Wider Angle: Links for 08.22.06

I needed a few minutes to understand these illustrations by Karen Minot for BBC World, then they were crystal clear like those Magic Eye posters. This project is a rare successful marriage of conceptual art and memorable advertising.

The Bush administration is scared that more proof of the NSA domestic spying program's unconstitutionality could be revealed if Verizon releases documents related to their cooperation with the wiretapping, so the feds are suing to make them stop being such a meanie-head. [via digg]

The Stephen Colbert Greenscreen Challenge - take his video and rework, composite, and render the funny. The dudes at the Report are on the bleeding edge of awesome. [thanks Maria]

Now this is a Firefox. IE could never be this cute. It's too busy sucking asssss. High five! [via reddit]

Bush has been losing his mind lately, and not in the normal way we're used to. First he had a brain meltdown at a press conference on Friday, then yesterday he got really angry at a reporter for asking a simple question. Outside of rants, his speech has been so strangely syncopated I am entirely positive he has an earpiece. As Allyson said, Who would let him out in front of people alone?

Snakes on a plane. Funny. Poisonous snakes in a theater during Snakes On A Plane. Not funny.

A man in Iowa flying his American flag upside down (freedom of expression, last time I checked) has been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and regularly receives threats.

Have you heard the latest news in the universe? Dark matter officially exists. Don your conical novelty hat and retrieve your sound machine. The math is tricky, but the animation is fun.

Cloud Mirror is not the name of the newest baby born in Brooklyn. Rather, it is a 3-story shiny dish that will reflect Rockefeller Center for a few weeks this fall. Pickle Juice Sport is not a game played with pickle juice. Rather, it is a sports drink. When you sweat, your body loses essential picklytes and brinerals that need to be replenished with the potent product of professional players packed with pickle power.

Jessica Helfand writes on the recent prevalence of relentless complexity in graphic design. "It’s on T-shirts at Old Navy and in classrooms at every design school I’ve visited in the last two years. It’s on packaging and in posters and pushing its way through publications and the somberist of annual reports. Some of it is breathtakingly beautiful, compelling, even entertaining. But most of it is excessive, indulgent and impossible to parse." It is a trend, like any other. Some compare it to a renaissance of Arts and Crafts-style ornamentation.

Modest Apparel USA. I suppose this is the opposite of excessive design. Missouri represent. [via plasticbag.org]