Five minutes after midnight today, moments into the earliest store opening on the first shopping day of the season, the beleaguered employees at CompUSA on 57th Street in Manhattan laid down some ground rules: no more pushing, no more grabbing, and no more stealing other customers' $9.99 wireless... View full entry
Rising sea levels force the evacuation of a Pacific archipelago: "For more than 30 years the 980 people living on the... Carteret atolls have battled the Pacific... They failed." Guardian, plus more. View full entry
Evidence of ancient climates preserved in new Antarctic ice cores reveals that global warming gases have not been at today's levels for at least 650,000 years - if ever. The climate, it is a-changing: New York Times, BBC. View full entry
An exhibition celebrating the life of Charles Darwin has failed to find a corporate sponsor because American companies are anxious not to take sides in the heated debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution. (Where will you find this news? In a British... View full entry
Island geography is vital for life's genetic future. "Animals can spread from island to island, giving rise to an explosion of new species, and even colonizing the mainland again. The results suggest that conserving biodiversity on islands is vital for the evolution of new species in the future."... View full entry
...says no to federal land. Where Bill Clinton set aside 1.7 million acres of southern Utah for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, locals have had enough: "Kane County's commissioners are in a land war with the government, claiming ownership of hundreds of miles of dirt roads, dry... View full entry
"a couple of statements by important people..." (like Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard, Antonio Negri and Slavoj Zizek). theoria | via View full entry
"The drive for 'green energy' in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orangutan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in... View full entry
An urban sign of things to come? A chemical leak in Harbin - or just a problem with the mains - means the whole city could face four days without water: BBC. View full entry
No, it's not a pile of cow corpses, it's British artist Damien Hirst's rotting Gothic manor, and he's having it restored by White Cube architect Michael Rundell - who's even building Hirst a chapel: Building Design. View full entry
To protest Camden's 2nd year as the most dangerous city in the U.S., "city leaders organized a trolley ride for journalists to see new construction sites and other signs of progress. But all along the way, block after run-down block, boys in puffy jackets lingered in doorways of abandoned homes... View full entry
Kapoor launches new "book"/sculpture/laser-cut paper...at a party in "Norman and Elena Foster's magnificent penthouse overlooking the Thames". read View full entry
Yes, they've just run all the way to the top of Taipei 101: it's called "tower-running," a sport whose "races take place up the tallest buildings and structures across the world." And an Aussie has clinched sweet victory. BBC. View full entry
Edwin Heathcote has an insightful article on the riots in France and the "prisons" of suburbia. | ftimes View full entry
Power-meme of the day: blogjects!, a variant of something known as a spime: "the idea of an object that knows itself ”” it's history, where it's been, where it should be, and can self-describe in a rich way. (read)" In succinct terms, a blogject "would upload their story up to web."... View full entry