Who could possibly be opposed to the promotion of breastfeeding? Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, of course.

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Has Radiohead’s Thom Yorke made the most mashable video ever?

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Feel like some light reading, literally? At featherproof books, you can download free mini-books and bind them yourself, following the provided origami instructions.

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The rumble of the garbage truck is an audio reminder of how much we throw away each week. Read how one family lives a zero-waste lifestyle.

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The Obama administration's decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act may have far-reaching implications.

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Talk about breaking a story: The New York Times reported on melting polar ice caps in 1881.

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A 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, rattled the city’s churches, infrastructure, and glaciers to the ground on Tuesday. The Atlantic’s In Focus photo-blog documents the devastation.

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Upset with your bank? Maybe you should follow this Philadelphia homeowner’s lead and foreclose on it.

A year ago, big magazine publishers heralded the arrival of the iPad as a boon to their mostly uninspired, unimaginative industry. As usual, they were thinking inside the box. Here are six reasons why iPad mags are failing fast—but could still succeed.

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Conservative love to claim Christ as their very own C.E.O. The New Statesman reminds readers that the Savior was more likely a socialist (GoBama!), and dissects his five most revolutionary lessons.  

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Ms. Magazine puts Nancy Pelosi on the cover of its Winter issue, then explains why mainstream magazines like Time and Newsweekdon’t have the guts to do the same.  

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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the silent sort in court—but loquacious when being paid to speak at elite conservative retreats. 

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Need a vacation from the never-ending winter? Who says you can’t drink white wine before Memorial Day?

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Now you can nurture your inner lit nerd and Nintendo geek at the same time with this addictive vintage Great Gatsby video game. You’re Nick Carraway searching for Gatsby and his hidden bags of gold. (Watch out for Wilfred the butler.)

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Wonderful and terrifying: Irina Werning's Back to the Future project.

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If someone told you there was a cemetery where prisoners have buried more than 850,000 paupers and the unclaimed, where would you think it was?

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The literature of failure: five novels.

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Franz Masereel's landmark 1925 graphic novel, The City, online.

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Filmmakers, pay attention: This is what 11 pairs of eyeballs watching a movie looks like.  

Why are the letters 'z' and 'y' so popular in drug names? BMJ investigates.

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A bit of scientific humor from the wags at The Journal of Irreproducible Results: Candidate for a Pullet Surprise.

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Readings from Flyover Country.

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Oh yeah, baby, rend those garments. Two authors argue that the Bible can be sexy.

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By sending you this link, we’re violating the first two rules of Geek Fight Club: Don’t talk about Geek Fight Club.

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Mark Dowie (written about at Utne here, here, and here) has a new podcast at Guernica. In the first installment he talks to Todd Gitlin, who argues that the relationship between America and Israel is steeped in the belief that both nations were “chosen” by God.

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Never one to mince words, Robert Reich tells us why the Republicans attack on “job-killing regulations” is dumb.

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Brooklyn artist Olek is turning the craft of crochet into a renegade art form. She’s on a mission to cover the world with yarn, from people to bicycles to Wall Street’s Charging Bull.

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Will technology help save the world or ultimately abolish our freedom?

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Farewell, Open Left, and thanks for being a hotbed of whip-smart progressive commentary and debate since 2007.

Cookbooks are hot sellers these days: Americans bought more than 60 million of them in 2010, a 9 percent increase over 2009. But how many people are using them to, you know, cook food? Kelly Alexander at The New Republic has her doubts about some of these glossy tomes, noting that Momofuku whiz-chef David Chang’s new cookbook sometimes leaves out crucial details and routinely aims way over the heads of its audience.

“The recipes are impossible for even an accomplished home cook to prepare on a busy weeknight,” writes Alexander, noting that a recipe for pork buns simply “doesn’t work” and another “calls for the cook to boil a pig’s head and recommends removing the hairy patches with a blowtorch.”

Alexander also singles out for criticism the new cookbook by René Redzepi, a Nordic cuisine hotshot, that calls for a “part food processor, part crock pot” device called the Thermomix that’s unavailable in the United States.

Even foodies who are actually willing to try challenging recipes are noticing that the exotica factor is sometimes just too much. In the latest issue of The Art of Eating, reviewer Jarrett Wrisley is generally complimentary to the $60, 372-page, photograph-packed new cookbook Thai Street Food by David Thompson, but he notes:

Cooking your way through this book could be difficult, especially if you’re far from an Asian market. Occasionally it calls for prep work impossible in the Western kitchen, such as fashioning a barbecue brush out of the leaves of a pandanus plant. And if you use canned coconut milk rather than freshly pressed or if you fail to strain your own tamarind pulp from the dried fruit, you’ll likely disappoint the man behind the words.

Mr. Thompson, prepare to be disappointed.

Ultimately, The New Republic’s Alexander surmises, many of these photo-rich, detail-starved books are more about flaunting one’s gastro-adventurism than anything else:

The popularity of these modern manuals is only tenuously connected to the practice of preparing food for people to eat. It has become common for folks who work in the world of food to brag that they read cookbooks “like novels.” Cookbooks have become objects of kitchen, coffee table, and nightstand décor, in which useful information has been displaced by close-ups of pornographic-looking turnips.

Sources: The New Republic (subscription required), The Art of Eating (article not available online)  

Image by photojenni , licensed under Creative Commons .  

Ethical coffee drinkers unite! This fair trade coffee status report just might make you a better person. 

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America’s Adopt-a-Highway program has inspired more people than you might think, from the writers of Seinfeld to the KKK. 

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In a haunting photo essay, Darcy Padilla chronicles the life of a woman who lived for 18 years with AIDS.

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The most resolute fiscal conservatives call themselves deficit hawks. Maybe adamant environmentalists should rebrand themselves as “climate hawks.” 

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If you’ve ever read Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel Oryx & Crake, her description of ChickieNobs—chicken breasts grown on building-sized, genetically modified hens—probably stuck with you. Well, it looks like we’ve caught up with the future, folks. Good reports on the burgeoning market for “beaker bacon, petri pork, and cultured chicken.” 

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Now that we’ve conquered every last patch of land, let’s colonize the sea! 

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Bike bloggers don’t get much bigger than BikeSnobNYC, but there’s a reason he’s got a new book and a column in Bicycling magazine: Dude is consistently funnier than hell and spares few targets with his alley-cat humor.