The World’s 6 Coolest-Looking Bookstores (via The World’s Best Bookstores | Spot Cool Stuff: Travel)

The World’s 6 Coolest-Looking Bookstores (via The World’s Best Bookstores | Spot Cool Stuff: Travel)

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Starbucks will begin offering free WiFi in July … What’s more, the coffee shops will allow free access to partially paid content like the Wall Street Journal and a free Apple iTunes download every week.
—Starbucks Free WiFi: Smart, but Overdue - Business - The Atlantic
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How Our Laws Are Made

How Our Laws Are Made

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In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.
—Are Cameras the New Guns?
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Reversing Roles: Should Washington Cover Operations Costs? « The Transport Politic Since 1998, Congress has banned the use of federal funds to pay for public transportation operations in communities of more than 200,000 people, effectively requiring transit agencies to pay for all of their salary, electricity, and fuel costs using local or state revenues. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has continued to sponsor a majority of costs for capital expenses, including the construction of expensive new fixed-guideway bus and rail lines.

This split in funding has resulted in a number of particularities in the American transportation system — during the recent recession, transit agencies actually received more money to pay for new construction programs from the federal government’s stimulus and steady transportation allocations, but less to sponsor services from fluctuating state and local revenue sources. This has produced a situation in which many cities are actively building new rail lines even as they’re cutting offerings on their bus operations.

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Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench

Must be scrolled through to be believed.

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New book by Nicholas Carr

It’s called The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (Amazon link).

It grew out of a July 2008 article in the Atlantic Monthly, titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

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“One of the guilty pleasures of an actual, ink-on-paper book is the possibility of marking it up—underlining salient passages, making notes in the margins, dog-earing a page. While it’s true that some electronic book platforms for the iPad allow highlighting (it even looks like you’ve used a fat neon yellow or blue or orange marker), and a few—most notably Kindle and Barnes and Noble but not iBooks—allow you to type notes, they barely take advantage of being digital. It is not possible to “capture” your notes and highlights, to organize, compile, arrange, or to print them out. Until there is a seamless way to do this, marginalia will remain sequestered in the margins, and the promise of electronic books will be unrealized. (via What the iPad Can’t Do | The New York Review of Books)

“One of the guilty pleasures of an actual, ink-on-paper book is the possibility of marking it up—underlining salient passages, making notes in the margins, dog-earing a page. While it’s true that some electronic book platforms for the iPad allow highlighting (it even looks like you’ve used a fat neon yellow or blue or orange marker), and a few—most notably Kindle and Barnes and Noble but not iBooks—allow you to type notes, they barely take advantage of being digital. It is not possible to “capture” your notes and highlights, to organize, compile, arrange, or to print them out. Until there is a seamless way to do this, marginalia will remain sequestered in the margins, and the promise of electronic books will be unrealized. (via What the iPad Can’t Do | The New York Review of Books)

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World Map Of Touristyness

World Map Of Touristyness

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Evolution of the World Cup ball

Evolution of the World Cup ball

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Is data journalism? If you need to ask yourself the question then you are about to miss out on an information bonanza. Starting this week, Downing Street is to make a series of announcements that could give journalists access to public data from all corners of local and national government, and revolutionise the way they work.
—Data: Information is power | Media | The Guardian
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Real clowns protest murder by imposter clowns - Boing Boing

On Monday in San Salvador, two men dressed as clowns shot and killed a man on a public bus after he refused to turn over his money. Yesterday, 100 professional clowns, who perform frequently on buses, marched through the city to show that most clowns are happy-go-lucky and not cold-blooded killers.

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When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously.
—Steven Pinker - Mind Over Mass Media - NYTimes.com
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The United States, viewed by distance to the nearest McDonald’s

The United States, viewed by distance to the nearest McDonald’s

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we are now as far from the 1980s as Marty McFly was from the 1950s in Back to the Future
—Ayla Brown and the Culture Wars - The Agenda - National Review Online
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