This collection of photos from some visually interesting libraries is worth checking out (ha!) The pictures are from a book, Libraries, by Candida Höfer.

Via Better World Blog.

We're big fans of data and transparency, so we couldn't pass up mentioning that the 300-page Census Atlas of the United States is now available online. It's no Harry Potter, but if you're nerdy for demographic statistics, this is the mother lode.

Via VSL.

In Russia Dmitri A. Medvedev is now president but "Parliament overwhelmingly confirmed Vladimir V. Putin as prime minister on Thursday, completing a carefully managed departure from the presidency in a manner that left him the country’s dominant politician and with a clear grip on power."

In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, who runs everything else, returns to running the government. "Correspondents say the new government's most pressing challenges include breathing new life into Italy's ailing economy and finding a solution to the untreated rubbish mountains in Naples."

Men are in a recession. Women are not. Can that be true? According to BusinessWeek, yes.

To be fair, Peter Coy qualifies his initial assertion just enough to basically refute it, but there's a wealth of interesting discussion along the way.

In Tuesday's Science Times, Carl Zimmer grants us access to scientists who are asking the question, "If it's so great to be smart, why have most animals remained dumb?" Researchers hypothesize that any animal with a nervous system can learn, but in the case of the test subjects—good old Drosophila melanogaster—the fast-learning fruit flies (the smarter ones) live on average 15 percent shorter lives than their unschooled counterparts.

In his brief response to the story, author and New York Times editorial board member, Verlyn Klinkenborg, reframes the question behind the research by asking whether there is "an adaptive value to limited intelligence."

Being smart, it turns out, is often high-priced: "It takes more upkeep, burns more fuel and is slow off the starting line because it depends on learning—a gradual process—instead of instinct. Plenty of other species are able to learn, and one of the things they’ve apparently learned is when to stop."

At last, perhaps, evolutionary biology explains the age old adage, "Ignorance is bliss."

Before the May 7 primary contests Hillary Clinton stopped by the North Carolina Auto Racing Hall of fame in Mooresville, (population: 18,823). After an introduction saturated with car racing metaphors, Clinton focused on the economy and education. A promise to end the No Child Left Behind Act drew especially enthusiastic applause.

Video by Sara Schutzki

When we put an AK-47 on the cover of GOOD 006, we were wrestling with the relationship between design and problem solving. Paper Wars offers a similar take on the design of that weapon—juxtaposing its gorgeous aesthetic with the reality of its purpose. Previewing the show, Core77 posted these amazing AK-47 remixes.

Will taking dramatic measures to reduce carbon emissions throw our economy into a nosedive? Or will we make a relatively stable transition to sustainability? It's unclear to us. And economic models, for all their apparent certainty, are themselves based on speculative assumptions. That's what makes Yale professor Robert Repetto's website See For Yourself so useful. He lets you explore the economic effects of carbon reduction based on your own assumptions about the kind of carbon-limiting legislation that's likely to pass and how we'll all adjust to it.

Repetto explains in this somewhat tedious video, but we recommend you just head here.




Via Treehugger.

In what is probably the biggest revolution in coach class air travel since JetBlue introduced the TV, Delta is outfitting its international fleet with new "Cozy Suite" seats from a company called Thompson Solutions.

Developed over seven years, the innovative seat design apparently makes it easier to get in and out of window seats, gives passengers extra legroom and a real headrest for naps, and accommodates more people in a single row. They're expected to be in use by 2010. We knew there were opportunities for design improvements in coach seating, but we weren't really expecting them.

Via PSFK.

As we suspected last night, Barack Obama does in fact roll in North Carolina—winning 56-42, and extending his delegate lead despite a two-point victory for Hillary Clinton in Indiana.

Some politicos feel the critical showing diminishes the punch of Hill's charge to superdelegates to override Barack's voter lead and hand her the nomination instead—so that maybe this thing won't end in a tie.

In case you're in the mood for something more decisive, John McCain ekes out a nail-biter over Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, et al. in both states—though the runners up happens to combine for a substantial 24% of the vote in N.C. and 23% in Indiana.

