Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud | “What I would suggest is that our idea of reading is incomplete, impoverished, unless we are also taking the time to read aloud.”

Confronting my worst nightmare | “I see 2004 and 2007, and think of Manny and Papi first and foremost. The modern-day Ruth and Gehrig. One of the great one-two punches in sports history. Were they cheating the whole time?”

Where the Wild Things Are Trailer | I really want this to be good.

A Tribute to Discontinued Cereals | Lots of great stuff I had forgotten about. I remember really liking C3PO's.

Bionic eye gives blind man sight | Wow. Sounds like he's going to be doing a lot more laundry now, though.

Sasha Obama Keeps Seeing Creepy Bush Twins While Riding Tricycle Through White House | “White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, also detailed a disturbing vision experienced by Sasha, who at several points during her encounter suddenly saw the twin girls lying motionless in a pool of spilled strawberry margaritas.”

Best Picture | “I'll put it in writing: the best motion picture released last year was WALL-E.”

Remembering Gene | Roger Ebert remembers Gene Siskel on the 10 year anniversary of his death.

Coming Soon: Pepsi Throwback, Mountain Dew Throwback | Made with sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup. Now if only Dr Pepper would get on board.

Gates Releases Mosquitos During TED Talk | “There is more money put into baldness drugs than into malaria. Now, baldness is a terrible thing and rich men are afflicted. That is why that priority has been set.”

John Updike, a Lyrical Writer of the Ordinary, Is Dead at 76 | “The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.”

Views From the Crowds: Panoramic views of the inaugural ceremony and parade. | More great panoramas from The New York Times.

The Impossible Project | “We aim to re-start production of analog INTEGRAL FILM for vintage Polaroid cameras in 2010. We have acquired Polaroid's old equipment, factory and seek your support.”

Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs about his health. | “So now I've said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.”

Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It | “In theory, I want to support all of these fine folks. In practice, I decide to save a buck.”

The Real Bill Ayers | “The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other's behavior.”

My Favorite Book Covers of 2008 | Some great covers collected by the Book Design Review.

Indians legend Score passes away | “His partners in the booth - Jack Corrigan, Joe Tait, Paul Olden, Nev Chandler, Steve Lamar, Reggie Rucker, Bruce Drennan, Bob Feller and others - came and went, but Score remained a fixture, calling season after season of mostly lousy baseball.”

Microsoft placing “I'm a PC” recording booths outside Apple stores | “Not to be outdone, Apple has pledged to send Justin Long to your house to charmingly condescend to you about his various abilities while still pretending to be your best friend.”

Undecided | “To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?’ To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

On Health Plans, the Numbers Fly | “Even the economists behind the forecasts say it makes them uncomfortable to hear candidates assert their numbers as indisputable fact, as if stating Derek Jeter’s batting average. What they are modeling, they emphasize, is ultimately unknowable.”

And Now… Opera | Opera hires Jon Hicks as Senior Designer. Hopefully they'll let him do something with that icon.

Earth From Above comes to NYC | Breathtaking photos from Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

Demand A Press Conference! | “Until Sarah Palin agrees to a full and open press conference, she should not even be considered as a possible vice-president of the United States. What has been going on with her and access to her is an outrage to democratic discourse and the entire electoral system.”

Our position on California's No on 8 campaign | Sergey Brin: “While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.”

Wario Land: Shake It - Amazing footage! | Great preview of new Wii game.

What the 21st Century Will Taste Like | “At the table, this means our plates will be heavier on grains and greens, and meat will shift from the center of the dish to a supporting role--the role it's played throughout history in most of the world's cuisines.”

Digging Deeper | “And so what makes Microsoft’s new ‘I’m a PC’ commercials so jaw-droppingly bad is that they’re not countering Apple’s message, but instead they’re reinforcing it.”

At Hangar 17, Pieces of Ground Zero | New York Times panoramas of 9/11 artifacts being preserved for inclusion in the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

Obama to Palin: ‘Don't Mock the Constitution’ | “Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years.”

Orwell Diaries | The Orwell Prize is publishing George Orwell's daily diary entries as a blog, 70 years after they were written. His ‘political’ diaries begin today.

Michael Moore To Release New Film For Free | “Slacker Uprising” will be the first major film distributed online and for free.

The Henry Ford of Literature | “Distributed discreetly by mail order, Little Blue Books disseminated birth-control information not available in small-town libraries, advocated racial justice at a time when the Ku Klux Klan influenced politics, and introduced Euripides, Shakespeare, and Emerson to people without the means for higher education.”

True Grit | Review of Annie Proulx's new book, “Fine Just the Way It Is.”

Revisiting Coen Country for Odd Men | “And more often than not, somebody gets shot in the face.”

The Diver's View | Great spherical panorama of the Water Cube in Beijing.

Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America? | “When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN.”

The balcony is closed | “Now the time has come to awake from my daydream. That's all history--treasured history, but past and gone, all the same.”

10 Most Amazing Ghost Towns | My favorite are the photos of Prypiat in northern Ukraine. I'd love a chance to visit the area around Chernobyl.

