The Skyliner

Issue date: 4/16/08 Section: Entertainment & Features

Are you finding that, despite your many attempts to quit, you cannot shake the Facebook addiction? You spend hours checking up on the relationship statuses of people you have not seen in two years, writing on your current friends' walls and avoiding your homework as much as possible.

Next time you are online, try wandering to these Web sites. It's okay if you do it after you look at the pictures your roommate posted last night.

For everything you never knew you wanted to know, visit mentalfloss.com.

Chock-full of semi-useful and interesting trivia, mentalfloss.com is an outrageously addictive and (dare I say it?) educational distraction from, well, your education.

The site is the spawn of mental_floss magazine, which was founded by Duke University graduates in 2001.

William Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur began the magazine as a student publication but decided to make a career out of it when they discovered that their concept was unique to the industry.

The idea came when Pearson told Hattikudur about lists of trivia Pearson had been collecting since childhood, according to an article published in the May-June 2001 issue of Duke Magazine.

"For the record: mental_floss magazine is an intelligent read, but not too intelligent," consoles mentalfloss.com. "We're the sort of intelligent that you hang out with for a while, enjoy our company, laugh a little, smile a lot and then we part ways."

The site also posts a zany quiz on its home page each day.

The short "Lunchtime Quiz" will challenge your knowledge on any topic, from '80s hair bands to Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavors to breakfast cereal. There's even a quiz about The Office.

Other trivial trivia tidbits included on mentalfloss.com are things such as odd mental disorders, Spam and "10 TV Shows That Changed the Course of History."

If you are interested in subscribing to mental_floss magazine, click on the link at the top of mentalfloss.com's homepage. Subscriptions are $21.97 for one year (6 issues) or $39.97 for two years (12 issues).

Bored of your music library and online radio stations? Try pandora.com, "a music discovery service designed to help you enjoy music you already know and to help you discover new music you'll love."

This unique online radio experience allows you to only hear music you like.

After you set up a free account, simply type in the name of your favorite artist or song and Pandora will make a streaming radio station of similar music based on your entry. For example, a station based on "Gavin DeGraw" will play his music in addition to songs from Ben Folds, Jack Johnson, Howie Day, Train and Snow Patrol.

As the songs play, you can indicate whether or not you like them. Voting "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" fine-tunes the station to play more of what you like.

Pandora is powered by the Music Genome Project, which has assumed the responsibility of analyzing and categorizing thousands of songs according to "the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony."

Now that you have some good music playing, how about finishing your project?

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