Never has North Carolina been so significant: deemed the game-changer for the Clinton camp and its recent momentum, yet ultimately, perhaps, the game-clincher for Obama. Next up in the strange spotlight of the national stage: West Virginia, next Tuesday.

CNN is calling North Carolina for Obama with, as of this writing, 0% of precincts reporting.

Indiana is still too close for the networks to call at this point, even though it looks like there are more results in from the state. This suggests to us that North Carolina may have been a blowout.

An old friend of GOOD, Rudy Adler, has put together an amazingly fun dialogue project called How I Spent My Stimulus. Is this an awesomely tangential rejoinder to our consumer spending concerns of yesterday? You bet it is.

From the homepage: In January, Congress approved $152 billion in economic stimulus checks for millions of American households, intended to boost the economy and avert a recession. Just how this money will be spent remains to be seen. We hope this website helps shed some light on where the stimulus money is going.

Our favorite, by a landslide, is Alex from Reston, Virginia. He purchased the kitten above.

We mentioned Isabella Rossini's "Green Porn" series back when we first heard about it. It's now live on the Sundance Channel's website. No introduction can possibly prepare you for this Zoobooks-meets-Hustler experience.

As the democratic candidates tour the remaining primary states and John McCain prepares for the general election, we'll bring you occasional videos of their public appearances. We hope to provide an audience member's perspective of the events and explore how the candidates address local interests.

Here, speaking at the Cricket Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina, Obama stresses economic issues: the loss of local manufacturing jobs and the jump in college costs.

This morning, FBI agents searched the buildings of the Office of Special Counsel in Washington, D.C. and the home of its head, Scott Bloch. The OSC is in charge of defending government whistle-blowers and federal employees who bring discrimination complaints, and enforcing the Hatch Act to keep partisan activities by government workers in check. Bloch has been accused of deliberately incapacitating the OSC and reorganizing it for political reasons. He recently had a bunch of computers at the OSC and at his home wiped of data; the FBI is probably trying to move before Bloch destroys any more evidence.

We worry about warrantless wiretapping and electronic voting machine irregularities, but we like to think that there will be some unambiguous sign when our government really goes off the rails. That might not be the case. When the guy responsible for protecting whistle-blowers is retaliating against them in his own office it reminds us that our institutions decay one Bush appointee at a time. Thank God we're getting a new decider this year.

Between making its own news reports and staging its own press conferences and dispatching "message force multipliers," the government has really been going out of its way to keep us all informed. Now our government has started a Google Adwords campaign (see screenshot) to defend American foreign policy. It looks like these ads may only be showing up outside the U.S., but our main concern is that the campaign is a waste of taxpayers' money.

Thanks Folkert.

Granted, there are some big problems inherent in using a consumer spending index as a yardstick of national health. However, an interactive consumer spending infographic can be damn elucidating. Way to be, New York Times.

We were already impressed with fungi. They gave us penicillin and vision quests, and can turn bland cheese into a delicious blue stilton. Now we hear that a common fungus may be able to clean up battlefields contaminated with radioactive uranium. Is there anything this kingdom of organisms can't do?

(The 2002 article from Salon, "How mushrooms will save the world," answers the question in the negative.)

¡Happy Cinco de Mayo! Sure, it's not really Mexico's Independence Day, but that shouldn't preclude you from knocking back a few beers to celebrate our southern neighbor's cultural heritage.

Apparently 1/3 of what we buy goes straight into the trash. That's according to the Akatu Institute, a Brazilian organization that promotes conscious consumption. To combat the tricks retailers use to encourage us to buy more than we need, Akatu enlisted art director Mihail Aleksandrov, who created fliers that "advertise" wasted, decaying food, and handed them out in front of supermarkets. Aesthetically, the fliers are reminiscent of those Diesel campaigns that subvert the glossy advertising style.

While at least 1/3 of these fliers probably went straight into the trash too, we like the creative approach and we'll assume the net effect of the campaign was positive until we hear otherwise.

Via Computerlove.