links for 2009-02-03

David Marx writes: … there was also the SoLa-Zoku (ソーラー族), which has an incredibly complicated derivation. Before the war, there was the Miihaa-zoku — superficial young women overly interested in popular trends and fads. To create a word for post-war women even more obsessed with pop culture than the Miihaa-zoku, the media indulged in a delicious pun: taking the two notes “So and La” on the “do-re-mi” scale that follow “me” and “fah” (ha, in Japanese.)

A person associated with the Internet Archive.

Heat map of travel time to a city of 50,000 or more. Sahara, Tibetan Plateau, Western Australia, Siberia, Northern Canada are a hike.