OK Economics (Thanks, unicorngirl!)

The debt ceiling. The fiscal cliff. The deficit rag. No doubt about it, economics is boring as heck! But there's one site that makes it fun and exciting for the young and young at heart: OK Economics.

Created by Oldrich Kyn, professor of economics emeritus at Boston University, OK Economics is a unique learning experience. Let's start with the basics. The first things you'll notice are the blinding color explosion and the flashing WordArt links. Then, you'll notice the slowly animating background that looks like someone vomited sprinkles and gunpowder all over the place. Finally, your eyes will wander down to the the rotating "portraits" of famous economists that have been put through the "Blurry, Oversaturated Andy Warhol Rip-Off Posterization" filter in GIMP with some additional flourishes in Microsoft Paint. Alfred Marshall has such kawaii anime eyes ^_^!

Now, what the ding dang is an economics, is what you're probably wondering. To answer that question, let's ask the experts, whose theories have been summarized in zany fonts in the form of an animated GIF. Want to read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations but don't have the time? Well, maybe you can just read some excerpts, which are presented in a multitude of colors and backgrounds like a ransom note or teen girl magazine, rending it almost unreadable. Just like Smith intended! On the Milton Friedman page, you can feast your eyes on an animated portrait of the Friedster in five sexy poses. I'm not exactly sure why "xxx" is part of that filename, but it is.

Of course, economics involves a lot of graphs, and Professor Kyn throws a lot of of animated graphs at you without much in the way of context. Yikes, this looks like boring math! Let's get out of here and look at some random pages!

In case you haven't noticed, Professor Kyn LOVES these portraits, made in a style he calls "DYNAPOPART." He has portraits of every major economist designed to look like ravers (looking good, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon!) There are portraits of quotable notables weighing in on topics like hatred, doing the right thing and freedom of "speach." There are also portraits of his former students. They probably had to check this crazy site on a regular basis to review the lecture notes, which is really funny, when you think about it.

– Adam "rubber cat" Jameson (@robbercat)