Wider Angle: Wider Angle Sunday Reader

Welcome to the first edition of the Wider Angle Sunday Reader. It's like the Wider Angle link dump you're used to, but perhaps with a bit more to injest. So grab your notebook and a cup of coffee (or a couple martinis).

The Oil We Eat is an essay published in Harper's in 2004 that will change the way you think about everything you eat. This had more of an impact on me than Fast Food Nation, which made me stop eating fast food altogether, and this article is only 7 pages. "David Pimentel, an expert on food and energy at Cornell University, has estimated that if all of the world ate the way the United States eats, humanity would exhaust all known global fossil-fuel reserves in just over seven years. Pimentel has his detractors. Some have accused him of being off on other calculations by as much as 30 percent. Fine. Make it ten years." [via kottke]

Video Chaser*: Rather than deliver a snide and witty comment to shame her dumbass co-star, Jodi Applegate totally freaked out on a live news report on Thursday. This is the kind of clip that gets cherished for years. *a Video Chaser will be defined in the spirit of Xeni Jardin's unicorn chasers to that follow very graphic/disturbing images on BoingBoing.

WikiMapia is a wiki project using Google Maps to describe the world. Scroll to various locations on the map, zoom in, and discover what's there. [thanks Allyson]

"At least 56 people, more than half children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that crushed a building, the deadliest attack of the campaign against Hezbollah."

Video Chaser: The Daily Show: Stop calling people Hitler.

The Chicago City Council has passed legislation to make big box retailers (those with stores in the area over 90,000 square feet and total annual revenues over $1 billion) pay their workers a living wage. Naturally, Wal-Mart has decried that this will hurt the workers and force them to close stores. That makes sense, as I found this in their 2005 Annual Report: "Our fiscal year ending January 31, 2005 was another record year for Wal-Mart. We topped $10 billion in net income for the first time in our history and added almost $29 billion in sales." How could they possibly afford to raise wages? I mean, where would the money come from?

Wikipedia celebrates 750 years of American independence from The Onion. "At 750 years, the U.S. is by far the world's oldest surviving democracy, and is certainly deserving of our recognition," Wales said. "According to our database, that's 212 years older than the Eiffel Tower, 347 years older than the earliest-known woolly-mammoth fossil, and a full 493 years older than the microwave oven."

At some Whole Foods, there are egg bar type places where you can find all sorts of weird eggs. Why? I have no idea. But Natalie Dee bought an emu egg, tried to fry it, wound up scrambling it, and created a detailed photo diary of the experience. [via BoingBoing]

Weekly internet TV charts. Links to what everyone's been watching.

Photos of the World Trade Center site on September 13, 2001. Virtually no one has seen images this detailed this soon after the attacks. [via reddit]

Video Chaser: Will Ferrell has done another video in the style of White House West, this time for global warming.

A couple weeks ago, my mom called me and asked what she should do with my boxes of baseball cards still in her basement. She said they didn't take up much space, so she wouldn't mind holding onto them in case they get valuable. I thanked her and suggested she do that, since a lot of them are of pretty good players. We both overlooked the fact that no one cares about baseball cards anymore. I'm not sure what I'll do with them now, but it seems that they're kind of worthless as anything more than the cardboard currency of elementary school.

I don't make a habit of talking to the under-20 crowd because I find them hard to follow since they rarely discuss anything I care about. It was that way when I was in my teens, too, which partially explains why I had so few friends. I don't like cars, have only a passing interest in chicks, and shopping malls make me sad. But I digress. According to The New York Times, where I get my slang information now, apparently, kids are shortening words in conversation to make themselves sound like they have some sort of brain-decaying disease. "Awkward became awk, actually became actu, typical became typ, amazing became amaze and hilarious became hilar. Something utterly hilar, of course, became TOPOSH — Top of the Pillar of St. Hilar — but there was nothing TOPOSH about the situation. As the older sister, I tried to do my part. Sometimes that involved throwing my sneakers at her, and sometimes it was as simple as, 'Hey, Justine, you’re an idiot.'" [via kottke]

The 5 trends that are shaping everything in the world. "We say that this is an ‘experimental’ financial system, because nothing like it has ever existed. Not that this is the first experiment with lighter than air money. No, the U.S. Treasury did not invent pure-paper money. In the modern era, it has been tried many times – but never with happy results. And never, ever on such a grand scale. Now, practically every currency in the world is backed by dollars. And the dollar itself is backed by nothing." [via reddit]

The ugly truth about everyday life in Baghdad - a confidential letter sent from U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to Condi Rice on July 20. We focus on the civil war and deterioration of a region, but sometimes forget about all the other problems on a local level. Fuck. "7. Temperatures in Baghdad have already reached 115 degrees. Employees all confirm that, by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without. By early June, the situation had improved slightly. In Hal al-Shaab, power has recently improved from one in six to one in three hours. Other staff report similar variances. Central Baghdad neighborhood Bab al-Nu'atham has had no city power for over a month. Areas near hospitals, political party headquarters, and the green zone have the best supply. One staff member reported a friend lives in a building that houses the new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day." [via reddit]

Video Chaser: Back to the Future I and II synced up so you see both Marty McFly's simultaneously.

Beautiful images of the former Penn Station in NYC. I was looking at this page this week after hearing once again how ugly the current station is under Madison Square Garden. Coindidentally it showed up on del.icio.us popular this weekend.

"I came over here because I wanted to kill people." A profile of Pvt. Steven D. Green. [via digg]

Video Chaser: Windows Vista speech recognition doesn't work so well... in a demonstration at their headquarters and replayed on CNBC.

Labels: Sunday Reader

Wider Angle Sunday Reader - July 30, 2006