Back in March, Maher and a friend launched a Facebook group to promote a protest planned for April 6. It became an Internet phenomenon, quickly attracting more than 70,000 members. The April 6 youth movement — amorphous, lacking a clear mission, and yet a bull's-eye to the zeitgeist — blossomed within days into something influential enough to arouse the ire of Egypt's internal security forces. Maher is part of a new generation in the Middle East that, through blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and now Facebook, is using virtual reality to combat corrupt and oppressive governments. Their nascent, tech-fired rebellion has triggered a government backlash and captured the world's attention.

When the Pew Research Center tested the public's political knowledge earlier this year, the best-informed news audiences crossed the ideological spectrum. Nearly half of regular readers of The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Harper's Magazine (48%) answered three political knowledge questions correctly. Regular listeners of NPR (44% three correct), and regular viewers of Hardball (43%) and Hannity & Colmes (42%) also fared well compared with other news audiences.

The survey, conducted April 30-June 1 among 3,612 adults ages 18 and over, found that about half of Americans (53%) knew that the Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives, while 42% could identify the secretary of state (Condoleezza Rice). Fewer than three-in-ten (28%) could name the prime minister of Great Britain (Gordon Brown). Just 18% of the public answered all three questions correctly.

Canada has weathered the global economic crisis with noteworthy grace. Last month, its economy created over 100,000 new jobs, more than in any month in decades. Wages keep growing, and Canada's banking sector is, according to the World Economic Forum, "the soundest in the world." So it shouldn't be surprising that last week, Canadians returned Stephen Harper's Conservatives to power and granted them 19 new seats in Parliament. Harper called the election because he thought he could win it. But the five-week campaign featured wild oscillations—and offered a few glimpses of Canada's fragmented future.

He paints a disturbing picture of 21st century American life, where behavioral tendencies produced by millions of years of scarcity-driven evolution don't fit the social and economic world we've constructed.

Our built-in dopamine-reward system makes instant gratification highly desirable, and the future difficult to balance with the present. This worked fine on the savanna, said Whybrow, but not the suburbs: We gorge on fatty foods and use credit cards to buy luxuries we can't actually afford. And then, overworked, underslept and overdrawn, we find ourselves anxious and depressed.

While visiting Seoul a couple of weeks ago, we caught up with our friend Emil Goh, who told us all about a trend among young South Korean couples and honeymooners known as “Couplelook.”

Essentially, couples match their clothing together. Originally, it was full on matching of outfits, but recently, the trend has evolved into more subtle details, such as matching watches, glasses, or sneakers. The most common manifestation are matching t-shirts. Some high end brands are even offering special Couplelook outfits and there are even a few stores that specialize in the look.

Greenhouse on the outside, energy-efficiency on the inside
Here in Sweden, where the dark drear of winter drives many of us to depression or worse, a clear greenhouse on the outside of your wooden house as insulation promises two months more of growing season on the porch and indoor gardens (fed by the houses' grey water, compost, and black water systems) and keeps your heating bills low. Plus an extra feature dear to Swedes' hearts, Naturhus lets you start using the decks in your house a lot earlier each spring.

JPF Eco Systems is Kiehl’s partnership with Brad Pitt, established to support global environmental initiatives that minimize our impact on the environment through thoughtful design. As a first contribution, 100% of the net profits from the sale of Kiehl’s “Aloe Vera” Biodegradable Liquid Body Cleanser will be used to help fund “Make It Right,” which is an initiative dedicated to the construction of environmentally sustainable, affordable housing for the displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005.

The MTA is currently testing out new digital screens that display ads on the sides of buses running on the M23 route. The screens, which use GPS technology to change according to each neighborhood's demographic, are being installed by New York-based ad company Titan Worldwide; the company's website declares that the 12-foot displays "are bright and unavoidable and will enable advertisers to target mass audiences by time of day, block, zip-code, demography and ethnicity." Yay!

Jobs stated that the company's $4.6 billion in iPhone revenues this quarter place it right behind mobile phone giants Nokia ($12.7 billion for the quarter) and Samsung ($5.9 billion). This puts Apple ahead of Sony Ericsson ($4.2 billion), LG ($3.4 billion), Motorola ($3.2 billion) and RIM ($2.1 billion).

NYT goes tapped. And says that maybe ur bottled water isn't that pure.

"While a lot of bottled water may be as pure as promised in those alluring commercials, the real problem is telling which is which. Public water supplies are regulated by the federal government. Not so for bottled water. The Food and Drug Administration does have some oversight, but bottled water is not very high on their long list of priorities."

Chinese Democracy (the song) streaming. From the most anticipated album of all-time.

P.S. Not a GNR fan, but I'm all about the major waiting time and checking out the results…