pages I find in my stumbles through the Web. Today’s episode features stories about Nigerian scammers, anthropology, human enhancement, science fiction, some humor, and of course, another simple online game. Enjoy.

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Ok, so the election has passed and I can now get back to regular blogging, right? Actually, the election’s been over for a while and I’ve just needed a break from real blogging (as if I’ve ever actually done any of that before). At any rate, it’s (about darn) time for another episode of Le Linkage! Today’s episode features all sorts of stuff, random bits I’ve been saving for the past few weeks. Like all Le Linkage episodes, I recommend you bookmark this then visit it whenever you’re bored or (hopefully) when you need something useful.

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Alright, too much car talk, as was recently pointed out by a reader. Time for another edition of Le Linkage to move things in another direction! (Actually it was moving in another direction anyway, and there are another couple of car posts coming up. My sister’s car was just stolen, so I’m helping her find a car. Not that I’ll be discussing that, but I have a few more bits of info I think would be helpful for people looking to buy a used car. Now I’ll shut up and start this episode of Le Linkage.)

Searching for Free Music with Google: Using this page, look for any artist or any song and with the help of a special a Google search query, this site may well just find it for you. Heck, I even found stuff by Sun Yan Zi, which is almost impossible to come by in this side of the world.

Strangest grammatically correct English sentence: Really, if you’re into grammar and the weirdness of the English language then you’ll love this short article on the strangest grammatically correct sentence in English. After reading that, I thought of my own: “Dogs dogs dog dog dogs dogs dog,” which translates to “Dogs other dogs chase, chase dogs other dogs chase.” Can you come up with others?

Drivers! Glorious Windows Drivers!: There’s nothing I hate more about software than having to find drivers. The problem is especially bad if you’re using Windows, since the OS is pretty much useless unless you have the drivers needed for it to work properly with your computer. (In Linux this isn’t much of a problem.) Anyway, if you’re stuck for drivers, this site may just have what you need.

Hope, Despair and Memory: An essay by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel discusses why for him, hope without memory is like memory without hope. “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” This essay is especially powerful given recent world events.

Ubuntu System on a Memory Drive: The coolest thing about CD-based Linux distributions is the fact that you can have your Linux distro just about anywhere. The bad part is that with those distros, you really can’t save anything so you’re pretty much relegated to single session computing. Sure, you can set up printers, have programs load up at lightning speed, and even download stuff off the Web. But if you’re the type to tote your OS around on a CD for use in different places, you’re also probably the type that likes to customize his environment, and that’s where the problem is: one reboot and it’s all over. Well now, if you use Ubuntu, you can save your system settings (and other items) on a memory drive! Just plug this baby in and you have YOUR computer with YOUR stuff back, with just a CD and a memory card. How cool is that?!

Alan Watts MP3’s and Podcasts: If you enjoy eastern philosophy, but don’t have the time to read a bunch of texts, then the downloadable Alan Watts lessons are definitely for you. If you know who Watts is you’ll know the value of these recordings. If you’ve never heard of the guy, click on one of the links and find out a bit about him.

Online Game: Proximity: This game’s pretty simple: Place your pieces in such a way as to make most of the board yours. What gets complicated is the strategy involved in order to make it happen. Very addicting, fun game.

It’s been a looooong time since I posted an online game. I have therefore began my process of penance by posting one of the most entertaining games I’ve played in a while. The objective of the game is simple: click on one of the squares to cause as long a chain reaction as possible. Tiles will start each other if their lines are connected. To start, just click on a tile! (Currently, my highest score is about 2100. Can you beat that?)

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A few more links from gathered with the help of the StumbleUpon plugin for Firefox. Frankly, I don’t know how I ever surfed the ‘Net without it.

The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less: Forget reading Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, this site goes over the history of the universe in less words than I’ll use in this post. (This goes under the “It’s-funny-’cause-it’s-true” file.)

How to be a Successful Evil Overlord: If you were an evil genius, what would you do? Or rather, what wouldn’t you do? This page lists 100 things evil geniuses would be smart to avoid, like #15, “I will never employ any device with a digital count-down. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable. I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.”

Project Gutenberg’s Online Book Catalog: Every book ever written in any language? Not quite, but if you’re looking for something in the public domain, there’s a good chance it’s here, whether it’s in English, Hebrew, or Esperanto. (By the way, I thought this to be fitting for the holiday season.)

Free Classic Audio Books: If you’re like me, you’re just as likely to listen to a book-on-tape (or CD) as you are to read one. This page contains more than enough classics (and non-classics, like the The 9/11 Commission Report) to keep your MP3 player full and your travels well read. One down side: it’s text-to-speech, so don’t expect the greatest of voice acting. Not bad for text-to-speech, however; it’s a bit less boring to listen to than the Opera browser’s text-to-speech functionality, and a heck of a lot nicer than Firefox’s plugin which does the same thing.

The Laser Game: The poing of this game is simple: use all types of reflective surfaces and objects to pass a laser beam through pre-determined points. This one’s for the puzzle solvers, and those meditating.