Bears will ice…you!

Don’t mess with dancing bears.

DataMasher

DataMasher helps citizens have a little fun with those data by creating mashups to visualize them in different ways and see how states compare on important issues. Users can combine different data sets in interesting ways and create their own custom rankings of the states.

Public space

A public space refers to an area or place that is open and accessible to all citizens, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level. One of the earliest examples of public spaces are commons. For example, no fees or paid tickets are required for entry, nor are the entrants discriminated based on background. Non-government-owned malls are examples of ‘private space’ with the appearance of being ‘public space’.

Public space has also become something of a touchstone for critical theory in relation to philosophy, (urban) geography, visual art, cultural studies, social studies and urban design. Its relevance seems to become more pressing as capital encloses more and more of what were thought of as ‘commons’. The term ‘Public Space’ is also often misconstrued to mean other things such as ‘gathering place’, which is an element of the larger concept.

Supreme Court of Canada – Decisions – Ramsden v. Peterborough (City)

“If members of the public had no right whatsoever to distribute leaflets or engage in other expressive activity on government-owned property (except with permission), then there would be little if any opportunity to exercise their rights of freedom of expression. Only those with enough wealth to own land, or mass media facilities (whose ownership is largely concentrated), would be able to engage in free expression. This would subvert achievement of the Charter’s basic purpose as identified by this Court, i.e., the free exchange of ideas, open debate of public affairs, the effective working of democratic institutions and the pursuit of knowledge and truth. These eminent goals would be frustrated if for practical purposes, only the favoured few have any avenue to communicate with the public.”

Kieran Healy’s Weblog – Violent Societies

Cross-national variation in rates of violent death.

TheStar.com | News | Private garbage pickup touted for savings

Or is it?

Sugartrax – How It Works

The world economy is tracking or doing worse than during the Great Depression (update) | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

memolio

Another “Moo Cards” type online print photo album service. Looks cool, but pricey.

Economist’s View: 2009 Reith Lectures: Markets and Morals

How Trillion-Dollar Deficits Were Created – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com

Torture Apologia Chart.jpg (image)

Phantoms In The Snow: Canadians’ Use Of Health Care Services In The United States — Katz et al. 21 (3): 19 — Health Affairs

Throughout the 1990s, opponents of the Canadian system gained considerable political traction in the United States by pointing to Canada’s methods of rationing, its facility shortages, and its waiting lists for certain services. These same opponents also argued that “refugees” of Canada’s single-payer system routinely came across the border seeking necessary medical care not available at home because of either lack of resources or prohibitively long queues.

This paper by Steven Katz and colleagues depicts this popular perception as more myth than reality, as the number of Canadians routinely coming across the border seeking health care appears to be relatively small, indeed infinitesimal when compared with the amount of care provided by their own system.

Union intimidation: Myth

The project was inspired by the national debate surrounding the proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act. Corporate allegations that the national law will allow employees to be coerced into signing “card’ or “petitions” motivated LER to conduct an objective assessment of how Illinois’ law is working. The results of the study unambiguously revealed that the majority sign-up provision was used extensively without hint of union
or employer abuse.

BC – Child poverty statistics

We’re #1!

Understanding (economic) Mobility in America

How the fortunes of rich and poor fluctuate from year to year, and between the generations. The United States is, compared to other countries, often thought of as the land of opportunity, where those with merit will rise. The statistics, however, do not support this rosy view.

Flaherty was right: Things aren’t that bad

Editorials that might come back to haunt the writers….

An Oral History of the Bush White House | vanityfair.com

An absolute must-read.

Microsoft Research Songsmith: Download

Songsmith generates [crappy] music to an accompanying [crappy] vocal track.

One of these pics is the end result of a night of heavy drinking by a BC provincial candidate that led to a demonstration of extremely poor personal judgment.

The other picture caused a BC provincial candidate to step down.

