This week's coming to an early end around the GOOD offices. Here are a few quick things to note before we head out:

-Sean Hannity sez: "America is the Greatest Best Country God Has Ever Given Man on the Face of This Earth." No joke; he really said that.

-The above value proposition notwithstanding, your right to privacy online is unraveling. The BBC reports that "Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube." The EFF is not happy.

And some highlights from the GOOD blog:

-Fox News turns NYT reporters into gargoyles with Photoshop. No credibility left to lose.

-A Parsons graduate launches her high-end fashion line in war-torn Sierra Leone.

-These cartoons lampooning business jargon crack us up.

-We saw new images of the High Line park-to-be in New York.

-Efforts by a right-wing news site to replace the word "gay" with "homosexual" backfire to hilarious effect.

-Is Google deliberately disrupting anti-Obama blogs?

-Tomorrow celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Here are some other things declared on the 4th of July.

As surveillance achieves new acmes in invisibility and intelligence, George Orwell’s insights in Nineteen Eighty-Four continue to grow in I-told-you-so prescience (sorry Big Brother). Penguin has decided to reissue the author’s dystopian classic, along with his other down-with-totalitarianism text, Animal Farm. The covers are designed by propaganda appropriator-artist Shepard Fairey, who imbues them with a striking, Soviet-style austerity.

But lest we forget, tomorrow brings BBQs, firecrackers, and all sorts of red-white-and-blue revelry as we celebrate 232 years of independence. The Fourth has always been a symbolic date, and, throughout our everybody-for-themselves history, has always been a opportune day for declarations. Here are a few of the best:

1845: Henry David Thoreau decides to be society-free and self-reliant and begins his two-year experiment at mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cabin near Walden Pond. During this period, he writes the transcendentalist classic Walden.

1855: Walt Whitman publishes twelve of his poems, calling the collection Leaves of Grass. It begins with the famous lines (and a lovely life philosophy):

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

1881: “The pride of the swift, growing south," the Tuskegee Institute opens, with Booker T. Washington as its first principal.

1939: Retiring because of the deadly disease that would bear his name, Lou Gehrig gives his beautiful, “luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech to the fans at Yankee Stadium.

1996: In an attempt to band the world together against a single cause, the film Independence Day invents man-annihilating aliens. Ironically, the world bands together in its intense dislike for the movie.

Remember in Being John Malkovich, when Malkovich goes through his own portal?

"Malkovich. Malkovich malkovich MALKOVICH. Malcovich."

This is what happens when Obama goes through his own portal. A visit to the city of Obama, Japan.

Thanks Zach!

In The Magnetic Fields' song "A Pretty Girl," Stephin Merritt sings, "I'm so in love with you girl, it's like I'm on the moon / I can't really breathe but i feel lighter..."

If that sounds like a pretty accurate description to you, you may want to start saving up. For 2.3 million dollars, a Japanese firm will blast you and your soul mate 62 miles into space to exchange your wedding vows in a zero-gravity environment.

Cold feet? No kidding—it's -455 degrees out.

Photo via the New York Times

Not new news—just an enthusiastic recommendation of a long-time favorite that will maybe help you pass time at work as the week pulls to a close: photos by Edward Burtynsky.

Burtynsky makes amazing pictures of big things, strange, scientific and beautiful. His documentary works address scale and excess. Artfully depicting vast human impact in series on mines, quarries, shipbreaking, and industry in China, these are images worth looking at for all kinds of reasons.

Photo: Burtynsky's "Oil Fields No. 1"

We're not sure if you've heard, but NBA players make more money than most people. A lot more. In response to news about point guard Baron Davis' possible move to Los Angeles and 5-year $65 million contract, King Kaufman waxes incremental over that sum. An excerpt:

"Davis' reported average salary for the Clippers over the next five years will be $3,302.85 per minute, even the ones he spends on the bench, or on the sideline. And that's about $55 a second. Two-tenths of a second left in the quarter? The Clippers won't be able to catch and shoot. They can only score on a tip-in. And in the time it takes the ball to travel the few inches from a player's fingertips to the basket, Baron Davis will make 11 bucks."

That's some serious scrilla; however, as Rick Reilly reminds us, 60% of NBA players go broke within five years of retirement. Come again? Now, don't get us wrong. We don't wish financial ill will on anyone—especially someone with the potential to resuscitate the ailing Clips. But these numbers (and the holes they burn in those pricey pockets) are so baffling that we feel like our heads might explode. We're just sayin.

...Jezebel writer Megan Carpentier had a far better summer job than any of us. Her cautionary tale of unintentional harassment is, well, cautionarily telling. Also, a lot more men say they've been subject to workplace sexual harassment by women than you might expect. What would Sam Zell say?

