With a big red shoe, Bozo has kicked the bucket. Larry Harmon, AKA Bozo the clown, gone to heavenly syndication.

In honor of the Fourth, I give you the 50 States and their Capitals, the U.S. Presidents, and in hopes for a better future, what the hell, all the Nations of the World.
Yes, the list of the Presidents is only current through Clinton. Yes, I'm absolutely fine with that. Happy Fourth, everybody.

Montreal Graffiti/Street artist Roadsworth, who was arrested in 2005 and faced up to 250 000$ in fines, is back on the streets, this time with a permit and a commission. Interestingly, the title of the new piece (which stretches across multiple intersections on downtown Sainte-Catherine street) is "Défense d'Afficher", which means "No Postering". It seems as though he's commenting on the role of art and advertisement in public space, but maybe that's just my take. Thoughts? For a more in-depth discussion, read the Torontoist's article on graffiti), and for more examples, check out Vandalist, the same blog's photostream of T.O. street art, Streetsy, a great photoblog showing off various street art from around the world, and, of course, Flickr's STREETART pool.

Seventy years ago today a world land speed record was set that has never been broken... on July 3, 1938 LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard reached the giddy speed of 126mph.
The Mallard was built by Sir Nigel Gresley (designer of the famous Flying Scotsman) to snatch back the record from Nazi Germany. The train itself is now retired at the National Railway Museum. Here's a simulation of the famous event.

Putin on the Ritz
Yes, it's a single-link video post, but it's worth the 2 minutes and 44 seconds of Taco.

Who? Only one of the supreme German graphic artists of his time, that's all. Long an acknowledged influence among illustrators, animators and cartoonists, he is probably known primarily for a couple of Dover Books collection of his sketchbook art that were published back in the 60s and are now hard to find.
All but forgotten today, his work informed Disney's "Dance of the Hours" sequence in Fantasia. His cartoons were unusually trenchant for the times, given that he did much of his most enduring graphic work in Germany between the wars. His use of animals to illustrate human foibles and failings was second to none. But let's allow the master's work to speak for itself.

Internet in Africa is more than just Nigerian spam. There are honest African bloggers who fight corrupt government and police to go where mainstream journalists dare not. Compare their blogging experience with your own. Imagine the government calling you over the phone at night and questioning about a particular post you just wrote.

Some of us are into body art. Some are into customizing our laptops. This crazy bastich laser-etches his own skin. Yowza.

Prospect/Foreign Policy release their list of the world's top public intellectuals(full list). Number 1? The Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen.

The rest of the top 10? The microfinancier Muhammad Yunus, the cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the writer Orhan Pamuk, the politician Aitzaz Ahsan, the evangelist Amr Khaled, the philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, the philosopher Tariq Ramadan, the cultural theorist Mahmood Mamdani and activist Shirin Ebadi. Sense a theme? Yes, all Muslims.
This is a striking turnabout from the 2005 poll topped by Chomsky, Eco and Dawkins.
What happened? Prospect Magazine explains. The Turkish newspaper Zaman weighs in. The UK's Independent is outraged. Fethulah Gulen defends himself.

Mexican and Latin Immmigrants as Superheroes [ via guanabee ]

Bush Stimulates The Porn Industry With His Economic Package When President Bush announced his economic stimulus in January, he bragged that his package was “large enough to have an impact" and would “boost” the economy. It sure has led to “higher consumer spending”, but not where Bush had probably hoped. The adult pornography industry reports that has seen a huge uptick in business thanks to Bush’s package. According to a press release from the Adult Internet Market Research Company. A case of tax relief translating into a venti latte with full release?

This is utterly delightful: Tara Busch sings the first line from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" backwards. Of course, you'll wanna check out how well she did it by watching it, um, forwards. Yep, she nailed it. I think I'm in love.
Of course, you'll want to see the version with the jet passing over her head, as well. Here she is explaining and demonstrating the process.

And gearheads, take note: she's (along with partner Maf Lewis) a gearhead.

FOX News gets a little goofy with their copy of Photoshop and caricatures two columnists. Will the NYT respond? No, Times Culture Editor Sam Sifton says, "it is fighting with a pig, everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it." (Which is actually a response in and of itself, so I presume the pig-fighting's begun.)

'Bad is good as a mating strategy' (NewScientist PDF | plain text). "Nice guys knew it, now two studies have confirmed it: bad boys get the most girls." Being slightly evil ensures a prolific sex life according to a survey of more than 35,000 people in 57 countries. (ABC News: Why Nice Guys Finish Last).

Google has been ordered to turn over all of its electronic records of the videos watched by users on YouTube to Viacom. The 12 terabytes of data include records of every video watched by every user, including the user's login name (if any) and IP address. Google had complained that the disclosure would invade user's privacy, but this argument was blunted somewhat by Google's earlier statement that IP Addresses are not, in and of themselves, personally identifying information. Google was also ordered to turn over certain other information, including its video classification database schema, but was not ordered to turn over information regarding videos marked as private, its source code, or its advertising database schema.

Web Designer Wall is the personal weblog of Nick La who is N.Design Studio. He talks about design ideas he has, design tutorials from Photoshop to CSS, etc., and trends in modern web design. (see previous)

People have made some awesome animated videos for Ramones songs, and have uploaded them to Youtube for our viewing pleasure. I Don't Wanna Go To The Basement is probably my favorite. Commando comes in close second. Ramones as legos playing Spiderman wins on sheer novelty. The papercut animation in this video for Blitzkreig Bop is definitely worth a look. Finally, this snippet of the claymation Ramones playing Judy is a Punk is awesome, if painfully short.
See the rest here.

Phyta. Downloadable (windows, linux) interactive thing. (via PlayThisThing)
I hesitate to call it a game because you can't really lose and it just loops on the last level forever as far as I can tell. But boy is it pretty.

Bonus linkage: the next installment of shift is out. (previously)

‘Even to this day the diary has a slight aroma of cocoa,’ says Steve Dickinson about a diary kept by his uncle Robert Dickinson while a prisoner at Servigliano, an Italian war camp, in the 1940s. The diary has a cover made of old cocoa tins (hence the smell) with a broadcast aerial design incorporating the title 'Servigliano Calling.' It begins with his capture by the Germans in November 1941, and finishes, about six months before his death, in September 1944. Via The Diary Junction blog.

"He grew up in a ruthlessly discriminatory world -- a world in which segregation of the races was pervasive and taken for granted, where lynching was common, where the black man's inherent inferiority was proclaimed widely and wantonly. Thurgood Marshall had the capacity to imagine a radically different world, the imaginative capacity to believe that such a world was possible, the strength to sustain that image in the mind's eye and the heart's longing, and the courage and ability to make that imagined world real." Born July 2, 1908, died January 25, 1993. Had he lived, he would have been 100 years old today.