1. Walter Russell Mead:

The looming struggle over water is not difficult to foresee. As China and South Asian countries use more and more water in urban development and agriculture, available resources will be intensely protected. China controls the vast Tibetan plateau, where most of South Asia’s rivers originate. Not only does China appropriate upstream resources, but pollution flows downstream, making what water downstream nations have available increasingly unsuitable for consumption or agriculture.

2. New Resident Evil ARG site and the site it takes you to.



3. Graphic design in the movie Moon.



4. Offline Gmail. (The only Chrome app other than Angry Birds that I've installed. Are there others worth installing?)



5. The latest nick and dent sale at TFAW (lots of comics and toys).



6. Tenacious Toys has Kidrobot Azteca Series 2 Dunny blind boxes on sale.

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1. A Gizmodo writer went on two dates with a guy she met on OK Cupid and then wrote a post about how he was a loser for being a world class Magic The Gathering player and not mentioning it in his profile (or maybe she had a different motivation for going on the dates). He participated in an interesting q&a at Reddit. Also funny: Top Signs You’re on a Date With a Gizmodo Writer, including "refers to post-dinner plans as 'occurring after the jump'."



2. Hotel elevator with separate buttons for staff and guests.



3. How to report scraper sites to Google. Via.



4. Lime green couch wallpaper. Via.

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Homemade bee-killing suit.







MLK memorial.







Bottle cap.







16-bit memories.







Puppies growing up.







Wild facts from Reddit.

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1. "A teenage Formula One fan has been fitted with a souped-up artificial hand after he offered to sell advertising space to Mercedes - on his prosthetic limb."



2. "Top five computer monitors for under $200."



3. "Here's A Sneak Peek Inside [Thomas Keller's] Bouchon Bakery [in Los Angeles], Opening Tomorrow."

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1. "Bank-Robbing Stripper and Brothers Caught After Car Chase, Gun Battle."



2. Tents that fold up really small. Via.



3. "Gap’s Death-Camp Chic mannequins."

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1. How to find PDF manuals for electronics using Google and Amazon.



2. New York City worker admits masterminding $7M food-stamp fraud.



3. "The man tapped by Rupert Murdoch to oversee News Corp.’s internal probe of wrongdoing . . . is best friends with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, who is leading the U.S. investigation into the company."



4. The BBTS has available for preorder the hardcover collection of the #1 issues for all of DC's new 52.

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1. How to remove yourself from various background check sites.

2. Good article about the history of DDT. For example:

The German army purposely triggered malaria epidemics, such as in Italy in 1944. Drainage pumps on the Roman marshes ordinarily pumped excess water out to sea, desiccating the land enough to make it malaria-free and thus habitable for thriving cities and towns. By stilling the pumps, the Germans could have flooded the region and effectively impeded the Allies' progress. But German malariologist Erich Martini had studied the habits of the local malaria vector, Anopheles labranchiae, in depth, and he knew that inundating the region with the Mediterranean's salty waters would allow A. labranchiae, which can thrive in brackish water, to flourish. And so rather than simply stopping the pumps, they reversed them, salinating some ninety-eight thousand acres. Then they confiscated local stockpiles of antimalarial drugs. As the German soldiers departed, they left behind "clever sketches," The New York Times reported in 1944, "of the plague of mosquitoes that would follow the flooding of the farmlands." More than 100,000 of the 245,000 locals sickened with malaria.

3. Today's economic news (aside from the stock market's freefall, and the continuing slow motion collapse of the Euro) was about protests in Israel. This was the most interesting analysis. (Hint, their economic problems don't really look anything like the USA's.)

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1. The five finalists in the Bioshock Infinite t-shirt design contest.

2. "Use seawater or vinegar to treat jellyfish stings, not urine."

3. "Artist EVOL Installs Miniature City Underneath Grassy Field."

4. Jess Nevins's Annotations to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume III Chapter Two, a.k.a. Century: 1969 (10% off at TFAW).

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1. Todd McFarlane describes his own strategy to explain why DC's 52 initiative is ill-conceived:

One of the things I have to do is not put all the All-Stars in the first line. Because if I do all the All-Stars in the first line, the next line is less than All-Stars. What I do is, I take my players, and I consider them to be A, B or C level. And I put six out in each line, I put two A, two B, two C, so that I balance it throughout the year so that I don't get these spikes in sales, and retailers see this steady stream of sales at a steady volume.

2. Madéleine Flores (who I link to periodically) has a new Kickstarter. $10 gets you a digital copy and an original sketch.

