Just when you thought Threadless T-Shirts couldn't get any better, they now offer their badass consumer designed t-shirts in 18"x24" prints. I know which one Gerard wants. jmj

The newest article from ESPN.com's Gregg Easterbrook takes a look at the punishment, or lack there of, of the New England Patriots and more specifically Bill Belichick. The most interesting piece of information happened to be contained in the final sentence of the footnote. glc

In Friday's Washington Post, NFL reporter Mark Maske quotes former Giants quarterback Phil Simms contending that stolen signals are no guarantee of victory: " 'I've been in games where we knew every signal, every call by the other team, and we still lost,' Simms said by telephone yesterday. 'We [the Giants] had the San Diego Chargers' signals in 1980. We knew every signal. We knew every play. We were calling out what they were going to do: 'Here comes this. Here comes that.' They still scored 44 points.'" After more Simms quotes, the article moved to other matters. Who was on the New York Giants' coaching staff in 1980? Bill Belichick and Ernie Adams.

Disclaimer: If you're a die hard LOST fan, you may not want to read this. MentalFloss calls Jason Hunter's explanation "The most comprehensive LOST theory ever." It's pretty technical, with some holes, but I think it makes sense. Remember, I warned you. tjc

Stop-motion video graffiti style. Be sure to have sound, it makes a difference. The scope of this project is amazing. (via snark) glc

Panoramas.dk offers interactive 360˚ views of sites around the world. Their latest view is of Piazza San Marco in Venezia, where as of May 1, 2008, the feeding of pigeons is been banned. Apparently, the number of pigeons outnumber the citizens of Venice 2:1. jmj

From Lifehacker: How to build a Gmail Notifier lamp. For those who really need to be on top of their email. tjc

GOOD Magazine tackles transparency in the campaign fundraising game. glc

What is so important about the number 350? See for yourself. glc

I went and saw the adaptation of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Sunday night, and it was, well, awesome! As a huge fan of the series, I'm glad to see that the movies are being released in the original order that the books were. If you bought the series today, the books are ordered chronologically, as opposed to their original order. When HarperCollins took over the series in 1994, the books were reordered using the internal chronological order, as suggested by Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham, using a letter that C.S. Lewis wrote to an American fan as basis for his argument.

I think I agree with your order [i.e. chronological] for reading the books more than with your mother’s. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published.

-C.S. Lewis

On that note: from McSweeney's "A letter to his imperial majesty, Aslan" by Mari Ness, who asks, "Why send kids?" My answer: because adults might have screwed things up even worse. Also from the site: "Yogi Berra is deeper than you thought" by Rosser Clark. tjc

Frank Chimero has begun a project called The States in which he draws an illustration of each state. I find the quote below a bit misleading in that he clearly added a thematic piece to the Colorado illustration that does in fact somewhat take away from the point of simply sketching the state itself. Also below you will find my favorite, Illinois. glc

The illustrations for the states don't necessarily have to deal (with) the thematics of the state's culture, it's just a nice exercise for my creative muscles.

Radar Magazine says that 8 million of the 304 million citizens of the United States of America could be on a special list. "In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention." Around 1 million of those are on possible-terrorist list. The rest? Uh?

James Comey, John Ashcroft's second-in-command at the Department of Justice during Bush's first term, at one point "expressed concern over how this secret database was being used 'to accumulate otherwise private data on non-targeted U.S. citizens for use at a future time,' " according to an inside source. This article plays out a high-stakes cloak-and-dagger story with many sources in many different aspects of government.

"(Comey) and Ashcroft had discussed the program in March 2004, trying to decide whether it was legal under federal statutes. Shortly before the certification deadline, Ashcroft fell ill with pancreatitis, making Comey acting attorney general, and Comey opted not to certify the program. When he communicated his decision to the White House, Bush's men told him, in so many words, to take his concerns and stuff them in an undisclosed location." tjc

None of the leading presidential candidates have been asked the questions that are so profoundly pertinent to the future of the country: As president, will you continue aggressive domestic surveillance programs in the vein of the Bush administration? Will you release the COG blueprints that Representatives DeFazio and Thompson were not allowed to read? What does it suggest about the state of the nation that the U.S. is now ranked by worldwide civil liberties groups as an "endemic surveillance society," alongside repressive regimes such as China and Russia? How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public? (Radar put these questions to spokespeople for the McCain, Obama, and Clinton campaigns, but at press time had yet to receive any responses.)

According to confusingwords.com, lay is the most popular confusing word. Interesting. I didn't realize that a three letter word would have an effect on so many people. Or is affect? Damn it. jmj