50 Useful Design Tools For Beautiful Web Typography

The mother of all web typography posts.

Collection: LostandTaken.com Textures

Flickr collection of free textures from Lost + Taken magazine.

30 Most Incredible Textures for Vintage Style Design | Web Design Ledger

Very nice compendium of some very nice textures.

Viewport: A Free Wordpress Theme | paulicio.us

Pretty nifty WP theme that suits itself well for artists and photographers.

Best & Worst Logo Redesigns of 2008

The good. The bad. And the ugly.

45 Beautiful Free Fonts for Modern Design Trends

These may very well be 45 beautiful fonts for modern design trends. Per usual, some winners, some stinkers.

Best Ever 65 mooTools Plugins and Demos

mooFX is a light-weight series of scripts to buff your website.

29 Most Useful Texture Packs of 2008 | Web Design Ledger

This may very well be 29 most useful texture packs. Of 2008.

Global Wage Report – 2008/09

The ILO found that between 1995 and 2007, real wage growth in the United States was essentially 0 percent, and in 2009 wages will “decline by 0.5 percent in industrial countries and grow by no more than 1.1 per cent globally.” The Center for American Progress Action Fund has found that weekly wages were actually 0.3 percent lower in June 2008 than they were in March 2001.

This stagnation — which occurred at the same time that CEO pay steadily increased — has led to severe income inequality. The ILO found that the U.S. is one of the countries in which “the gap between top and bottom wages has increased most rapidly.” Indeed, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported recently that “in the United States, the richest 10 percent earn an average of US$93,000 — the highest level in the OECD. The poorest 10 percent earn an average of US$5,800 — about 20 percent lower than the OECD average.”

35 Things Every PC User Should Know

My computer can fly! FLY!

Europeana

The European Union’s new online repository of culture. Looks extremely interesting, but they need to add more servers to speed it up.

30+ High Quality And Free Vector Object Sets

These may very well be more then 30 high quality, free vector designs.

Lessons from the Great Depression

Debunks one of the key conservative claims against Roosevelt’s New Deal: that it actually prolonged the Great Depression.

The Iraq Math War

That number falls at the low end of Roberts and Burnham’s confidence interval, which ranges from roughly 393,000 to 943,000. But while epidemiologists and statisticians are still pondering questions raised by differences between the two surveys, there’s no longer much doubt among them that Iraq’s civilian casualties number in the hundreds of thousands.

There has been a concerted effort to throw sand in the public’s eyes about the scale of Iraqi civilian casualties. This is a useful article on this phenomena.

Most Wanted Ajax Techniques

Another “best-of” list of free Ajax resources.

45 Excellent Sets of Adobe Illustrator Brushes

They, uh, do look excellent.

Death and Taxes 2009

Pretty cool infographic of the 2009 United States Federal budget.

Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries

The gap between rich and poor and the number of people below the poverty line have both grown over the past two decades. The increase is widespread, affecting three-quarters of OECD countries. The scale of the change is moderate but significant.

Sci-Fi-O-Rama

A visual scrapbook for cataloging inspiring Art, Graphics and Illustration with a Sci-Fi and Fantasy Slant.

Naomi Klein: Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism

“As the world reels from the financial crisis on Wall Street and the taxpayer-funded $700 billion bailout, we spend the hour with Naomi Klein on the economy, politics and “disaster capitalism.” The Shock Doctrine author recently spoke at the University of Chicago.”

Japanese Public Service Posters

Please…do it at home.

Slimming down the bloated iTunes 8 installer

I like iTunes but, per this article, I don’t like how it installs stuff you don’t need.

Vintage Poison Labels

Ensure that your family’s supply of deadly nightshade is properly labeled. Downloadable files.

400 Floral Brushes for Photoshop

This might surprise you, but this is a collection of links to 400 PS Floral brushes. Some actually good. Others…not so much.

50 Inspiring Vintage Advertisements

Slacks, and lots of ‘em!