• A New Hope – I’d love to order one of these shirts or posters, but their ordering system seems to be down. Arg. (via Buzzfeed)
• Worlds’ Geekiest Personal Library – Jay Walker (the Priceline guy, not the Good Times guy) has a dy-no-mite personal library. He doesn’t like first editions as much as I do though. (via kottke)

A final reminder: Tomorrow is election day in Canada. If you are not signed up at PairVote, at least take the time to figure out how best to use your vote for the environment:

• Open Letter from Economists to Canada’s Leaders – Over 250 Canadian academic economists have signed this letter demanding action on climate change now and endorsing the idea that a price on carbon is the best way to reduce consumption.
• Scientists Urge Canadians to Vote for the Environment – Over 120 of Canada’s top scientists have signed this letter urging Canadians to vote for a government that will take action on climate change.

• Iceland: The Party at the End of the World – Tracy McVeigh of The Guardian reports that one of the world’s best places to live is a country on the verge of collapse, thanks to inflation, a crumbing currency and the meltdown of financial markets. (via BuzzFeed)
• Sarah Palin’s Doodles – Noam Scheiber of The New Republic makes an absolutely amazing find on his reporting mission to Alaska. (via BuzzFeed)
• Obama’s Good Deed – A wonderful story of how a young Barack Obama came to the rescue of a young Norwegian bride 20 years ago. (via reddit)
• Don’t Blame the Poor – Daniel Koffler of Culture 11 tells us not to believe the pundits who want to blame the financial crisis on irresponsible poor people. (via Economist’s View)

• Biggest. Rickroll. Ever. – Project Blinkenlights takes over Toronto City Hall during Nuit Blanche. (Torontoist)
• Wörgl’s Stamp Scrip – The amazing story of a “complimentary currency” set up in an Austrian town during the Great Depression. (via reddit)
• Forget Moral Hazard – Tim Harford knows that there’s plenty of things to worry about in the current financial crisis, but moral hazard is not one of them. (The Undercover Economist)
• How visas frustrate the labour market – Another great paper on how and why we should liberalize migration. (VoxEU)

• Holy Mackerel – Justin Scheck at the Wall Street Journal explains how pouches of a fish no one wants to eat replaced cigarettes as the basic unit of currency in America’s prisons. Totally fascinating. (via Marginal Revolution)
• The Choice – The editors of The New Yorker make as powerful a case as I’ve read anywhere for Barack Obama.
• Crystal Head Vodka – Dan Aykroyd is totally nuts, but I still kind of want one of these. (via reddit)
• The Money Meltdown – A great primer on the current crisis. (via waxy.org)

• September Madness – Berkshire Hathaway is the new Gonzaga (TechCrunch)
• The Power of the Handshake – Touch gets the brain ready to release oxytocin, making emotional connection easier and more powerful (Neuromarketing)
• The best and worse case scenarios for the economy – Be very afraid. (Marginal Revolution)
• Stories of amazing customer service – Zappos amazes me. (Freakonomics Blog)

• Virtual Boyfriends – Apparently Japanese girls are going crazy over a dating simulation site that lets them have a virtual boyfriend. As someone who spent a good deal of the summer with his 12-year-old Canadian nieces, I guarantee that this would be a big hit in North America as well. (Techcrunch)
• The Superstruct Game – I can’t quite get my head around this yet, but it looks amazingly cool. In 2019, the world is beset by crises including a pandemic respiratory disease outbreak and the collapse of the global food system. Your job is to report from that world and help develop solutions. The game is set on the web and encourages people to set up blogs, make videos, etc. At least I think that’s what this is about. Anyway, the game launches Oct. 6, and I’m interested in finding out more. (via zefrank)
• The Plunge Protection Team – Drake Bennett writes about Wall Street’s most persistent conspiracy theory: a cabal of powerful men who are propping up the market to protect us from finding out just how fucked the economy really is. (Boston Globe Ideas Section)
• The Secret History of Paul Thomas Anderson – John H. Richardson gives a fascinating account of how PTA grew up to be the mad filmmaker he is today. (Esquire)

• Inside the vaccine-and-autism scare – Rahul Parikh reviews Dr. Paul A Offit’s new book, Autism’s False Prophets, which reveals the anti-vaccine movement to be grounded in little more than greed and opportunism. (Salon)
• Laughter in the Dark – Jack Handy explains how to find the humour section of your local bookstore. (NYT Sunday Book Review)
• The Internet, circa 1934 – An amazing video outlining Paul Otlet’s vision for a multi-media superhighway. (via reddit)
• The real difference between liberals and conservatives – A great talk by Jonathan Haidt on the moral values that separate us and bring us together. (TEDBlog)

• What’s happening on Wall St. and why it matters – Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap, provide an intelligent assessment of exactly what has happened in the financial markets recently and what it all means. (Freakonomics Blog)
• Using Facebook to find a job – A website called One Day, One Job recently conducted an experiment by getting university seniors to create ads on Facebook and target them to people who work at the companies where they want to work. (via Freakonomics)
• Why Libertarians should move to Canada – Will Wilkinson reports on the Cato Institute’s 2008 Economic Freedom of the World study noting that Canada has moved ahead of the U.S. on the list. (via Marginal Revolution)
• Behold a 30-ton, 10-foot-high spinning ball of steel and sodium – Clive Thompson reports on a wonderfully insane experiment to simulate the Earth’s magnetic field. Steampunk science. (collision detection)

• Andre the Giant: Greatest Drunkard Ever – Richard English relates all the larger-than-life boozing of the Gentle Giant. (via reddit)
• An Inside Tour of the Large Hadron Collider – Brian Cox, whose slight smarminess sort of makes you want to punch him in the face, gives a great talk at TED. (via reddit)
• In Praise of Passionate Amateurs – Chris Anderson on why passionate amateurs (which has to be a common porn title) beat bored professionals at their jobs. (The Long Tail)