Horrifying gun-based language used by Palin and her own reality show? Frightening. It's so insulting that anyone would even remotely consider her a guide to wilderness and wildlife.

Great recent gems from the NYTimes: awesome slideshow featuring a 4,500-page tome, "The Histories of Animals," published by the Swiss physician Conrad Gessner (mid-1500s), and an article on the love of reading shared by a father and daughter.

Image: source.

The cutest little beach cottage ever?

I'm no biker (don't I wish) but I do love this designed-for-biking hoodie, especially in bright blue.

Love this cute idea for cable clips.

Zombies v. unicorns!

Would love to see this exhibit at the International Center of Photography: visual culture and the struggle for civil rights.

Check out the NYC Polaroid Project:. Yet another reminder that I want more creativity/art in my life...

Amazing story about friends of a paralyzed graffiti artists who helped figure out a way for him to draw...with his eyes.

Image: source.

The Mountain Goats in film.

Beautiful, simple rings (the rectangles are particularly unique).

Interesting: why good people skills matter in a recession.

Image: from Playing with Pictures: the Art of the Victorian Photocollage.

Awesome stop motion animation.

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” - David Foster Wallace

I love Hammerpress and it's so cool to see these shots of their studio.

Listen to Raymond Carver reading some of his work.

Image: source.

From NKSScreative, sexy backed dresses, enviable blue suede shoes, and summer jackets.

Look at this amazing house in Ibiza...incredible.

Wonderful bird jewelry over at the Etsy shop Kuss.

“Make a radical change in your lifestyle & begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances & yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, & conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, & hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new & different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security & adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning & its incredible beauty.” — Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild.

Source.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

Image: source.

Google Maps adds bike routes! "With the click of a mouse, the new feature allows you to plot the best (and flattest!) ride."

Thoughts on Boston's Branch Library Crisis. Save our libraries!

Love this teacup. I'm obsessed with keeping my tea hot, and with having a place to put the teabag, and this solves both issues! So practical.

Image: source.

The HuffPo picks up on a story from The Harvard Crimson featuring the wonderful Greg Sensing, "New Harvard Policy Covers Transgender Health."

I want one of these "lawyer's bookcases" - and I won't put any law books on it!

These suggestions aren't the most amazing but they sure did make me miss San Juan, PR. Truly an wonderful place to live and visit.

Can't wait to try this, I love all things Rogue!

Voices from Solitary: Charles P. Norman on “The Insanity of Solitary Confinement.” And from the Prison Law Blog, "Are Solitary Confinement Cells the New Asylums?"