The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones (above).

Robert Henke, aka Monolake shares his custom Max for Live devices.

How to dispose of old electronics in a responsible way.

Top 7 Best Green iPhone Apps.

Ira Glass on Storytelling (YouTube): part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Design and Meaning: an interview with Nathan Shedroff.

Self-Destructing Bacteria Could Be the Key to Better Biofuels.

Incredible ‘Garbage City’ Rises Outside of Cairo.

How to protect your ideas in the digital age: Don’t. Build a reputation as someone who creates great ideas, sometimes on demand. Or as someone who can manipulate or build on your ideas better than a copycat can.

The practice of hanging out is consistently demonized by educationally-minded folks as a waste of time. Yet, it is in that space where youth learn to navigate social situations, make sense of impression management, and develop the social skills necessary to be productive adults.

The artwork of Chiharu Shiota (above).

The other extreme: low-alcohol beers.

Deep below New York City’s bustling streets lies a dangerous world inhabited by “sandhogs.”

The Rise and Fall of Design Within Reach.

How Robber Barons hijacked the “Victorian Internet”

Robert Henke talks with Rashad Becker about audio mastering.

Apple’s Mistake: An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work.

Processing T-shirts 2009/2010.

ABC Oddity iPhone app for toddlers.

What design researchers can learn from hostage negotiators.

Christian Swinehart’s visualizations of Choose Your Own Adventure stories.

Reinventing the MBA: 4 reasons to mix business with design thinking.

Report: 237 millionaires in Congress.

Nutrition-style labels reveal companies’ social responsibility.

Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection.

The Botany of Desire: based on the book by Michael Pollan.

The Roomba Art Pool on Flickr (above).

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party (video).

Why do we often care more about imaginary characters than real people? A new book suggests that fiction is crucial to our survival as a species.

Everything Tracy Jordan Said in Season 3 of 30 Rock.

Danger Mouse to release blank CD after record label EMI reportedly cancelled his new album.

The coming wave of cellphone novels, Twitter fiction, sudden fiction, and flash fiction.

How using gestures can make you smarter.

The duplicability of recordings has had another unexpected effect. The pressure is on to develop content that isn’t easily copyable—so now everything other than the recorded music is becoming the valuable part of what artists sell.

Yudo announces 8Bitone Retro 8-bit Synthesizer + Sequencer for iPhone/iPod Touch.

Steel Factory Reinvents Itself, Now Grows Lettuce (video). Something about green, going green, they’ve really gone green, someone—everything’s gone green… no.

Mark Bittman On Why Food Matters.

Ableton Live 8 and Studio 8 are finally out, so defrost your plastic! Or, you can download the demo (sans save and export, of course) to get your fix like the rest of us po’ folk.

Facebook, YouTube at Work Make Better Employees, says a recent study.

The next green fuel source: algae.

DIY camera kit (above) for the crafty geek in all of us.

Herman Miller Replaces the Sample Catalogue With a Smart Web Site; someday we’ll be able to afford such brilliance.

He Charted the Moon Before Galileo, But You’ve Probably Never Heard of Him.

Jenny Holzer’s Protect Protect Show.

The Unreleased Recordings by Hank Williams.

Wrong Tomorrow is a database of provable predictions.

Novation announces SL Mk II; sweetness.

Fantastic design work followed by fantastic increases in newspaper circulation, by Polish newspaper designer Jacek Utko. His advice: “Give power to designers.” Right on!

Get Satisfaction as a Protection Racket.

A 10-month investigation by a team of researchers at the University of Toronto uncovered a broad Chinese espionage scheme that reached into foreign embassies, news services and even the office of the Dalai Lama.

The Top 5 Greenest Laptops.