Here's the bike-dancing scene from the Kevin Bacon movie Quicksilver. Really, why did we ever leave the 80s?

"Dunbar's number, which is 150, represents the maximum number of individuals with whom a set of people can maintain a social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person." [via intriguing social network discussion on kottke.org]

Cathrine Kullberg makes these sweet lamps from thin birch wood, and carves them with natural scenery.

"havent slept in 105 hrs. my eyes are burnng horribly an seem to be bloodshot. as far as reaction time goes, its almost nonexistant. i had friend throw something at me, and didnt even bother flinching."

The Yale University Press recently reprinted an expanded version of Josef Albers' classic book Interaction of Color. Unlike many books about color, this one eschews most discussion of optics and wavelengths and the physics of light. It's not about theory and systems. Instead, this one is meant to be a very hands-on book---experiment and observation. Each small chapter is dedicated to a particular color concept, a sort of visual consciousness-raising, if you will. Though it only takes an hour or two to read the book and ponder the examples, actually following through with the projects takes hours and hours of cutting out paper samples and ceaselessly arranging and rearranging.

To offer one tiny quibble, the layout of the text really threw me for a loop. The sentences are arranged in such a way that they don't continue to the true margin on the side of the page, neither making a justified block of text or a comfortable right-ragged edge. I'm not sure of the reasoning for this decision. But it really made the whole thing harder to read.

That aside, it's a fantastic book.

I'm Too Sad to Tell You, a collection of self-portraits of people in tears. [via port2port]

Photos from the Eighth Annual Harbin Ice and Snow World in Harbin, China. The photographer was also there in 2003 and 2005. [via veer]

Etched in Stone is an animated short film, a murder-mystery revolving around typefaces, specifically Trajan. Watch the trailer first.

The Bibliochase is both a chair and a bookshelf. I love it. The armrests look a bit small, but I love it.

David Friedman did these sketches of people enjoying libraries. It was back in the 1960s and 70s, so there's not a computer in sight. Kind of weird, in a way.

The Codex Seraphinianus is an encyclopedia of a fantasy world written in a fictional language. There's a full set of scans from the book on Flickr.

I just picked up The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything today. Pretty dern good so far.

The makers of Splenda have bought off hundreds of negative domain names, like splendakills.com. Is it just their paranoia or should I be concerned? [via torrez]

Due out next month is The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, written by Robert Murphy. I think Murphy is pretty sharp. I liked his market-anarchist speculation/philosophizing in Chaos Theory. And he also wrote a study guide for Murray Rothbard's 1400-page economics treatise Man, Economy, and State. I'm looking forward to this latest one---it could pair nicely with Economics for Real People for a sort of friendly intro to libertarianism. Save the Block and Hoppe for later.

Check out the a full reproduction of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, one of the most famous early printed books. It was probably written by Francesco Colonna in the mid-15th century and beautifully printed by Aldus Manutius in 1499. There's also a copy of the 1592 English translation (Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream), which attempts to preserve the typography of the original. And of course, Project Gutenberg has a plain text English translation.

Hot dogs, filled with cheese, wrapped in bacon, deep fried.[via not martha]

Here's a collection of newspaper masthead clip art from the time of China's Cultural Revolution.

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross has a book coming out this fall, a history of 20th-century music.

Artists, illustrators, designers, and creative folk share the stuff on their desks. I like this voyeuristic peering into other people's minds sort of thing. Reminds me of the Flickr tags whatsinmybag/whatsinyourbag.

Some interesting thoughts on the future of libertarianism from Virginia Postrel:

While the last century’s greatest threats to liberty, prosperity, and peace came from totalitarian nation-states, today’s come from transnational organizations—ranging from imperialistic regulators (the European Union) to violent religious crusaders—and from “failed states” where warring gangs have superseded governments. Focusing on the nation-state as the source of all threats to liberty is anachronistic... Against these ideological and institutional challenges, liberal society will need the practical lessons of libertarian scholarship on decentralized order and knowledge sharing. It will need the cultural libertarianism that knows liberal society is not just familiar but good. And it will need the 18th-century wisdom that lets skepticism happily coexist with civility and reason. Surviving the 21st century with our sanity and civilization intact will require less Nietzsche and more Hume.