estimated number of gallons of extra gasoline burned each year because americans are overweight: 938,000,000
from the harper’s index, november 2006

…the bush administration cut anti-terrorism funding to new york by forty percent this year. the reason: the department of homeland security concluded that the city has no national icons or monuments that terrorists would want to attack…

tired of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season? need to get away, even for just a minute? the quiet american web site has a series of “one-minute vacations”, which are one minute ambient recordings of a certain place, a certain time. the quality of some of the recordings, which anyone can submit, vary in quality, but sometimes i prefer the imperfect recordings, which can really amplify the nostaglic feelings that some of these recordings invoke.