Greg A. Brown

It’s pretty awesome.

There’s a new trend of copying portions of other people’s profiles (on Facebook, Myspace, etc.) in an attempt to seem more interesting or articulate. It’s easier online, although not quite a new phenomenon. Every once in a while you’ll meet a one-upper: someone who will take your hobbies and interests and do them too, only in a more extreme fashion in an attempt to impress you and others.

1. build a giant labyrinth of tunnels under my house. Essay penned by the wonderful author behind BLDGBLOG.

I’ll figure out everything else once I get that done.

Charles Taylor ordered his soldiers to eat the enemy as to cause fear amongst the population. Whoa.

… but not enough to take up smoking. Luckily, Brand New has the hookup with the new Camel pack designs!

The NY Times on how mental health is joining public health as an outlet to improve living standards in developing nations, spawned by the realization that maladies like depression aren’t just “diseases of the affluent.”

Someone mapped out the area codes where Ludacris claims to have hoes, and the big red splotch on Nebraska makes it awesome.

Wired is reporting on this year’s TED conference, highlighting the most interesting participants and attempting to get across the same content as in their talk. One such participant is Jill Bolte Taylor, who recounted her experience of a stroke she suffered one dozen years earlier.

So on the morning of December 10, 1996, Taylor awoke with pounding,
caustic pain behind her left eye. It came in waves, gripping and
releasing her. Nonetheless, she started her morning routine, oblivious
to what was happening. She jumped on an exercise machine and looked
down at her hands and says they looked like primitive claws to her. She
didn’t recognize her body as hers.

The New Republic has a great article up on Obama’s economic and foreign advisors, and how they like to come up with policy. Particularly interesting was his tendency to pull economic advisors from the academic sphere, particularly the right-leaning University of Chicago.

China Mieville, a sci-fi/fantasy/hard-to-classify author and part-time writer on international law, wrote a scathing indictment of libertarian philosophy that also laments how they stole the original coolness of floating city-states, giant ships that only function under their own laws. It’s a great, great read.