Headlines from August 4, 2008
- Obama leads McCain 2-to-1 among low-wage workers, but neither is convincing anybody that things will get better.
- "Flat-earthers" thrive in online communities, say photos from space are fakes, Earth is horizontally infinite.
- Discover the criminals in your community (search available here).
- Print for the commute: Why do nations exist, and why do particular nations exist in particular forms?
- Wall-E's plant apocalypse as seen from a botanist's point of view.
- Also highly printable, "Through God's Left Eye" in Cabinet.
- Satirical maps of the first World War.
- The exhaustive Times obit for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
- He emptied the vials of his wrath over Americans who liked rock music. Hitchens on Solzhenitsyn.
- Break up via answering machine, and other sly tricks now that you can skip straight to voicemail.
- How to get the Madonna-Demi-Olsen face for $30,000.
- Eighty-five works of art "improved" by modern gadgets.
- Replica of Beijing's Bird's Nest in Legos; great stop-motion video; trailer for Ghost Town.
- See also: Banana peels in London.
- Who the other side would pick for Veep.
- Reporter hatches Obama-too-svelte story on Yahoo! message boards.
- Op: The real reason newspapers are dying: They no longer dispense social currency.
- Every phase of sleep is necessary--"unconscious rehearsal" aids memory, crucial cognition.
- Video: Britain's digital trails, seen from the skies.
- Beijing is conducting a huge experiment by taking extreme measures to cut pollution--scientists are elated.
- Bird's Nest stadium creator slams China for using Olympics to strengthen domestic power, recognizes progress.
- Clay Risen: It would be nice to see a concern for actual human beings return to the center of the architectural field of vision.
- Badminton: Bit off opponent's ear; disqualified. Jack Handy on his Olympic trials.
- Jennifer Finney Boylan on what it means to test athletes' genders.
- Audio: Four American women discuss their experiences as soldiers deployed in Iraq.
- An introduction to the murders and mythologies that started the black metal music scene, and that brought it to America.
- Video: John Carpenter's The Thing, reinterpreted by G.I. Joes.