3. Bioshock Infinite t-shirt design contest.

4. Tip: Pillow cases are perfect for cleaning ceiling fan blades.

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1. News Corp does enough terrible things that you shouldn't have to make up claims.

2. Google's first social network Orkut was briefly very popular in Finland:

Orkut [the Google engineer who built orkut] is Turkish, so we had no idea when we launched it that in Finland evidently that same word means “multiple sexual climaxes.” When people saw a product called orkut, they thought it was a dating service or sex site, and it took off quickly. As soon as they saw what it actually was, interest cooled somewhat.

3. To take a screenshot on an iPhone, hold down the lock button and the home button at the same time for about one second until the screen flashes white. Via.

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1. Gizmodo's list of best laptops. You can find the cheap choice at eBay.

2. Free and pretty fun Cowboys and Aliens shooter. Via.

3. A look at the entries in Red Bull’s annual Red Bull Creation event.

4. The WSJ calls the home of the Cincinnati Bengals "one of the worst professional sports deals ever struck by a local government" Via.

5. It's $6 off t-shirts at Zazzle with the code ZBDAYTSHIRTS. I recommend Miskatonic University, Vonster, and my own store.

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One can simply walk into...



Lamp post cries out for vengeance.



Nyan Cat put to good use.



Protester - - the comment thread is an interesting window into how people game Reddit.



Glowing bugs.

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1. Mark Cuban was a great sport when Deadspin found some of his old college photos, apparently unintentionally made public due to Google+.

2. Lev Grossman on fan fiction.

3. How to tie anything to your car.

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1. Find out what Google thinks you're interested in (and turn off the tracking). Via.

2. JShea posted the three sculptures he created for Gallery Nucleus's Harry Potter show.

3. Since I seem to be obsessed with Bruce Timm's art right now, here's a pinup.

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1. For other Blogger users, here's a useful comment by a Blogger employee from Ann Althouse's blog:

While our export tools may have been somewhat unreliable when handling blogs this large (Althouse is one of the largest Blogger blogs!), along the way helping Ann we discovered ways to improve them and moving forward Blogger will be much better equipped to handle cases like this.

So Ann while I'm personally sad to see you go (if that is indeed the decision), I wanted to let you know that you will always have a home on Blogger and a team who cares about your experience with Blogger. That also (of course) goes for everyone. We love hearing from users, and anyone can bug me directly on Twitter (@electrobutter) if something is on their mind, or hit up the team via @blogger.

It seems like such a typical Google thing to do to make such outreach efforts only when it was too late to keep her on the platform. Her entire Blogger blog was deleted, possibly by error, possibly by a rogue Google employee, last month.

2. "An investigation into Atlanta’s public school system has uncovered evidence that teachers and principals have been secretly erasing and correcting answers on students’ tests for as long as a decade."

3. "For the past few years, networks have been digitally inserting ads and product placements for new products into old reruns."

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1. Johnny Depp has apparently made $350 million from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

2. The Netherlands is apparently the world's third largest agricultural exporter, despite having little land, thanks to hydroponic agriculture that uses computer-controlled feeding of high-quality chemicals. (Presumably such techniques could be applied elsewhere if there was a serious danger of food shortages.)

3. For Los Angeles residents, if there's a police helicopter hovering over your house, you can call 213-485-2600 to find out why. (I had need of this today.) Via.

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1. "How to Create an In-Case-of-Emergency Everything Document to Keep Your Loved Ones Informed if Worst Comes to Worst."

2. Free mp3 download of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother audiobook.

3. You'll only get this if you follow the NBA, but Dwight Howard and Gilbert Arenas have been engaging in a planking contest at Twitter, and then Dwight Howard posted this.

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1. How to create "cinemagraphs" (animated gifs that look like photos with subtle movement). Via.

2. Big Sister maquette. (Bioshock 2.)

3. Sounds like this former AOL worker has quite an axe to grind, but read this if you're jealous of professional bloggers.

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1. "The best notebooks of the year so far." (Check back in six months and maybe there will be some real bargains.)

2. If you liked that Tokyo Rockabilly Club picture I posted the other day, check out this music video - - it shows how the guy achieves such a monstrously high pompadour. Via.

3. Useful wallpaper for learning geography.

*Buy vintage maps at eBay.

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Vi Hart's latest math lesson makes math look fun and easy. She has a donation button at her site.

READ MORE - The latest brilliant visual math lesson by Vi Hart