Light rail bridge construction in Portland, Oregon, depends, literally, on the ears of salmon.

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The Citizen Jane festival celebrates films made by women. (Check out the awesome-sounding lineup.)

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The life and times of a private eye in Salt Lake City. (Yes, it involves a Burger King stakeout.)

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Get bent, Oprah. Check out the books and magazines (including Utne Reader)in the Lisa Simpson Book Club.

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You’ve heard of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, right, mateys? Now you can add International Talk Like a Beat Day to your calendar, the perfect time to mimic the acid-fried, crypto-spiritual slang of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey.

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The Guardian chimes in on the 10 best songs based on books. Glad to see Kate Bush, Mastodon, and Jefferson Airplane on the list.

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No matter how many times your rambling great-uncle explains it to you, peak oil is hard to wrap your head around. Let an economist make things clear.

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Could you forgive the man who shot you in the face? In the days after 9/11, a Dallas man named Mark Stroman went on a revenge killing spree. Rais Bhuiyan survived and, a decade later, tried to stop Stroman’s execution.

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The final words of famous authors, from Hunter S. Thompson to Louisa May Alcott. One can only hope to have the deathbed moxie of Voltaire.

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Taking eco-fashion to the extreme: A dress made from 3,000 yak nipples.

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Did you miss the Republican primary debate last week? Check out this telling infographic, which shows how much airtime each topic and candidate received and offers video clips of the most memorable moments.

Image by goodmami, licensed under Creative Commons.  

When you think of first-person shooters, trigger-happy video games like Halo and Quake come to mind. Or if you’re old enough, you may remember the good ol’ days of Doom and Duke Nukem—and all of their pixilated gore. A game called Warco (currently in development) hopes to change the first-person shooter dynamic. In the game you get a video recorder instead of a shotgun, and you can’t kill anyone or blow up buildings. Your job is to sit back and document the scene.

Warco, you see, is a video game instilled with the principles of journalism. (The term “warco” is industry slang for a war correspondent.) According to techie blog Ars Technica, the game’s developer, Defiant, “is working with both a journalist and a filmmaker to create a game that puts you in the role of a journalist embedded in a warzone.” Half of the game play involves capturing the action, and the other half is editing your footage and creating compelling news stories.

“It’s also about navigating through a morally gray world and making decisions that have human impact,” Defiant’s Morgan Jaffit explained to Ars Technica. “It’s about finding the story you want to tell, as each of our environments is filled with different story elements you can film and combine in your own ways. It’s both a story telling engine and an action adventure with a new perspective.”

To the concerned parents out there: The violence in Warco is not toned down—in fact, it’s amped up and hyperrealistic. (Check out the promo video below.) War is rarely subtle and rarely free from bloodshed. But if the game developer pulls off what is trying to do, the gamers will need to survive on the opposite side of the gun. As players collect footage and try to make meaning from random violence through the video editing process, they’ll be forced into a conceptual position unprecedented in the video game world. After the Xbox or computer is turned off, perhaps they will have learned a new way to think about conflict, or perhaps they will better understand the inexplicable horrors of war.

The developer’s aspirations are noble. Which is why they should be especially worried about selling it to a wide audience.

Source: Ars Technica 

Image is a screenshot from Warco.

So you want to be a writer. Well, start reading.

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God may or may not be dead, but churches have become collectible.

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Farewell, free will?

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Wow. Some gorgeous photos from Iceland.

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Sebastian Junger tells The Guardian why he’s getting out of war reporting.

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This year’s literary genius grant winners have been announced.

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A Muslim woman describes wearing a hijab—and how she felt going bareheaded in public for the first time at age 28.

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September 22 is the Day of the Girl. Some things you can do: Tell Facebook to take down “rape joke” pages, change the channel on sexist entertainment, and write a letter to the editor when you see negative portrayals of girls in magazines.

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A new take on the drinking fountain combines beauty and interaction. “As you approach it, it gently bows down to pour water into your glass.” Cool video…

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The Table Project (kind of like Facebook for Christians) draws more than 1,600 churches from around the country and of every denomination.

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Civilization is beautiful. Watch this time-lapse video taken by the International Space Station one night as it orbited around the earth.

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What does India’s lush Kaziranga National Park have that the rest of the country’s decimated reserves do not? Plenty of tigers, for starters. (The world’s highest ­density.) Fleets of endangered one-horned rhinos. (More than two-thirds of the remaining population.) And, since last year, a take-no-prisoners antipoaching policy that allows rangers to shoot on sight. Welcome to the future of conservation.

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Germany takes the hands-off approach: Driverless cars hit the streets of Berlin . . . and were completely functional.