Watermelon May Have Viagra-effect | “We've always known that watermelon is good for you, but the list of its very important healthful benefits grows longer with each study.”

Butterflies are free, so why aren't iPhone apps? | “What happened to the Communist paradise of each working to provide for free what he or she is able to make and receiving the like in turn from his or her comrades as was promised us by the great thinkers of the 19th century?”

Believe Me, It's Torture | Christopher Hitchens reports on his experience undergoing waterboarding.

Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole this summer | “It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.” Yikes.

A Master of Words, Including Some You Can't Use in a Headline | “But what came through, even as he shook his head and used one or more of the seven forbidden words to say how stupid we were, was his love of language itself and how various and evocative it was.”

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination | J.K. Rowling's Harvard commencement address.

Natasha | The first time this short story by Vladimir Nabokov has been published in English.

A Story from This American Life | Wonderfully animated by Chris Ware.

Einstein Letter on God Sells for $404,000 | “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

Approaching the uncanny valley from the other direction | “I don't know about you but a middle-aged Madonna made to look 24 gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

At the bar with the Hate Camel | “Enough with the anger towards Anger. Love gets you Nora Roberts and Harlequin Romances; Anger gets you Slaughterhouse Five and Lenny Bruce.”

Hillary and Bill: The movie | “The campaign was not about political positions, but about sheer desire. Hillary wanted to win, and she ran and ran and ran until there was a kind of heroism to it. Futile heroism after a point, but that's where the story lies.”

Sprint Spending $100 Million to Kick iPhone in the Nuts (iPhone Wearing Cup) | Sprint is launching a $100 million marketing campaign for its Instinct phone.

Apple and AT&T to launch iPhone 3G a lot sooner than we think? | AT&T employees are not allowed to take vacations from June 15th to July 12th.

The Last Meal on the Titanic | Here's what was served in the first-class dining room on the evening of April 14, 1912.

In Weak Rivets, a Possible Key to Titanic's Doom | The rivets could explain why she sank so quickly, 96 years ago today.

Roger Ebert, the Critic Behind the Thumb | “His criticism shows a nearly unequaled grasp of film history and technique, and formidable intellectual range, but he rarely seems to be showing off. He's just trying to tell you what he thinks, and to provoke some thought on your part about how movies work and what they can do.”

Life Before Death | Beautiful series of portraits taken of people before and after dying.

It’s Not You, It’s Your Books | “Now that you mention it, if I went over to a man’s house and there were those books about life’s lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.”

Japan: URL’s Are Totally Out | Interesting observation of Japanese advertising from Cabel Sasser’s recent trip.

Secret Skin | “An essay in unitard theory” from Michael Chabon.

Black Guy Asks Nation For Change | “What he really needs is a job.”

Hulu.com | Free online TV and Movies. Very impressive.

The Origin Of The iChat UI | Jens Alfke's 1997 sketch of a chat interface based on speech balloons.

Boston Dynamics Big Dog | Seriously amazing walking robot. Don't miss it on the ice.

Vain, querulous and a genius | “With her portraits of oddbods and adolescent girls, Carson McCullers has captured the hearts of generations of readers. Just don't be fooled by her apparent innocence.”

I fell in love with a female assassin | “I want to believe that she had a change of heart. I want to believe that she wasn't the cold, heartless, evil killer she appeared to be. But who am I trying to fool?”

Garfield minus Garfield | “Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?”

Coens take on tale of alternate Alaska | The brothers will adapt and direct Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Trailer | I remain optimistic.

Flash on iPhone Political Calculus | “If Flash does turn into a major force in the mobile world, Apple can always add it later. But why shouldn't Apple push for a Flash-free mobile web future now?”

Polaroid Abandons Instant Photography | “Polaroid said it would happily license the technology to other manufacturers should they want to go on supplying the niche market with film after 2009.”

Apple //c Unboxing | Shipped in 1988 and opened for the first time.

A Rookie Guide to Digital SLR Cameras | Mike Davidson's “guide for DSLR virgins considering purchasing their first full sized digital camera.”

How camera lenses are made | 10 minute video showing the glass cutting through final assembly.

Books That Make You Dumb | “Ever read a book (required or otherwise) and upon finishing it thought to yourself, ‘Wow. That was terrible. I totally feel dumber after reading that.’?”

The MacBook Air | John Gruber on the MacBook Air's place in Apple's notebook lineup.

MacBook Air | Pretty, but I haven't much use for it. The trade-offs for the slim design aren't worth it to me.

iPhone Webclip Icons | How to make a custom icon that will display on the iPhone or iPod Touch if someone makes a “webclip” bookmark of your site.

TextWrangler 2.3 | Update to Bare Bones great (and free!) text editor.

The Magnetic Fields: Distortion | “Distortion isn't a return to form so much as a return to content.”

The 2007 Feltron Annual Report | Nicholas Felton's 2007 year in review. Great idea, great design.

James Joyce: A Classic Review | Review of several of Joyce's works from Atlantic Monthly in 1946.