70 Amazing Houses from around the world
(weburbanist)

Camile Rose Garcia's Ambian Somnambulants show at Jonathan Levine Gallery

Business card holder made from yellow pages (core77)

Check out the wooden works of Mr. Matsumo

Where Have You Gone R. Cobb? (designobserver)
In 1968 the two most influential underground newspaper cartoonists in America were R. Crumb, who most everyone knows today, and R. Cobb, who sadly many do not. Crumb devastated establishment pieties while Cobb attacked the establishment’s devastation of rights and liberties. Both made an indelible impression on my impressionable generation.
Crumb, who lives in the south of France today, survived the Sixties to become a bone fide culture hero, with films, books, and exhibitions celebrating his creative madness. Cobb, who lives in Australia, left the ephemeral art of cartooning for a career as a concept designer and art director in television and films, including The Abyss, Aliens, True Lies, Total Recall, Rocketeer and many more.

What it's really like to be Schizophrenic (with video) (via metafilter)

An in-depth analysis of each of Obama and McCain's campaign website technology platforms. Obama wins in a landslide

The world's verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for (Guardian UK)

We know one of Palin's first acts as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Alaska was to ask the librarian the procedure for banning books. Oh, but that was a "rhetorical" question, says the McCain-Palin campaign. We know Palin is not telling the truth when she says she was against the notorious $400m "Bridge to Nowhere" project in Alaska - in fact, she campaigned for it - but she keeps repeating the claim anyway. She denounces the dipping of snouts in the Washington trough - but hired costly lobbyists to make sure Alaska got a bigger helping of federal dollars than any other state.

She claims to be a fiscal conservative, but left Wasilla saddled with debts it had never had before. She even seems to have claimed "per diem" allowances - taxpayers' money meant for out-of-town travel - when she was staying in her own house.

Yet somehow none of this is yet leaving a dent. The result is that a politician who conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan calls a "Christianist" - seeking to politicise Christianity the way Islamists politicise Islam - could soon be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Remember, this is a woman who once addressed a church congregation, saying of her work as governor - transport, policing and education - "really all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God".

If Sarah Palin defies the conventional wisdom that says elections are determined by the top of the ticket, and somehow wins this for McCain, what will be the reaction? Yes, blue-state America will go into mourning once again, feeling estranged in its own country. A generation of young Americans - who back Obama in big numbers - will turn cynical, concluding that politics doesn't work after all. And, most depressing, many African-Americans will decide that if even Barack Obama - with all his conspicuous gifts - could not win, then no black man can ever be elected president.

The 75th anniversary issue of Esquire has an e-ink cover. Neat! (via /.)

snap and dine is just too cool. (via boingboing)

Do your part to protect political free speech.
(EFF and ACLU)

Influence-peddling at it's slimiest: Republican congressmen partying hard with lobbyists during the hurricane-delayed RNC
(via LobbyistsForMcCain)

Credit Card companies bully mythbusters into axing a piece on RFID vulnerabilities (gizmodo)

Art with Pritt corrective pens
(via the fantastic Fubiz)

The Empire that was Russia: Amazing color photography from early 20th century Russia

Around 1907 Prokudin-Gorskii envisioned and formulated a plan to use the emerging technological advancements that had been made in color photography to systematically document the Russian Empire. Through such an ambitious project, his ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of Russia with his "optical color projections" of the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the empire. Outfitted with a specially equipped railroad car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II, and in possession of two permits that granted him access to restricted areas and cooperation from the empire's bureaucracy, Prokudin-Gorskii documented the Russian Empire around 1907 through 1915.

The Medicalisation of Everyday Life (BadScience, bia metafilter)
When you’ve been working with bullshit for as long as I have, you start to spot recurring themes: quacks and the pharmaceutical industry use the exact same tricks to sell their pills, everybody loves a “science bit” - even if it’s wrong - and when people introduce pseudoscience into any explanation, it’s usually because there’s something else they’re trying desperately not to talk about. But my favourite is this: alternative therapists, the media, and the drug industry all conspire to sell us reductionist, bio-medical explanations for problems that might more sensibly and constructively be thought of as social, political, or personal. And this medicalisation of everyday life isn’t done to us; in fact, we eat it up.

Data visualization at many-eyes (associated nytimes article)

Comic Book style explanation of Google's new browser: Chrome

Another voice warns of an innovation slowdown (NYTimes)
Of college graduates, 30 percent to 45 percent in India and China have engineering degrees, compared with 5 percent in the United States. Venture financing and patent applications are falling in Europe and the United States and rising in China and India, he said.

Most alarming to Mr. Compton is that 60 percent of engineering doctorates from American universities are granted to foreign nationals, but they are no longer staying here to work. “The American economy is not as exciting as China and India, and a lot of them are going back home,” he said.

The Republicans are up to their usual RNC Gestapo tactics again
Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.

UPDATE: Article and video of journalist Amy Goodman being arrested for "conspiracy to riot" by cowardly jackbooted thugs.
How is it that cops fall into complicity with this shit so easily?