How to start and drive a Ford Model T (yt, via metafilter)

NYTimes Krugman on US Congress members' Treason against the planet

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

America's Corporate Shell Game
They make no attempt to hide the bad news for the U.S. Economy–“return on assets for U.S. companies has steadily fallen to almost one quarter of 1965 levels,at the same time that we have seen continued, albeit much more modest, improvements in labor productivity.” The meaning of this is staggering–any productivity gains from the digital revolution have been more than wiped out by our corporate (as well as personal) addiction to debt.

A big list of pseudonyms

Right-ear advantage (via /.)

Volcanic eruption from space

The Great Johnny Quest Documentary

Map of the USA, showing only streets and roads.

Excellent article: The Truth about the Insurance Industry (washington post)

What drove Potter from the health insurance business was, well, the health insurance business. The industry, Potter says, is driven by "two key figures: earnings per share and the medical-loss ratio, or medical-benefit ratio, as the industry now terms it. That is the ratio between what the company actually pays out in claims and what it has left over to cover sales, marketing, underwriting and other administrative expenses and, of course, profits."

Think about that term for a moment: The industry literally has a term for how much money it "loses" paying for health care.

The best way to drive down "medical-loss," explains Potter, is to stop insuring unhealthy people.

Ugh.. Now ASCAP is claiming that your mobile phone ringing is 'a public performance', and they want to get paid. (techdirt)

Cardboard cloud

Milk Bottle Banksy

Pentagram's ideas for cigarette marketing

Symptom of the American Way: Beautiful train stations, wrecked and replaced by hideous, utilitarian contemporary crap.
(via boingboing)

Momma don't take my Kodachrome away

Throwing the "T" word around: The DOD classifies any protest as "low level terrorism"
(salon)

Lancaster, PA spies on itself (LA Times)
"Years ago, there's no way we could do this," said Keith Sadler, Lancaster's police chief. "It brings to mind Big Brother, George Orwell and '1984.' It's just funny how Americans have softened on these issues."

"No one talks about it," agreed Scott Martin, a Lancaster County commissioner who wants to expand the program. "Because people feel safer. Those who are law-abiding citizens, they don't have anything to worry about."

Hi-Tech's Great Leap Backward
WSJ on China's censorware and blocking policy.

Hunch

NYTime's Frank Rich on how the far Republican right's toxic rhetoric is getting increasingly closer to a treasonous call-to-arms.

When I am emperor, every town will have a goat tower (via boingboing)

Daily Show's Jason Jones on a funny, if snarky, tear-down of the New York Times.

20,000 app iphone hyperwall

Surf Logo Library (via coudal)

Move over Comic Sans... it's the jockstrap font

30 Rock is a rip-off of The Muppet Show

IETI: Invitation to Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Is a blog set up to allow for alien posts. Featured on this week's This American Life

20 bookshelves

This is just hilariously evil. As in 'Dick Cheney' hilariously evil.

Bunny Burgers

Obama heiroglyphic

Designboom visits Riva boats. Nice pics of superdeluxe Chriscraft-inspired wood-decked cruisers.
(somebody do a Makemag or instructable on a Little Squid copy!)

Brainstormer: draw what you spin.

A hand-carved stamp tutorial.

Threads of Change: greenpeace tshirts from around the world

So I guess this means I shouldn't be expecting that crunchberry tree I planted to yield too much fruit later this summer?

I'm no hardcore gamer, and I've certainly got no love for Micro$oft, but could Natal be the Wii-killer?

A visual history of the credit card