the habit of wonder

I took some test/ Says I’m an Existentialist

Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense.

What humans could accomplish.

Letting go is hard.

On the web site of Target Corp.—the former Dayton-Hudson Corp.—you can still find a Flash presentation promoting Marshall Field’s flagship on Chicago’s State Street. (One year and two owners ago, Field’s was owned by Target Corp.)

Ice cream for dogs is now the most profitable product line for America’s biggest ice cream company.

Q. When my society becomes decadent, how will I know?

A. People will keep saying things like: “We did some studies and found that all dogs love peanut butter;” and, furthermore, will regard such utterances as perfectly normal.

Advances in tissue engineering could lead to meat grown in a lab, not raised on a farm, the BBC reports.

“With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply,” said Jason Matheny of the University of Maryland. “And you could do it in a way that’s better for the environment and human […]

Bathtub reading, favored affectation of Zooey Glass, finally gets recognition as a for-profit venture. A small New York publisher has patented the waterproof book.

If you’re a tub reader, or if Alice Munro makes you cry, perhaps DuraBook is for you.

If you want thousands to show up for the opening of your new big-box retail emporium, here’s what your ads should say: DON’T shop. DON’T spend.

It worked in Prague.

Related:
Zagnut bars and PBR by the can: It’s the house of misfit groceries

In a play that offers a fresh take on impossible relationships, a young man falls for a shark. It’s Jaws meets Trick in Rhode Island:

Is it love at first bite? Swimming in the Shallows treats its unusual infatuation as your everyday teen crush, all giddy apprehension and nervous fumbling. Clearly, a little man-shark love is […]

A librarian pedaled a mile and a half to her parents’ house, unaware of the bomb planted under her bicycle seat.

It’s the work of a man known as “Italy’s Unabomber,” says The Guardian.

Japan SAQ (Seldom Asked Questions) unravels that country’s everyday mysteries for bemused foreigners:

Q. Last summer I was looking around Tokyo for an apartment with my girlfriend. Outside one of the rental offices there was a placard advertising REALLY nice places for super cheap rent. Then my g.f. warned me that they were `bad […]

“Trivia & Bizarre items” from the online World Carrot Museum:

Carrots produce more distilled spirit than potatoes.

Carrots might unlock the secrets of the universe.

If your first name is Carrot it has made you happiest when you are expressing in some creative, artistic way, and not conforming to strict routine.

Saddam Hussein has been definitively linked to Doritos, and Low Culture calls PepsiCo to account.