Connecticut voted on Thursday to ban sales of sodas and other sugary beverages in state elementary, middle and high schools as part of an effort to stem teen obesity. This is good. I’m sure teen obesity in Connecticut will plunge now that the kiddies are only drinking water or milk on pizza and french fries day. (Seriously, though… way to go Connecticut. I’d love to see other states follow suit.)

The Return of The King on Chromasia.

This interlocking loft from Kyu Sung Woo Architects makes such wonderful use of limited vertical space. It’s featured in this month’s Dwell Magazine. I dig my apartment and all… but I’m a loft-kinda-guy.

I’m going to spend the rest of the day pining for Mike Tucker’s portfolio Ludosabato. Great work, illustration goodness, super-slick Flash interface design, and showing it all off in HUGE format.

Do rich artists make bad art? Nice conversation starter.

Anti-software piracy group the Business Software Alliance is offering a $36,000 reward to anyone who informs on U.K. employers who use illegal or unlicensed software.

David Bean’s got some new photography up at The Visual Reserve.

Chinese performance artists the Gao brothers will stage their first British World Hug Day, instructing participants to hug a stranger for 15 minutes. “The brothers said they were inspired to start [it] because of the lack of hugging in their native country.” Aw, tender.

It’s about time Karl Urban and Clancy Brown played Norse conquerers and answered the age old question “who wins? Vikings or American Indians?” Vikings are the new ninjas. You heard it here first.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act basically criminalizes production and dissemination of copyrighted materials. According to CNET News, Congress is proposing measures to beef up the DMCA with new fun things like permitting the FBI to wiretap in investigations of copyright crimes, trade secret theft, and “economic espionage” (sounds so TERRORist!), allowing the copyright holder to impound records from the infringers (i.e. web server logs and all the IP addresses attached to them), and boosting the criminal penalty from five years to ten years.

Just to put it in perspective, if I go outside right now and punch a police officer in the face, I’ll get five years. Aggravated assault? Six years. Digital piracy? Ten years. I’m glad we have our priorities in order; I’d get less jail time for flying to L.A. and beating a teen pop idol to a bloody pulp than I would for illegally downloading his crappy album. Yes, friends, that’s COMPLETELY logical.

Now, on to the semantics about government. Lots of the articles related to the proposed DMCA changes make mention of how “the Bush Administration” is pushing these changes, “the Bush Administration” has created this draft legislation, “the Bush Administration” blah, blah, blah. Now, while I’m certainly not a big fan of our current administration in many ways, I find it fairly humorous that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was unanimously approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Even if the current administration is going crazy with wiretapping and ten year prison terms, they’re only following in the footsteps of governments that have gone before them.

P.S. I’m glad our government and the RIAA are so friendly. Who would look out for the little guy if not?

Hey Shoutwire, digg called, they want their site back.

- M.A. Turner

You remember EmoKid? Sadly, he died.

Flickr set of found photos from the 1964 New York Expo. I dig this one.

Robosaurus – The 40 foot tall, 58,000 pound, fire breathing monster robot. The best part? HUMAN PILOT in the robot’s head.

If you’ve got some spare time, why not enter the contests to redesign the bbc.co.uk homepage or Slashdot? The Slashdot one is unfortunately much more restrictive, but part of me thinks this whole thing is ridiculous… “paying” someone with a nice laptop and some exposure to redesign a massive corporate site that should cost tens of thousands of dollars. Then again, if one doesn’t like the terms, then simply don’t bother, I suppose.

So you’ve decided to be evil: a step-by-step guide to joining the forces of darkness.

John Mayer and Pino Palladino played a small show on April 10th (billed as Bill Buchanan) to try out some material from the upcoming Continuum album. The wonder of BitTorrent will let you download it here. I’ve been listening to this show a lot. Good, good stuff.

Photographer extraordinaire Jeremy Cowart has a book coming out via Relevant Books on 7/18 called Hope in the Dark which chronicles some of his time in Africa this past summer. You can take a sneak peek at the advance copy here. Amazing stuff, and congrats on your first book, Jeremy.

ZACHARY FLAGG. THE single best illustration portfolio I’ve seen in months. There’s a range of influences in his work (I see bits of Bill Plympton and Norman Rockwell, not to mention some contemporary artists) but it’s such an amazing style and presentation.

Congress is giving away the internet and you won’t like who gets it. (Much) more on this later, when I have time to articulate my rage.

David Copperfield was robbed at gunpoint, but when the assailant demanded his money he showed empty pockets, even though he had a cellphone, passport and wallet in them. “Call it reverse pickpocketing,” Copperfield said. This proves a few things. Crooks are stupid, crime doesn’t pay, and David Copperfield is suddenly cool.