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March 30, 2008

Good reads around the Web

Links for a lazy day.

Unattributed illusion, without context on a site in Italian.

The White House losers : The Guardian (U.K.) talks to Presidential election losers: George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Geraldine Ferraro, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis. It's a tiny, scarred club but the bond of that shared experience is so strong that it made McGovern and Barry Goldwater fast friends. Good idea, nicely done.

Mark Freunfelder at Boing-Boing: The New York Times has a loving profile of Mad magazine idiot gang member, Al Jaffee, who at age 87, recently completed his 400th Mad Fold-in!" Jaffee makes the fold-ins on a flat board that won't fold, so he has to plan carefully, he says.

NYT: A Veteran MAD Man Remains in the Fold | Interactive Fold-In gallery

50+ Smart Video Collections on YouTube. From Open Culture, "The videos come from media outlets, cultural institutions, universities and non-profits." via the lovely and talented wood s lot.

The Clean Energy Scam. At Time,

...But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. ..

Students of Virginity in today's NYT. At Harvard, a club for those who shun the hookup culture.

Photo by Anne Chrysotème

I'm using this photo from Claude Monet's garden at Giverny as my spring desktop.

The Next Slum? in The Atlantic.

For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.

Autistic poet gives rare glimpse into mystery illness. CNN.

Isaac Newton's alchemical notebooks. At PBS's Nova, with a decoder.

The News Business: Out of Print: Eric Alterman in The New Yorker.

VirtuSphere - Ultimate gaming experience. Virtual reality becomes real in the gaming world.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 2:23 PM | Permalink