Sexual Congress
is the cleverly titled site which tries to find the most attractive members of the U.S. Congress by having you choose between two official portraits, in the proud tradition (and methodology) of KittenWar * (and PuppyWar *) and Randall Munroe’s late lamented Best, Fairest and Funniest Ever sites. For non-USians, there’s a similar, more subtle, British site.

as seen on MetaFilter

“And This Is Where We Leave Our Annie: For Now”

After 86 years, several artists and a major makeover, "Little Orphan Annie" the comic strip has ended… in mid-story. Leaving a hole in the comics page of less than 20 newspapers, the ‘Princess of Pluck’ already has a sort of a comeback planned with a revival of the "Annie" Broadway musical. But nothing that could happen in that 1930s-based show will get her out of the clutches of ‘The Butcher of the Balkans’ in 2010, will it?

So, once more, let’s all sing that wonderful song… no, not THAT one… this one:
"Who’s that little chatterbox
With the pretty auburn locks…"

A perfectly cromulent new word: Collapsitarianism. Apparently coined by social critic James Howard Kunstler when he declared "I’ve never been a complete collapsitarian,*" comparing himself to Dmitri Orlov, who uses the term Collapse in his writings – a lot. It failed to be popularized by blogger Kevin Kelly in early 2009 (during the fifteen minutes after Obama’s inauguration when optimism came back; bad timing), who defined it as an umbrella term for a diverse collection of dystopian groups, but specifically the ones looking forward to whatever Collapse they expect. Analyzed by Mother Jones (and semi-rebutted by Dmitri Orlov hmself), the term has even been used by such semi-forward-looking entities as The Tomorrow Museum. The word appears to be due for a comeback (if it has anything to come back to) as the New York Times used it in an article about Peak Oil. Finally, premillenialism for the non-religious!

* not unlike the phenomenon where a phrase is not considered Oxymoronic until someone has written an article loudly declaring that it "is NOT an Oxymoron".

As seen on MetaFilter.

The very short and fairly descriptive domain name e.co is being auctioned off. 90 minutes into the 3 day auction, $16,000USD has been bid, and it can be expected to go much higher. Of course, anyone can bid, and it’d be a great asset for the BP PR department at any price, right?

As seen at MonkeyFilter

A blogger reporting from “Greater China” is lobbing useful info over/around/through the “Great Firewall of China”. The latest involves Friday’s 21st Anniversary of a Big Event China Wishes You Didn’t Know About at Tien’anmen Square. (Hint below)

Now Chinese Authorities had shut down Twitter, Facebook and every other major piece of the so-called Social Web before or during the 20th anniversary, but intrepid web-people, determined to make symbolic but mostly futile statements, used the “Social Locator” service Foursquare to declare that they were at Tien’anmen on Friday (whether they really were or not).

Of course, that got shut down in a hurry. Thankfully, we can still know that it got shut down, which is a victory of sorts for those who live on teenylittlesmall victories.

And for the 7 or 8 of you on the Web who don’t know what Foursquare is, here’s a visual aid from the PvP comic strip, using a fictional version of the service with a similarly ‘schoolyard game’ name, because Scott Kurtz is more afraid of the Social Web people than David Feng of Techblog86 is of the Chinese Authorities.