el nonanon de buckanon

Making a Living From Discarded OTB Race Tickets

In Pursuit of the Wild Cohiba

What Makes Us Happy? A longitudinal 70-year study of Harvard men and what led them to be 'happy-well' or 'sad-sick'

How to save the USPS

Portamento, where hath thee gone?

Currently burdened by spatial reconstruction, what would the brain do when relieved from this by holographic sound?

Sand that sings

Ants: the superior civilization?

Photography to be viewed from satellite distance

10 years after Gene Siskel's death, Roger Ebert writes a memorial

Downtown San Jose in Photos - 1975 and 2006 Remarkable change for one of the hubs of Silicon Valley

Mass-produced vegetables provide a declining nutrient content

Goodbye Dubai? The effect of economic crisis on one of the world's fastest growing cities

Tropicana redesigns. Puzzling concession from an iconic brand. Eye-popping, generic, medicinal.

Head trauma's lasting effects on Abraham Lincoln. "In his tenth year he was kicked by a horse and apparently killed for a while."

Kayaking through the Chilean archipelago. Cajones!

Research or biopiracy? Careful what you bring out of the Amazon

Suspended Life How mammals have the freak ability to generate hydrogen sulfide in emergencies, which may have been a life-saving trait during massive die-off 250 million years ago.

What color is that? I always had trouble with my definition of greens/yellows.

How Starbucks actually helps the mom and pops

The school that fell from the sky How a downed WW2 pilot returned the favor of the protection afforded him by villagers on New Britain

I fell in love with a female assassin A much more personal story of the ongoing conflict in Colombia

A global map of social-networking frontrunners Astonishing amount of diversity: MySpace in the US, Facebook in Egypt, Orkut in Brazil, Hi5 in Mongolia, Friendster in the Philippines, Bebo in NZ.

Learning to smoke at age 46

A language of whistles

Life exists even in clouds

Life with a seven second memory Twenty years since a documentary of amnesiac agony, life now leans chipper for Chris Weaver

Sao Paulo bans billboards A quote from a dissenter: "Advertising is both an art form and, when you're in your car or alone on foot, a form of entertainment that helps relieve solitude and boredom."

An hour and a half BBC documentary from within Tehran

Baudrillard No Longer Exists Have to admit, I too found out of him through the cameo of his book (Simulacra and Simulacrum) in the Matrix.

Wife of Chinese cyber-dissident to sue Yahoo

More than you ever expected to know about the etymology of paneer.

The rotting oak beams of New College Hall at Oxford were replaced by those of a nearby oak grove planted explicitly for that purpose centuries before. Urban legend or no, a worthy morsel to chew. Link to an Oxford rebuke unfortunately goes 404.

Sleeping in an Orange County truck-bed. I've always wanted to try this.

California's push for independence Pipe dream, perhaps, for the 8th largest economy in the world.

Reckoning the newly-opened Beijing-Lhasa railroad

Origins of the ubiquitous Chinese dish, General Tso's chicken

Why pennies should be rebased to 5¢

Why we drive on the left... I mean right? Wikipedia transcends encyclopedia.

Asimov: "This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written."

Remarkable photos of Hashima Island (端島) aka Gunkanjima (軍艦島, Battleship Island) 15 kilometers from Nagasaki, this abandoned coal mining facility allegedly sustained the highest population density ever recorded: 83,476.2 inhabitants per sq. km in 1959. More history.

Airports turn to Walt Disney The New Zealand Herald highlights a proposed solution to bring in Mickey Mouse to rehaul US visa and entry procedures. Assert happy!

A candid appraisal of the religious, moral, and philosophical roots of vegetarianism. Must be a food meme going around. High time to find my local farmers' market schedule.

RIP Hubble telescope?

Do Lucky Charms keep the doctor away? A lucid if somewhat long-winded take on how nutritional reductionism has subverted dietary health. The author's succinct advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Britain debates disallowing food from bearing the organic label if it has been transported by air.

A three-dimensional animation of global economic activity.

An American in Al Qaeda A fascinating psychological profile of a young man from Southern California who, as a member of the media committee of Al Qaeda, has become the first citizen to be charged with treason in more than fifty years.