UPDATE (and answer to above question): He'd say it's time to fire as many people as possible. We really should have seen that coming.

We all make mistakes. From time to time, even the most venerable people and institutions will, in a moment of weakness, say or do something regrettable. Even Fox News, the fair and balanced beacon of truth, experiences the occasional ethical hiccup. For example, take a look at the following Media Matters video clip. There's a summary of Fox's tiny indiscretion below it.



It's bizarrely coincidental that Fox's accidental snafu happened during a segment on "attack journalism." That's so...something.

Thanks, Nate.

Our career ambitions circa age six: astronaut, spy, or, barring those, Allosaurus. We had more or less retired these plans, but watching this light (ha!) video made by the inhabitants of the International Space Station, "astronaut" is back in a big way.



Via VSL.

Charming British journalist and long-time writer for Vanity Fair Christopher Hitchens undergoes one of the CIA's most fave "interrogation practices"— waterboarding—(and there's a video) to help answer the question, "is it torture?" Most of us are no longer grappling with this, but there are some people at the top who still need convincing.

Naively, we initially scoffed at the mere matter of seconds he held his own, but apparently waterboarding is just really efficiently persuasive. A group in New York City is recruiting fifty lawyers for an undertaking similar to Hitchens's: waterboarding for five seconds. See below if you practice law and have an adventurous/self-sacrificing side.

LAWYERS WANTED FOR NYC WATERBOARDING EVENT: Step Up And Ride the Waterboard of Terror
An Experimental Art Event Presented by Steve Powers and Creative Time

WANTED—Fifty courageous lawyers willing to be waterboarded for five seconds. Volunteers will be strapped to a wooden board and have water poured over their face to simulate drowning. You will be required to sign a release and attend one short training session prior to the event.

IS IT SAFE? Yes. The waterboarding will be carefully supervised and last for a maximum of five seconds. Trained medical personnel will be on hand. Volunteers will be able to stop the waterboarding at any time by ringing a bell.

WHY? We're interested in whether waterboarding is torture. Now that this question has been handed over to the courts, who better to answer it than trained legal professionals?

Write to ridethewaterboard@gmail.com for more info. (Thanks Morgan)

Photo via vanityfair.com

In case you missed it, two separate instances of amazing large-cat-hug situations.

There was a story about Bengali tigers in the New Yorker back in April that we're still not over. The best part goes: A man was traveling through the forest, when he turned to see a tiger lunging at him, roaring. So he hugged it. He said, "I knew I was going to die. So I embraced the tiger. He was soft. The tiger was soft. Like a sponge." Consequently, the tiger freed him and dragged one of his companions into the forest by the throat.

True story. Embrace that which is about to gnaw your face off, and things will turn out alright. Very profound, very applicable.

And on a related, equally life-altering, but way cuter note, here's a video which also involves embracing a large jungle cat, only no one gets mauled, and everyone is laughing and wearing bellbottoms.

A little background: these two (very stylish) Australians were living in London in 1969, and purchased a lion cub at Harrods department store, back in the days when you could still purchase lion cubs in department stores. When the lion (named Christian) outgrew their flat, they sadly resigned to sending him to Africa to live in the wild. Apparently, they were specifically told he would not remember them. NSFW because you might start crying tears of joy in your cubicle and everyone will see you and think you are a sap.

Thanks Denise for both cat hugs.

In 2003, Ben Gibbard's electronic indie pop project The Postal Service once sang about how people would misinterpret global warming as a reward for good behavior -- "Now we can swim any day in November." Half a decade later, any smidgen of that optimistic perspective deserts us as abnormally high temperatures mess all kinds of things up, including certain species' ability to reproduce.

The latest projected casualty: the tuatara, an ancient species of three-eyed lizard-like reptile in New Zealand. The tuataras still around today descended from the sphenodontian family, which first appeared 225 million years ago and included other awesome reptiles like the Diphydontosaurus and the Toxolophosaurus. Projected temperature increases suggest that by 2085, it will be too warm for females--which can only hatch in cooler temperatures--to be born.

This is sad, because tuataras are among our all-time favorite reptiles right now. They have a mysterious third eye on top of their heads, they can hold their breath for an hour, and they're both cold-blooded and nocturnal, a rare but bad-ass combination. They do have a life span of about a century, so we won't really be feeling the tragic loss of the tuatara for a while. But, we're stubbornly dwelling on how unfair it all is.

More immediately, temperature can affect reproduction for all kinds of animals, like pipefish and moths, and in Chesapeake Bay, it has already resulted in a sexually confused crustaceans situation. If you're not up for nine generations worth of tuatara panic, there are, already in swing, a number of temperature-induced reproductive oddities to freak out about.

By 2015, Mercedes' entire line of cars will run on alternative fuels. Can you imagine what would happen if the companies that make affordable cars follow suit? Until then, you can always do it yourself.

