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In its latest issue, the American Book Review has taken stock of literature and come up with its Top 40 Bad Books [pdf]. Faced with the unusual Top 40 list (which is not strictly a list and includes, among other things, The Great Gatsby) Alison Flood at the Guardian responds by asking, "What makes a bad book bad?" while at the L.A. Times, Carolyn Kellogg puts forth that the list's only constant is "that the best books that appear on their worst-book list are subject to the most unreasonable critiques."
The introduction to the list [pdf]:
Richard Ford once said that it takes as much effort to produce a bad book...
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"At first, I thought, 'Why should I be on food stamps?'" said Magida, digging into her dinner. "Here I am, this educated person who went to art school, and there are a lot of people who need them more. But then I realized, I need them, too." Salon takes a look at the growing wave of young people utilizing food stamps.
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After being beaten into a brain-damaging coma by five men outside a bar, Mark Hogancamp built a 1/6th scale World War II-era town in his backyard. Mark populated the town he dubbed "Marwencol" with dolls representing his friends and family and created life-like photographs detailing the town's many relationships and dramas. Playing in the town and photographing the action helped Mark to recover his hand-eye coordination and deal with the psychic wounds from the attack.
Through his homemade therapy, Mark was able to begin the long journey back into the "real world", both physically and emotionally - something he continues to struggle with today. 
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David Livingston's [NSFW] Big Dick series [NSFW] features the artist walking around Park Slope [N-even-the-url-is-SFW] and other New York neighborhoods wearing "immense pink genitalia" [YGTI].
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Nusch Éluard was The Surrealists' enigmatic muse. She was a model for Man Ray and Picasso and Lee Miller. In fact All the boys loved Nusch. Perhaps the most ethereal portrait was taken by photographer Dora Maar (previously). Here is tumblir tagged page and Orchid-thief. ( As this is Surrealism and Paris in the early C20th – this FPP is considered NSFW in some environments. )
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Nine months after Michael Jackson's death, his estate has signed one of the biggest recording contracts in history, giving Sony, Mr. Jackson's longtime label, the rights to sell his back catalog and draw on a large vault of unheard recordings.
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Tired of leveling up your mafia and building your farm? Get right to the heart of the matter with Progress Wars!
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Do you have a life-changing medical condition? Patientslikeme (mentioned previously in a 2008 post on mood conditions) is a way for you share information online with other people who have the same condition. Some of the conditions with groups established already are epilepsy, depression, and Multiple Sclerosis. Started by 3 MIT engineers who had personal experiences with ALS (Lou Gherig's disease), the site is funded by partnerships with healthcare providers who have access to anonymised data about the member base. The stated goal in their Openness Policy is to speed up the pace of research and help fix the broken (US) health system. The Privacy Policy has a plain-English description of what happens to...
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The future of Cape Wind will be loudly contested for another few weeks. The latest wrinkle seems to be conflicting claims about the project's impact on sacred Wampanoag rituals and cultural heritage. There might even be a movie about it all. Previously.
If all this gives you a headache and you just miss the vineyard, MV times has webcams. 
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Swimming with Great White sharks Mike Rutzen is an expert on the great white shark and an outspoken champion of shark conservation. His fame spread due to the images of his free diving exploits swimming with the animals without a cage. Mike has spent more time swimming cage-less with great whites than anyone else. He has since travelled the world lecturing on sharks and filming documentaries on them... [More video]
[Original Discover Channel program] Michael Rutzen plunges freely with a great white shark. Rutzen eats, sleeps, breathes and dreams of sharks and is on a one-man crusade to prove that rather than being the crazed man-eater from Jaws they are in fact sociable...
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Everyone knows about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? Pursuant to this authoritative source I learned of Erdos numbers, which are fascinating in their own right, but not nearly as much as Erdos-Bacon numbers. Sir Alec Guiness does surprisingly well with a 3. Bacon does not.
My apologies if everyone else is aware of this wonderful system and I'm the last to catch on. 
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750words.com is a simple, free site which challenges you to write 750 words (~3 pages) every day and tracks your results. The notes from happy patrons are inspiring.
All entries are private by default. Previously featured on Lifehacker. 
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The "Still Face" Paradigm (YT video) designed by Dr. Edward Tronick of Harvard and Childrens Hospital's Child Development Unit, is an experiment which shows us how a 1-year old child will react to a suddenly unresponsive parent. It allows us to understand how a caregiver's interactions and emotional state can influence many aspects of an infant's social and emotional development.
From Zero to Three's Helping Babies From the Bench: Using the Science of Early Childhood Development in Court. They have a Parenting Resources page. 
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A cosmically selective process: you enter a white cab in Chicago. After the usual pleasantries, the driver asks you if you'd like to hear a song...
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Still reeling from losing that hour of sleep Saturday night? Check out this catchy old country tune from old-time banjo-playing sensation Louis Marshall "Grandpa" Jones in which Grandpa rants about Daylight Savings Time.
I found this track while looking for stuff to sample and couldn't resist posting it here.
It's the first track on the playlist, if you can't find it. 
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What happens when you mix Iranian Americans and the U.S. Census?
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The supersonic jump of Felix Baumgartner. previously
Here's Felix jumping from the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio. 
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Top 50 Gay TV Characters. (Full list.)
Some stats and commentary about that list.
Top 50 Lesbian and Bisexual Characters.
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Many people who paint portraits try to make the painting look like a living person. Alexa Meade tries to make the person look like a painting.
Related. 
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"Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times." An Ode to DiskWarrior, SuperDuper, and Dropbox: John Gruber talks about his Mac's hard drive failing and how he was able to recover all of his data using DiskWarrior, a file recovery utility, SuperDuper!, a backup utility that creates a fully bootable backup, and the file syncing system DropBox. While his advice is Mac specific, you can get a similar system going on Windows with Acronis for backups and one of many free file recovery programs such as TestDisk (which also has a Mac version).
If you are not willing...
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An excellent set of illustrations from a French Sherlock Holmes collection. Let us attempt to sleuth out the stories to which these great little pieces of art belong.
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The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rules that once emails have been received by a third party, no Fourth Amendment protection applies to any copies. In Rehburg v. Paulik, among other claims, Charles Rehburg alleged a violation of his constitutional rights by the improper subpoena of his emails from his ISP. Last week, the Eleventh Circuit ruled against him:
Rehberg's voluntary delivery of emails to third parties constituted a
voluntary relinquishment of the right to privacy in that information. Rehberg does
not allege Hodges and Paulk illegally searched his home computer for emails, but
alleges Hodges and Paulk subpoenaed the emails directly from the third-party
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SLYT: Chatroulette piano improvisation
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Last November 23rd, upwards of 64 people (including at least 34 journalists) were killed in the Philippines. It has become known as the Maguindanao Massacre.
Esmael Mangudadatu, the vice mayor of Buluan municipality in the Philippines, wanted to run for Governor. He was warned that, once he filed for candidacy, he would be chopped "into pieces" by rivals for the position; accordingly, Mangudadatu decided it would be safer if his filing were accompanied by journalists.
On the morning of November 23rd 2009, a convoy of six vehicles holding Mangudadatu's relatives, his lawyers, as well as the aforementioned journalists, left Buluan to file the papers. The convoy was stopped along a...
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Fun fact: Cannibals didn't necessarily boil people alive, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't been used as a form of execution. [Via AskMe.]
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