Monday Links: September 29th, 2008

What follows are a number of links completely unrelated to banks, stocks, bailouts, the Federal Treasury, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (see: news items that trouble and confuse me).  Instead, how about a nice dose of random:

• The Macarthur Foundation announced the recipients of its annual Genius Awards last week.  One of the newly minted geniuses is an artist named Tara Donovan who creates art I think is brilliant, mainly from everyday objects at an enormous scale (tens of thousands of pencils, toothpicks, etc).  Check out a slideshow of her work on the NYT site.  [Hat Tip: Kottke].

• It’s impossible to talk about China without acknowledging the sensitive political and human rights situation.  But, being a complete geek for all things related to space exploration, I still found this video of the first Chinese spacewalk (on their third manned flight) to be worth celebrating [Hat Tip: Gizmodo]:

• Sam (who also pleaded for a more upbeat Monday Links…maybe not this week) drew my attention to this story in the comments of my last post.  Today the American Prospect blog picked it up with the appropriate title “Shame.“:

On Friday, two men attacked a Mosque in Dayton, Ohio, with some kind of chemical irritant. The victims were the Muslims worshiping peacefully inside, and the perpetrators have yet to be apprehended. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt, but this kind of bigotry is simply unacceptable and is symptomatic of the stigma surrounding American Muslims that surrounds our post-9/11 elections — see the ridiculous accusations that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and the political imperative he has to deny the charge as loudly as he can while defending Muslims as quietly as possible.

• Want to feel a little guilty about your daily java habit?

If you drink 2 cups of coffee a day, you will need 18 coffee trees devoted just to you. And it takes 5 years before a tree is fully mature and productive.

• North Dakota is apparently the most outgoing state in the nation, according to an index of personality traits.  This is completely true based on my sample of 1 (cheers, Kate!):

[The index] used a standard personality test that rates people based on the “big five” personality traits — extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness. The results? Highly conscientious states were a really mixed bag, including New Mexico, North Carolina, Utah and Florida. Super neurotic states included not only the obvious culprits — New York and New Jersey — but also Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas (the latter three possibly, the scientists surmise, because of the extremes of poverty found there).

• I mentioned Alltop a few months ago; the topics have since expanded from 20 to 215+, so now might be a good time to check out the new design.

• At times like these, we all need a little more Dr. Seuss in our lives.  Mental Floss obliges with Stories Behind 10 Dr. Seuss Stories.  My favorite Dr. Seuss tale is the Butter Battle Book, but here’s the tale behind Green Eggs and Ham:

Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss’ editor, bet him thaat he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. The Cat in the Hat was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225 words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came up with Green Eggs and Ham – which uses exactly 50 words. The 50 words, by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

Stay tuned.