Better than Barefoot

I’d never heard of Vivo Barefoot shoes until this Ask Metafilter question. If I had an extra $100 to throw around I might try a pair of these, though one of the answers gives me pause:

I had a pair of Vivo Barefoots (Barefeet?) which I loved. I didn’t find it difficult to walk in them at all. The main problem I had with them was that the upper didn’t seem to be fully waterproof (it’s hard to make a waterproof and breathable upper, as far as I can make out) and so because the sole didn’t raise your foot off the ground, walking in rain, in dewy grass, on damp ground, etc. all got my feet soaking wet. But this may have been tackled with the newer models - they also used to have a zip all the way around, which was the first thing to break, and now they don’t.

I don’t think I could ever wear a pair of the The Vibram Fiverfingers mentioned in many of the answers.

What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?

So what if this has been bookmarked by 1,160 delicious-users and added as a favorite by 1,035 MeFites? It’s new to me.

My addition to this list would be Kenneth T. Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. It can get a little academic at times but I think it would satisfy a layperson interested in the history of the American urban form.

What would you add?

Question: Where to Study Information Visualization or Infographics

Information aesthetics asks its readers for the names of some good infographics-related academic programs.

Recreation at highway speeds

More than 100 years ago, [the] Hudson River made the sport of ice yachting famous. Now, as the river freezes less frequently, a small but dedicated group of enthusiasts sail to keep history alive.

This collection of photographs from the Times’ Nathaniel Brooks also includes some plans for building your own ice yacht, excerpted from an article in the September 1881 issue of Scribners Monthly.

Unlike the folks who reenact Gettsyburg each July, the ice yachting reenactors feel the same emotions—the fear of crashing at highway speeds, for one—as their historical counterparts. It’s easy to replicate the same uniforms and equipment, impossible to simulate the same fear.

What was the last major war involving the United States that still elicits serious reenactment? World War II? Vietnam?

One-hundred and fifty years from now, will middle-aged men gather outside Fallujah in antique humvees? Will War on Terror buffs waterboard one another in suburban basements? (Are they already?) And if they do, will military reenactment have finally found a way to simulate the same fear as felt by historical participants?

What happens when we recreate war at highway speeds?

'Post-speculative melancholia,' saltation & a cemetery in a parking lot

‘Post-speculative melancholia’ [via blackbeltjones]
This post does what everybody circa 1999 thought blog posts would do nothing but: “I felt like X when I walked down the street today and saw Y.” What sets this post apart, of course, is that it describes and names that feeling X we’ve all been having lately when we walk down the street and see Y (let Y=any number of ridiculous iPod accessories). It’s post-speculative melancholia:

in which a sweeping utilitarianism suddenly arises, in which
technologies must do something or else get lost and the drugged
up sense of nothing mattering is followed by a come-down in which the
whole thing seems regrettable.

Through the sandglass: the man who figured out how deserts work
[via rodcorp]
An article about Ralph Bagnold, the man who “documented saltation, the process by which flying sand grains land and kick yet more grains into the air.” In his delicious comments for this bookmark, rodcorp wonders what else works like this? Any suggestions?

Oklahoma’s strip-mall graveyard
[via criticalspatialpractice]
A Native American cemetery in the middle of a parking lot:

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