Much like The Last Supper by Michaelangelo, Stonehenge has become a subject for the postmodern meme. Some of you may be familiar with this variation and some of you may be familiar with this.

Reason #3,546,012 why the world needs English majors

it's the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine..

Just a thought, but will America ever really embrace sustainable environmentally-conscious technology when recent polls have shown that 44 percent of Americans think Jesus will likely return to Earth within the next 50 years? After all, why worry about global warming when the the end of civilization seems like such a cool idea? (Although some would disagree.) Could this be why Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was so relieved to announce in September 2006 that "Fortunately, the media's addiction to so-called 'climate porn' [i.e. Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth] has failed to seduce many Americans"?

Google directions from California to Sweden

be sure and don't miss step #33.

of course

Cormac McCarthy's amazing novel "The Road" is among the five finalists for the 2007 National Book Critics' Circle Award. The nominees are:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (Knopf)
• Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Grove/Atlantic)
• Dave Eggers, What is the What (McSweeney's)
• Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land (Knopf)
• Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Knopf)

You can view a list of past winners here.

displacing negativity, anyone?

I'd like to go here, mainly because I could REALLY increase my cosmic awareness.

biased in favor of those with toes

Not sure how well these'll go over.

fiction, fact

If you saw The Da Vinci code and got into it, you might find interesting this editorial by a modern member of Opus Dei. I dn't read the book or see the movie, so I'll just assume this guy's point is relevant.

google maps for heaven

I must say I'm impressed with Wikisky. For all of your stargazing-with-a-laptop needs.

frightening

The BBC has an animated interactive map of Baghdad showing the key areas of violence and the city's major ethnic divisions.

gravity is still just a THEORY

Here are some suggested stickers to put on high school science textbooks in lieu of the ones currently placed there.

a history of violence: Jerusalem & Baghdad

This is a fascinating 90-second visualization of the conflicts and empires that have dominated Middle Eastern Europe for the past 5000 years.

haha

The Wisdom of Children, by Simon Rich.

poem of the day

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one--
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table--
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

-- Billy Collins

wear your padded shorts

Would anyone like to go cycling with me on Saturday? Yes? Wonderful, we'll be riding for 62 miles near Panama City, Florida.

handy

The Sidewinder is a nifty little human-powered cell phone charger.

Life v2.0

old & busted: The Ten Commandments

new hotness: Ten Commandments for Living a Bold Life

recursive

This guy takes the most interesting photographs.

Rube Goldberg would be proud

Landmark 1st Amendent case before U.S. Supreme Court

He may be a pothead, but I like this guy.

"The most important student free-speech conflict to reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War hinges on a somewhat absurd, vaguely offensive, mostly nonsensical message of protest.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus.

That is the slogan that a defiant high school student named Joseph Frederick fashioned with a 14-foot piece of paper and a $3 roll of duct tape. His goal was partly to get on TV as the Olympic torch passed through his town of Juneau, Alaska, and mostly to get under the skin of his disciplinarian principal, Deborah Morse, with whom he had a running feud.

"To me, it's absurdly funny," Frederick, now 23, said in a recent conference call with reporters organized by the ACLU. "The phrase was not important. I wasn't trying to say anything about religion. I wasn't trying to say anything about drugs. I was just trying to say something. I wanted to use my right to free speech, and I did it."

Thanks Alice!

latest natural disaster

The bees are dying.

people are so weird

A few tidbits from Overheard in New York:

Hipster chick: ... And I'm like, 'I love you.' And he's like, 'Get away from me.' I think he's just afraid of commitment.

--7th Ave
Overheard by: Regina Deorum

Woman to friends: Who needs a boyfriend when you've got a dog who farts?

--Max Brenner, Broadway, between 13th & 14th

Suit on cell: You shouldn't feel bad for the boy who cried uterine trouble.

--A train
Overheard by: Sue

Hobo sitting on ground cleaning a trumpet, to hot lady passerby: Hey, don't fucking look at me -- I'm too old for you!

--51st & 2nd
Overheard by: Outlaw

revolt

Let the corporations know you mean business by sending them back this pamphlet in their own envelope.

slightly useful

Tired of having your coworkers mysteriously using your coffee cup? Who knows where their mouths have been? The Anti-Theft Cup solution is delightfully useless and utter genius as the same time. The cup comes with a hole in the side that strategically makes whatever liquid your coworker deems worthy of slurping down undrinkable. The only way to make the cup drinking friendly is to insert the specially sized key lock which plugs up the security hole.

flash

This is exceedingly odd.

This is exceedingly diverting.

who wants to go?

histrionic ahistory

Has anyone else seen 300 yet? I found it visually stunning but... flawed. Yes, flawed. I kept getting the feeling that something just wasn't right. Maybe it had something to do with this.

UPDATE: It appears that just about everyone in Iran has a problem with the film as well.

quote of the day

"I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them."

-- Galileo Galilei

Can't happen here

No man is an island, but...

Great commercial

This really has nothing to do with Snickers at all, but there you go.