William Kunstler's perspectives are discomfiting, but difficult to gainsay: "…We live in places so extreme in ugliness, squalor, and dysfunction that just going to the store leaves a sentient American reeling in angst and anomie. Our popular culture would embarrass a race of hebephrenics. We think that neck tattoos are cool. A lot of our pop music is overtly homicidal. Our richest citizens have managed to define a new banality of evil. Our middle classes are subject to humiliations so baroque that sadomasochism even fails to encompass the finer points. And we don't even need help from other nations to run our own economic affairs into the ground — we're digging our national grave with a kind of antic glee, complete with all the lurid stagecraft that Las Vegas, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue can muster…"

the mind boggles, and moves on (via Make)

I'd never heard of the Bristol Stool Chart. Now I have.

animated view, 1700-2000

(via FlowingData)

Voornamenprofielkaart van Nederland: "The researchers compiled the 177,000 different names given to the 4.2 million children born between 1983 and 2007, and were able to link these statistics to data relating to the place of birth…"

I, for one, REALLY want to know what-all is on that iPad… and wouldn't it be interesting to be able to see the history of its users' explorings of the contents?

(this one is really worth your time to read and ponder, and the comments are pretty rich too)

via LanguageLog, of course

(from the Bangkok Post)

an amazing use of the iPad and Autodesk's SketchBook Pro, really inspiring

too wonderful