Via Inhabitat.

While acknowledging the discrepancy between the populism of the movie-going public and the elitism of most movie-reviewing critics, Erik Lundegaard employs some creative math and clever charts to convey that (surprise, surprise) well-reviewed films do better at the box office.

According to a study in a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, psilocybin (the drug in hallucinogenic mushrooms that makes all the wackiness happen) is good for you. That is to say, the hallucinations it induces can have long-term psychological benefits. It also might be helpful for treating alcohol and drug addiction.

Now, it's still considered dangerous and categorized as an illegal drug, and the findings aren't all that conclusive. The only thing we know for sure is that mushrooms are very helpful for concocting stories about the bricks of the building you're beholding under a melting midnight campus sky wherein the bricks all work in a brick factory and get paid in bricks and, on Christmas, if they've been especially good bricks this year, are allowed some extra salt when they dine on their Christmas brick.

Link. Image via Flickr.

Here at GOOD HQ, we have oft marveled that Evolution of Dance, a truly insipid video of a man doing various popular dances of the 20th century, is the most watched video on YouTube. For a long time, it seemed that nothing could unseat it. However, now the video of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" is within less than a million views. If we all put our hearts together, we can change history and make a new video reign supreme on YouTube. You can be a part of that. Please. Watch. Added bonus: The song and video are awesome. Don't hate.

Adama Kargbo was born and raised in Sierra Leone, but moved to New York when she was 12. After graduating from the famous fashion design program at Parsons, she returned to her home country, ravaged by a desperate and brutal civil war, to launch her high-end line.

Sierra Leone isn't the first place you'd think of finding couture, but the country is changing. According to filmmaker Eric Becker, who helped with her first shoot, "It is a world of rural, mud hut villages where cell phone ring tones mix with the sound of baying goats, where chiefs have business cards and gmail accounts. ...where the bottom—still brutally victimized by the trappings of poverty—has begun to connect to a global world at a rapid pace." In this context, Adama's case of reverse brain-drain makes more sense. And while fashion might not heal the wounds of civil war, it may help Sierra Leone realize a more beautiful future.


Adama's line, called Aschobi, is based in Freetown.


Adama had only one model for her shoot. She found the other two girls at a local ex-pat bar.


Adama's clothes give traditional African style an urban twist.


Photos by Henry Jacobson

Generally the combination of booze and driving is discouraged, but not in the U.K.'s royal family. Prince Charles has
converted his vintage Aston Martin DB6 to run entirely on bioethanol fuel distilled from surplus British wine.

Use of wine-based ethanol is actually not such a bad idea, because while corn crops--America's primary biofuel source--suffer across the midwest due to difficult weather this growing season, British vineyards seem to thrive in the world's new slightly warmer climate.

While it won't reduce the prince's carbon footprint too dramatically as he only drives the car 200 to 300 miles a year, the transition to green is a nice gesture. Conversion of his private jets and helicopters to run on gourmet food items is still underway.

Via the Huffington Post

If you thought good old-fashioned gangster action, hit men, people seeking bloody retribution for wrongfully-offed comrades, and the use of phrases like "rubbed out" were all just the dramatic devices of classic cinema anymore, you were wrong. These things still happen in New York City. Sometimes to people we've heard of.

Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who famously bit part of a guy's ear off in 1997, has been accused of paying $50,000 to have two men killed, possibly connected to the murder of his friend and bodyguard, whose nickname, by the way, was "Homicide."

Tyson denies any involvement at all. Deliberations at the federal trial begin this week.

Fun fact: growing up as a delinquent in Brooklyn, Mike Tyson had been arrested 38 times by the time he was 13. Another fun fact: Did we already mention he bit part of a guy's ear off back in 1997?

Image: Still from Godfather, Paramount Pictures

A semi-truck trailer transporting 12 million bees overturned yesterday on the Trans-Canada highway. Oops.

The honey bees had been used to pollinate a crop of blueberries and were on their way home. We are torn over what's more fascinating here--the practice of commercial entomophily, or the mayhem and terror that could ensue when twelve million bees are turned loose en masse on the unsuspecting people of Canada.

Thankfully, rain kept the bees huddled around and in the truck, where bee specialists presumably worked to gather them and return them safely to their little bee community until their next pollination gig. No major injuries were sustained, though a Canadian journalist who, brilliantly, got too close to the truck was stung several times. (Shocking.)

The crux of this story is the quote from Richard Duplain, vice president of the New Brunswick Beekeepers Association, which also sounds like an ancient western proverb: "You certainly don't want to go walking through a field of disoriented, agitated and wet honey bees." Advice for the Canadian journalist, and advice for life.

Image: Poster for The Savage Bees, made-for-tv horror movie, 1976