Karrie, one of my friends, is noted for her liquid nitrogen ice cream. I've not had it, but the process of making it reportedly astounds and amazes children and probably enhances her reputation as a mad scientist. Here is how to do it ... If your Net connection is slow, I note that the videos are of very poor quality.
http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/Henry/Icecream/Icecream.html
The low quality video is reminiscent of George Goble's page. This goes back to 1994 and resulted in George being awarded the 1996 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry. If you have ever wondered if the process of lighting a fire could be enhanced with a cryogenic oxidizer, look no further...
http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/~ghg/
There is something about George's portrait that says it all.
OK, time to get back to the more serious subject at hand.
You can probably tell it has been hot around here. The only true way to make ice cream is with a crank operated White Mountain. The recipes on the page are too basic, but the hardware is astonishingly correct.
http://www.whitemountain-outlet.com/
I have made a few of the recipes here. There are better (get the Ben and Jerry's book and modify away), but the feel is 50s and 60s so it is a good place to start. Vegans can stay pure by sticking with sorbets.
http://www.freerecipe.org/Dessert/Frozen/Ice_Cream/
Recently I was listening to a replay of This American Life at Town Hall. Ira Glass is a genius of the spoken word and tends to attract serious talent. This week you can find the real audio for Sarah Vowell's wonderful piece on becoming Beckie the Goth.
http://www.thislife.org/
On the site you can also find a magical comic book format manual that will teach you how to conduct an interview. This is the starting point for many of the kid's pieces you hear on NPR and it is too bad that news readers on TV lack the basic skills taught here.
It is impossible to mention This American Life with noting David Sidaris and They Might Be Giants. I'm going to assume that you know about David's work and note the TMBG site.
http://www.tmbg.com/
These guys have marketed with answering machines and are using mp3s on the Net to their advantage. And, mirable dictu, their music is worth a listen.
So I only recommend the next link if you dislike Bush 2.0. For the time being I will attempt to keep these notes somewhat apolitical, but most of the people I know tend to be non-conservative.
http://blogs.salon.com/0001189/
We close with something potentially deep and cool. As humans we tend to focus on things of our scale .. a centimeter to a few meters ... seconds to a lifetime. We easily speak of different scales, but this usually requires abstraction.
A few projects attempt to help us contemplate different scales (although usually longer time scales). Greg points out one such place. Spend some time here.
http://www.tiwalkme.org
6:39:27 PM 
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