A plain writing convert bids fond farewell to polysyllabic prose.

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Previously unpublished Yeats play, Love and Death, is now available online.

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Step aside, Golem. Make way for real life Jewish strongman Zisha Breitbart in Superman’s creation myth.

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George Saunders dissects the curse of the creative writer: the impulse to convert every involuntarily thrilling moment in one’s life into story fodder—and then complicate it with irony or tragedy.

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Fourteen urban art installations that you don't want to miss.

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Listen to Junot Diaz and Talib Kweli read work from the 2010 PEN Prison Writing Contest.

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In their family-themed July/August issue, Dwell offers 13 ideas for building natural playscapes.

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Ms. compares Republicans to pirates with their handling of the debt ceiling debate.

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“All mammals except camels and kangaroos eat their placentas, which made me think ancient humans probably did, too.” Meatpaper offers musings on eating human placenta, plus a recipe.

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Reason compiled a number of dispatches from the Food Truck Wars.

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The skinniest house in the world is so thin it’s not technical legal.

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New research from the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior shows that it is much easier to predict whether or not your husband/girlfriend/it’s complicated will sleep around than previously thought.

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When Texas Governor Rick Perry cancelled subscriptions to Utne Reader, Mother Jones, and The Progressive.

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What’s more refreshing than to sit back in your favorite chair, sip some coffee, and read a harsh polemic against the banking industry?

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Mongolia: Frozen wasteland or frontier of luxury?

Would you like to take a ride on the euthanasia coaster?

Slavoj Žižek, “philosophy’s answer to Bob Dylan,” chats with the Guardian about WikiLeaks, Lady Gaga, and a new communist society.

Obvious news, finally quantified: Two sociologists have analyzed 42 years of Rolling Stone covers and determined that women are increasingly presented as sex objects.

In the modern homestead, the woman’s role is a lot like her role in yesteryear’s homestead.

Would a medium-sized bargain be better politically for Obama than the grand bargain he was hoping for?

Even if you think your child has the next Great American Novel in them, they may need a few pointers to actually become a writer.

Gay rights improved by French fries. RIP, Wallace McCain (d. May 13, 2011).

Fun mashup: Sesame Street rock the Sure Shot.

At Denmark’s Roskilde festival, design firm UiWE tested a chic, communal urinal for women.

Star anise, sun-dried tomatoes, and cake sprinkles. Check out these amazing hyper-close-ups of common foods.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial said that WikiLeaks and News Of The World hacking are “largely the same story.” You can’t make it up.

Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. are getting lambasted for the phone-hacking scandal. Call it eye-for-an-eye, but the hacker collective called LulzSec now has The Sun and News of the World in their crosshairs. As LulzSec’s twitter account says, “expect the lulz to flow in coming days.”

And the most misleading headline of the week award goes to…“Michele Bachmann’s Migraines: Joan Didion Weighs In”.

Paul Ford, writing for New York, mourns the end of endings brought about by social media.

A sad tale about the state of things at Ireland’s National Library.

Christopher Walken reads The Three Little Pigs. (Just for fun.)

Have changed attitudes toward getting hammered left us with a bland literary landscape?

Renegade artists take over bus shelter ads in Madrid. Long live civil disobedience!

Downsized drama is over. The Germ Project brings back big, complex, messy theater.

This college lecture has been brought to you by the Koch brothers.

If you missed the recent episode of Frontline about the Kill/Capture campaign in Afghanistan, watch it now.

In defense of treating books badly.

Image by iluvcocacola, licensed under Creative Commons. 

You know those packets of silica gel found in boxes of new shoes and beef jerky that you’re not supposed to eat? One writer set out to discover what happens if you actually do eat them and ended at a surprising answer.

Choose your drugs wisely, counsels Sam Harris.

Getting his PhD in literature was a terrible mistake until Richard Russo realized it was turning him into a creative writer (and, as it turned out, a Pulitzer Prize–winner).

Character is supposed to be destiny, says Adam Kirsch, but as the 10-year mark approaches, post-9/11 fiction writers contend with a narrative arc that renders both meaningless.

Stephen Colbert jumps into the fracking fracas.

White Jewish guy stars in African movie. (laughter)

Tricycle magazine offers a list of books that brought people to Buddhism. 

Boston Review weighs in on the European backlash against multiculturalism.

A little hometown pride: Women bikers thrive in Minneapolis.

This horoscope reveals just how evil you are.

Are book recommendations too personal, or not personal enough?

“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” is a stunning children’s book for iPad created by a former Pixar employee.

