animalnewyork.com

• We already told you about the elderly Japanese man who makes landscape art using Excel spreadsheet documents. In another example of Microsoft products and their unintended creative uses, a couple of Spanish video artists made a motion-capture erotic art clip using the XBox 360’s Kinect camera.
• It’s boom time for chickpea farmers in Wash. state, as hummus mania takes over as America’s new snack-O-choice. Even more fun, it turns out the market for the bland beige spread’s controlled by a joint venture of Pepsi and an Israeli company. (As for myself, I have declared my body to be a hummus-free zone.)
• Sick of the Sims? Then experience a fictionalized version of working class street-vendor existence in the locally made video game Cart Life.
• A pair of Seattle Times guest opinionators remind you that Wash. state can’t, or at least shouldn’t, rely on importing educated workers instead of educating our own folk.
• Some Seattle neighborhoods are getting wowzers-fast Internet service next year.
• Eric Alterman asserts that the American populace is “much less conservative than the mainstream media believes.”
• Arrogant, elitist, crooked mega-bankers: Ireland’s got ’em too.
• White House economist Alan Krueger spoke at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. His topic: how today’s winner-take-all economy resembles the old superstar-dominated rock scene.
• Meanwhile, author George Packer claims the “Decline and Fall of American Society” began in the pre-Reagan late ’70s. But Packer blames it, in part, on the Reaganist “self-interested elites.”
• We’ve linked previously to Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker frontman David Lowery’s blog calling for “an ethical and sustainable Internet.” Now, Lowery has posted his Pandora songwriting royalties for one of his biggest hits. It got played a million times and he got less than $17.
• New carbon-fiber cables could lead to longer-distance elevators, which in turn could lead to mile-tall skyscrapers.
• Mia Steinberg at XOJane offers advice on “How Not to Be a Dick to Someone With Depression“:

When you tell someone with depression that they should maybe try harder to be happy, it’s essentially like telling a diabetic that they could totally make an adequate amount of insulin if they just concentrated a little harder.

• Finally, some pathos combined with memories of commercialized “fun,” in the form of the world’s abandoned amusement parks.

chris luckhardt via seriouslyforreal.com