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If President Obama had an LGBT Advisor, what would their job be like?

Image by xlibber, licensed under Creative Commons. 

“I hate all the fetishistic twaddle about books promoted by the chain stores and the book clubs, which make books seem as cozy and unthreatening as teacups,” writes Luc Sante in defense of his sprawling book collection, “instead of the often disputatious and sometimes frightening things they are.”

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Please enjoy the most hilarious typo of all time.

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A drought-caused famine in Somalia has starved to death more than 29,000 children in the past few months, making this no time to cut foreign aid, pleads U.S. Catholic.

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You’ve heard that old saw: Religious disputes fill the world with violence and strife. But new research suggests that idea is just a veneer for less spiritual issues.

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The Atlantic’s exhaustive look at the state of alternative medicine and the move towards more integrative clinics, “The Triumph of New-Age Medicine.”

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The Queen of Conservativism supports equal rights for gays and lesbians. Wait, you thought we meant Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann? No, no, silly—we’re talking about Lady Gaga.

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Vladimir Putin, the Action Man.

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Fast Company brings good news to the world. Announcing: a windshield wiper for your bathroom mirror.

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Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek has now been going boldly for 45 years.

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A former examiner of Social Security disability applicants had forty minutes to determine a claimant’s fate.

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10 buildings shaped like what they sell.

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Near the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, researchers learn more about the social world of the sperm whale, one of the planet’s most mysterious creatures. “Sperm whales have distinct dialects, complex relationships and a set of traditions passed down between generations—what scientists are calling a ‘multicultural civilization.’”  

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Check out this video of a jacket that collects, stores, and purifies rainwater, and allows you to drink it with a built-in straw.  

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Write a poem for Bill Murray, win $1,000.  

Image by Saltygal, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Bookish Virgos belong in literary Boston, intense Scorpios are drawn to Minneapolis’s calming river, and private Aquarii crave suburbia. Find out the best places to live depending on your astrological sign, according to EcoSalon.

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Are you freaking out a little about climate change? Come on, you can do better.   

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Learn how to pilot your bicycle in a decorous fashion.  

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Docs say: please don’t use group health insurance to pay for your prettied-up labia.

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A surgeon with a good bedside manner isn’t just more pleasant in the operating room. Surgeon civility also results in fewer post-operative deaths.

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Don’t kick the bucket before watching the 50 Documentaries To See Before You Die.

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An unregulated American fertilization industry is creating super fathers, some with as many as 150 children.

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“The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy,” says Mike Lofgren, a former Republican party operative who resigned his post after a 30-year career out of disgust for the political process.

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A little confused about how electoral politics work? Micahel Bérubé wants to explain the process: “[T]here seems to be some serious misunderstanding of the dynamics of national elections in the US.  So let me try to clear this up once and for all.”

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Barry Duncan is quite possibly the world’s first master palindromist, and he refuses to cede control to the alphabet.

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Here’s a list of the top ten things everyone should know about time. According to the author, most organisms have a lifespan of 1.5 billion heartbeats—which means you should hurry up and read.

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Have you ever wondered what to listen to while eating eggplant parmigiana? The blog Turntable Kitchen offers pairings for food and music.

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The Japanese branch of the Domino’s pizza chain has unveiled plans for the first pizzeria on the moon. For reals.  

Image by zeeweez, licensed under Creative Commons.  

A ruminative essay on the wonders of walking finds connections between “life, narrative, and bipedalism.” 

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The Frisky discovers JC Penney selling a T-shirt for girls that reads: “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.” (The shirt has since been pulled from shelves due to consumer outrage. The power of the people!) 

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Doctors turn to driving cabs and waiting tables after immigration. An innovative program helped Somali doctors regain their licenses—until funding was eliminated. 

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The issue isn’t if Michele Bachmann “judges” gays. The issue is her zealous advocacy of laws that strips individual rights based on her personal religious views of homosexuality. 

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Incisive, deep-thinking media critic Jack Shafer was recently laid off by Slate—but not before American Journalism Review captured him in a revealing profile. 

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Could Muammar Qaddafi be hiding in...New Jersey?

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Here’s an odd couple: TheKama Sutra and The Adventures of Sherlock Homesare the most popular e-books downloaded from Project Gutenberg. 

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Dorm room essentials now include a high-tech spitball gun, crazy synth guitar, and self-cooling beer pong table. 

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Have trouble remembering the difference between a macchiato and a mochaccino? Or an au lait and a latte? This handy infographic clears things up (sort of). 

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An expectant mother braves the Russian hospital system and lives to tell the tale. 

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Swiss comedian Ursus Wehrli turns tidiness into art.  

Image by o5com, licensed under Creative Commons.