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Boom! A master planned community. Boom! A big-box mall! Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia. This article, by New York Times columnist David Brooks, takes a look at exploding suburbs and exurban migration. This migration is nothing new, author Joel Garreau wrote extensively about it in his 1991 book Edge Cities. The phenomonon really took off after World War II, during the period of post war prosperity, and is best represented by this famous postwar American suburb. A veritable army of "suburban sprawl critics" has emerged over the years including Jane Jacobs and James Howard Knunstler plus many others including some who are predicting the immenent demise of suburbs because of oil depletion. For Brooks the critics of suburbs "just regurgitate the same critiques decade after decade, regardless of the suburban reality flowering around them" but you can't dismiss what the architect Paolo Soleri says about American society that "we have a society that is moving very rapidly to the super-, super-, super-consumptive."
posted by thedailygrowl at 11:42 PM PST - 28 comments

It's pilot season! Each May the networks announce their fall schedules. Here are the many, many shows battling for a prime time spot. (continued inside)
posted by braun_richard at 7:31 PM PST - 42 comments

outbreak [note: flash, advertisement] play this sim and struggle to protect your network from a hacker onslaught.
posted by crunchland at 5:48 PM PST - 6 comments

The European Union welcomes 10 new members! As I write this, the celebrations have started as Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia become members of the EU today. While some folks are gonna party like crazy, others are warning of doom and gloom. What do you think? Will this have significant effects on global culture, politics, and economics - or will it merely represent a paper change within the rarefied world of European diplomats, with little other than localized effects on day to day life?
posted by MidasMulligan at 5:26 PM PST - 43 comments

Lightcycle deathmatch! If you've been looking for an excuse to parade around in your Tron underroos or are just plain sick and tired of that little room you've been locked into, hop on a lightcycle in SWRON and play some chicken. single and multiplayer
posted by roboto at 4:19 PM PST - 7 comments

How many systems does Google have? It depends on how you look at their S-1 filing and estimate their buying patterns... any way you look at it there's some serious computing power there.
posted by clevershark at 3:00 PM PST - 8 comments

'Laser vision' offers new insights Directly spraying light onto the retina, basically a heads-up display on your eye. And it's a step closer to the sunglasses Chevette stole in Virtual Light. Said glasses being wired up to display metadata about the world around you -- if you have a gardener set you walk through and look at the plants and everything has little labels with the common names and names in Latin.
posted by artlung at 2:06 PM PST - 5 comments

Accidental condom inhalation. (pdf)
posted by Wet Spot at 12:36 PM PST - 17 comments

The Battle of Antietam is the single bloodiest single day battle American history. Historically told in words, the battle illustrated in pictures [SVG required] shows jostling strategies that resulted in a loss of over 20,000 troops in 13 hours.
posted by pedantic at 12:26 PM PST - 7 comments

"High court says man shot himself during interrogation".

In reversing the lower court decision, presiding Judge Toshinobu Akiyama of the high court said it was technically possible for Yanagi to snatch a bullet from a plastic bag placed on a table as evidence, when the two interrogators were not looking.

And yet, there might actually be an argument here. As seen in the Fark thread that followed their initial posting of this Japanese case, Alexander Jason (a forensic analyst) completed a rather detailed analysis and found the scene at least not incompatible with the suicide theory. This Alexander guy's quite interesting -- have to respect a guy whose home page opens up with a gun pointing at a mannequin's head (full research paper here, not entirely safe on a full stomach).
posted by effugas at 12:22 PM PST - 5 comments

Bitkraft.com This is the best webdesign/use of flash I've seen yet... I just started poking around in here. (Via igiveashit.com)
posted by black8 at 12:03 PM PST - 26 comments

The oddest bit of Friday flash that I've yet seen. It's apparently an ad for Kikkoman soy sauce... but it's the most bizarre ad I've ever seen. A caped superhero type guy with a whole fish for a head rides on a motorcycle, pours soy sauce on people, apparently drives a cute little kitten to suicide, then goes to bed with the condiment-based superhero world's answer to Sailor Moon. Deeply weird.
posted by Shoeburyness at 11:45 AM PST - 23 comments

Vending Machines of Japan PhotoMann recently decided to 'collect' images of unique vending machines found in Japan. They are everywhere. Estimates suggest there are 5.6 million vending machines which works out to be one for every 20 people in Japan. Sales from vending machines in 2000 totaled $56 billion! The most common are drink and cigarette machines followed by machines with pornography
posted by Postroad at 9:14 AM PST - 19 comments

Part 4 of the Mario brothers tragedy is up! A follow up to this post. Finally, no more sleepless nights.
posted by dazed_one at 9:04 AM PST - 11 comments

How to calculate the speed of light with a microwave and some marshmallows
via Making Light
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:02 AM PST - 11 comments

ASL Browser.
posted by xowie at 7:05 AM PST - 26 comments

Serendipity saves lives and holds a lot of things together. Harry Coover, an Eastman chemist, was trying to develop a plastic for gunsights. Instead he discovered cyanoacrylates otherwise known as Superglue. It's been sticking things and people together since 1952. Harry is being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
posted by tommasz at 6:20 AM PST - 3 comments

To commemorate the end of National Poetry Month, today is Poem In Your Pocket Day. And for us ItarWebby types, it's also Poem On Your Blog Day. via Sharon at Watermark
posted by Wulfgar! at 5:43 AM PST - 18 comments

Celtic Digital Library.
posted by hama7 at 5:33 AM PST - 3 comments

Simple English Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia with simple words and grammar.
posted by reklaw at 3:21 AM PST - 4 comments

A glowing tribute honoring Bob Edwards on his final day as anchor at NPR's "Morning Edition" ... from the bastards people who fired reassigned him in the first place. (Sorry to start your Friday on a downer.)
posted by RavinDave at 2:45 AM PST - 26 comments

Pre- and post- explosion satellite images of the Ryongchon train station in North Korea.
posted by PenDevil at 1:45 AM PST - 37 comments

I'd like my left bollock to go to Julie and my right one to Children in Need. Quoth Davy Saville.
Don't ever die, it's horrible is Øystein Runde's chosen epitaph.
Greg Derrick would like to be disposed of as follows ...chucked in the water float for weeks as my corpse rots. Only to wash up on a beach in the coasta del sol.
I want my Dad barred from my funeral. The mans a cun*... says Mark Reed
mydeath.net is a site which allows people to specify the arrangements after their death. From food and dress code to disposal and famous last words. Read or contribute your own. [Contribution requires quick registration]
posted by kenaman at 12:45 AM PST - 6 comments