When new gadgets come out, older technologies become obsolete, right? Not dial-up Internet, ham radio, or telegrams—they’re still around and thriving.

Social critic Barbara Ehrenreich imagines the robot wars of the future at TomDispatch.

Image by Bradmcmahon, licensed under Creative Commons.

For those overstuffed on fast food, there’s the slow food movement. Find capitalism voracious and unsustainable? Join the ranks of the slow money movement. Even a cadre of designers and architects have taken on slow principles when developing products or constructing buildings. But what about for those of us overdosing on electronic media?

The slow media movement advocates conscientious media production and scaled-back media consumption. The idea got a little buzz in 2010, most notably for the 14-point Slow Media Manifesto. But for all the Manifesto’s good intentions, social media is more popular and distracting than ever, advertising and public relations continue to supplant independent media production, and we’re still killing tons of time in front of Kindles, iTunes, and Hulu.

According to RealSEO, the average person watches nearly 100 videos on YouTube every month, and watches about 10 hours of online video across various websites. What if those 10 hours were allotted to just one video? Prolific blogger Jason Kottke found a collection of YouTube videos uploaded by user TehN1ppe that do just that: repeat for 10 hours straight, effectively an online eternity. One video shows Nintendo-era plumber Mario climbing a vine for 600 minutes straight. Another repeats the ominous horn in the film Inception probably 18,000 times. It’s a different take on slow media. These videos transcend monotony and induce a sort of media euphoria. So, without further ado, here’s 10 hours of epic saxophone playing:
 

But, really, 10 hours is nothing compared to 1,000 years. About 11 years ago, composer Jem Finer created the Longplayer project, an online musical composition that will “play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again.” Longplayer sounds (at least in its current state) quite Zen, with soft mallets striking metal bowls. If there was ever a song to subvert the cheap immediacy of pop music, Longplayer is it.

Longplayer succeeds on grounds of conceptual merit, while TehN1ppe’s videos seem to merely critique the emptiness of online culture. Is long media a solution to our media woes, or simply a manifestation of it? You’ll have to check back.

Image by bogenfreund, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, doesn’t think News Corp.’s antics in Britain—hacking phones, interfering in a murder case, bribes—were restricted to the British Isles. No, that just doesn’t add up to him, given the back-and-forth travel across the pond of some of Rupert Murdoch’s executives and editors. But that’s just Spitzer conjecturing, and it’s not the reason he’s calling for News Corp. to be investigated in the U.S. by the Department of Justice. According to Spitzer, the media company has already violated a U.S. law—the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “Indeed,” Spitzer writes, “the facts as they are emerging are a case study for why the FCPA was enacted.” The law was put in place in the 1970s in an attempt to give some sort of ethical boundaries to international business. And even if infractions take place completely overseas, companies based in the U.S. can still be held accountable here. “So,” writes Spitzer, “acts in Britain by British citizens working on behalf of News Corp. creates liability for News Corp., an American business incorporated in Delaware and listed on American financial exchanges.”

Read the rest of Spitzer’s argument, including calling for News Corp.’s FCC licenses to be revoked should the company eventually be found liable, at Slate.

Source: Slate 

Image by Alex E. Proimos , licensed under Creative Commons.

How much is a pound of cigarette butts worth? A San Diego-based environmentalist will give you $3 for them.

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Androgynous fashion model Andrej Pejic walks the runway in men’s and women’s fashions for Brazilian designer Lino Villaventura. Which look do you favor?

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Has a businessman from Denver committed the biggest green scam in history? 

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Want some fresh toxins with that strawberry shortcake? Methyl iodide on California strawberry fields gives you one more reason to go locavore and organic this summer.

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Before you head to the beach this weekend, check out Guernica’s list of 10 States Where You Should Think Twice Before Jumping in the Water.

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How fewer smokers led to a public health problem in Arizona.

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These 27 maps show the cartographic history of Africa.

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If “I love that book” is your only pickup line, then e-readers have effectively destroyed your love life.

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Strange bedfellows: The intellectual libertarians at Reason released Canadian singer-songwriter Lindy’s video for “No-Knock Raid,” which graphically shows the accidental violence typical of unannounced drug raids. Cannabis Culture follows up with an interview parsing Lindy’s politics. While you’re at it, check out rapper Pharaohe Monch’s short film for “Clap (One Day),” which dramatizes a no-knock raid gone tragically wrong.   

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Fast Company takes a deeper look at Matt Damon and Water.org: "Our vision is clean water and sanitation for everyone, in our lifetime…So we better get to work."

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What would you do if you were stuck overnight at Dallas-Fort Worth airport?

Image by indi.ca, licensed under Creative Commons.