Ken Burns:

Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales -- from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska -- The National Parks: America's Best Idea is nonetheless a story of people: people from every conceivable background -- rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy. It is a story full of struggle and conflict, high ideals and crass opportunism, stirring adventure and enduring inspiration -- set against the most breathtaking backdrops imaginable.

Michael Chabon:

Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted--not taught--to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?

Once something is fetishized, capitalism steps in and finds a way to sell it.

Jeff Goldblum, in Jurassic Park:

You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!

Jamie Hogan:

I'm an engineer, and if one genius bear can do it, sooner or later there might be two genius bears.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea | PBS

This is a collection of e-mails I have sent to people who post classified ads.

My goal is to mess with them, confuse them, and/or piss them off.

These are the ones that succeeded.

Richard Hamming:

If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work.

Samantha Power:

There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.

E-mails from an Asshole

Jon Gertner:

This is a story not about Amtrak but about trains, and the problem with any story about trains in America is that you often find yourself thinking about Amtrak, and you often find yourself thinking about how nice it would be if you weren't thinking about Amtrak. This is especially true when you're actually riding on Amtrak.

You see:

That's not grime you're seeing, it's historical charm.

J.M. Harper:

This is not my home.

Also in the archive:

Train Runs Through Bangkok Market

Model Railroad Slums

Getting Up to Speed

Roadside America:

Dinosaur Kingdom is a twist on the biblical Creationist view that people and dinosaurs lived together. Here, people live with dinosaurs -- but only until the dinosaurs eat them.

As the tour begins, visitors are asked to imagine themselves in 1863. A family of Virginia paleontologists has accidentally dug a mine shaft into a hidden valley of living dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the Union Army has tagged along, hoping to kidnap the big lizards and use them as "weapons of mass destruction" against the South.

What you see along the path of Dinosaur Kingdom is a series of tableaus depicting the aftermath of this ill-advised military strategy.

Donald Rumsfeld:

Building a new nation is never a straight, steady climb upward. Today can sometimes look worse than yesterday -- or even two months ago. What matters is the overall trajectory: Where do things stand today when compared to what they were five years ago?

Kurt Schwenk, via Carl Zimmer:

I guarantee that if you had a 10-foot lizard jump out of the bushes and rip your guts out, you’d be somewhat still and quiet for a bit, at least until you keeled over from shock and blood loss owing to the fact that your intestines were spread out on the ground in front of you.

From the archive:

Pablo Escobar purchased the 8.4 sq mile Napoles Estate, about 200 miles from Bogota, in 1978.

He turned it into a fantasy land with concrete dinosaurs, a bullfighting ring and a private zoo that would have made Michael Jackson jealous, with giraffes, elephants, kangaroos and hippopotamuses.

To keep them company, he built a herd of concrete dinosaurs.

Finally:

Rewilding: the process of creating a lifestyle that is independent of the domestication of civilization.

Dinosaur Kingdom, Natural Bridge, Virginia

World of Goo is a physics based puzzle / construction game. The millions of Goo Balls who live in the beautiful World of Goo don't know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious.

From the archive:

"We are on the cusp of perfection of extreme evil -- an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond weapons of mass destruction," Joy warned recently in Wired magazine.

You must learn to love the Goo, for it loves you.

I wait in eager anticipation of Grey Goo Graffiti.

Only you can prevent Gray Goo

World of Goo

“What’s cool about the sport is, it’s all about confronting yourself and seeing what you’re capable of,” she said. “That’s very instructive in life. So, as far as my injuries go, it’s a little like the catcalls I get. I may not like it all that much, but it’s not going to stop me.”

From the archive:

Spread the word: This delirious import is the most (maybe the only) fun action movie of the summer—swift, funny, filled with actual stunts instead of digitized mayhem, and primed at a moment's notice for megaton ass-kicking.

When a body plummets down a stairwell or is hurled against a slot machine, it does so with conviction.

The spread of parkour into the woods of Georgia and the deserts of Arizona occurred almost entirely through the boundlessness of Internet message boards.

In Parkour, Climbing Walls Because They’re There

Once when I needed to entertain my daughter while we were driving somewhere, I said, "Let's pretend that, rolling along outside the window, there was a little ball that would pick up trash and boxes and trash cans, and that as it collected items it got bigger and bigger, until it was picking up houses and buildings, and that there was happy music playing that sounded like this (I hummed a bit), while hundreds of citizens called out for help that would never come."

Her little eyes got really wide.

She was very quiet for the rest of the ride.

From the archive:

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!

"As a friend of mine said, it takes half a second for a baby to throw up all over your sweater. It takes hours to get it clean."

Parenting Tip #234: Katamari Damacy

Cambridge has a lot to offer the student. The academic demands are neither stringent nor time consuming. One is not compelled to go to lectures or forced to produce essays, though such activities are actively encouraged. Consequently, most students have time on their hands, The river is attractive and relaxing, the backs are inviting, punting is a novelty, parties abound, coffee is liberal: what a way to spend one's days.

I came to Cambridge in 1963 and rapidly became bored. Everything seemed so artificial and stultifying. It was a green-house existence with little possibility of escape. My depression grew by the day: I had to break out of it in some way.

Cambridge Nightclimbing

In full automatic mode, the 2009 Nissan GT-R shifts as if it had been programmed by Ed Begley Jr.

The Arrival of the Fittest

This trip was going to be different.

I for one, have never updated my will before any other trip. And I wasn't alone. Out of the five of us that were going, three updated their wills and/or life insurance policies in the weeks before we left.

Where were we going?

Angola

An epic bike journey through Africa.

Angola, it's not like they said. - ADVrider