I'm not sure when this launched (recently?) but the White House has a portion of their site entitled We The People that enables anyone over the age of 13 to create a petition, gather signatures and rally for their cause. If they are able to gather 25,000 signatures in 30 days they will get an official response from the White House. Regardless of your political leanings you gotta admit that's a pretty great way to communicate with the untouchable powers that be in DC. There's a video explaining it all as well.

Petitions such as Dissolve the Electoral College or End Corporate Personhood are absolutely worthy of a conversation and this seems like a good place to start. Other items like Formally Acknowledge an Extraterrestrial Presence Engaging the Human Race are just too awesome not to sign!

HT Chad

While I haven't actually used it yet, this Waze app looks pretty interesting. Using crowdsourced information it helps to inform a driver about the best potential routes for travel. It appears to be a robust GPS coupled with traffic reports from people actually experiencing the traffic. Watch this intro to get an idea of how it all goes down.

The interface is nice, the branding is cute and the information seems like it could be priceless for the busy commuter. The downside is that in order for it to work you need to be actively using your phone while in your car - a behavior that often causes more accidents. Maybe there's some voice control support I'm not aware of. Hope so.

Overall, it looks good and I'll be trying it out next time I have to drive somewhere during rush hour.. just to see how informed it is.

via Daniel.

This Twitter logo was drawn entirely with CSS3. There also happens to be a load of examples of other logos - Atari, BP, Windows, etc - all harnessing various CSS techniques to draw very faithful recreation of these familiar insignias. The practicality behind such a thing is questionable but it's an impressive proof of concept.

Yesterday marked the official launch of the Nest Thermostat - a programmable `learning` device that manages energy efficiency and comfort. I can't say I ever expected to be writing about a new fangled thermostat but after watching the Introduction Video, browsing the absolutely gorgeous site, discovering that it was started by people like Tony Fadell (who helped kickstart the iPod and iPhone) and designed by people like Mike Matas I knew that this was something different. Even their environmental responsibility writeup is not something you see very often.

Long story short, the device is worth investigating and the company is absolutely one to keep an eye on.

News Reporting is Dangerous is a playlist from Eddie Codel compiling the best of the best of news reporting gone wrong. There are some classics in there and a whole lot that I'd never seen. It's basically the best way to waste time for you today. Watch it (and, obviously, be aware of NSFW language).

Absolutely loving this piece of illustration from Kimberley Salt depicting Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. She took home first prize in this Nowness contest and will receive a copy of Murakami's latest, 1Q84, his entire catalog of previous works and a commission from the site to showcase more goods. Looking forward to the book and to the showcase.

The title pretty much sums it all up - Illustrations of Songbirds Wearing Military Uniforms. Courtesy of Sato and Lee.

This article on the temporary Northern Lights migration to parts of the country as far south as Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, etc. is a quick one with a handful of beautiful photos of the event occurring in different states. The images are great but keep your eye out for a bit of the writeup that's particularly ridiculous sounding.. if you find it you'll be delighted.

Even if the insightful writeup on this explanation of how Apple's iPhone 4S page works doesn't surprise you in any way you are bound to be entertained by the ongoing animation. It's a mesmerizing loop.

No better way to legitimize a platform than by having the President use it, right? Well, this is great news for Tumblr - he's now Tumblogging. Granted, it's not him that's writing up the blog posts but it's a phenomenal way to reach a community of people very quickly. Now lets see, like most new bloggers, he starts to neglect it after a few weeks.

It's hard to believe that this TreeHotel is actually a legitimate place to stay. The six unique rooms are scattered throughout the forest and embrace a myriad of rather intense designs - The UFO, The Bird's Nest and The Mirrorcube being prime examples of the greatness. If you've got a bucket list of vacations to potentially take I'd say this is probably a worthwhile inclusion.

via Radiolab / ckck

Thanks to Jamie for making me aware of this IMDB list of Most Popular Documentaries Released in 2011. Consider it a fairly well vetted "Add to Queue" list of films to see. They may not all be on your choice of streaming film but it's always good to have a Go To list of things to watch - rather than aimlessly browsing.

• Scrollbar Color Change in Webkit - I've really no idea why you'd want to do this but you can change the scrollbar coloring in webkit browsers if you feel so inclined. I'm not saying you should but in the off chance that you must, now you can.
• LionBars - a jQuery plugin that emulates the new scrollbar look from OSX Lion into any website. Absolutely a handy tool to have in your repository of goods.

If you need a palette cleanser after that last post, I understand. Just point your browser to this video of Child Star Psychologist Kiernan Shipka - aka Sally Draper from Mad Men. Kiernan sits down with a few child actors to get inside their problems and it's quality entertainment. I can't decide which segment is my favorite so I deem them all hilarious. Good work Funny or Die!

You may remember my posting about a Nashville band called Birdcloud awhile back. Their album is a near impossible to describe mixture of fun, catchy, stupid and intentionally offensive but without malice. They have a slew of videos from each song on the record but their latest takes the cake.

A word of warning - this song contains explicit lyrics. In fact, it's entirely possible that it may actually offend some readers (though I don't see why - it is hysterical). Don't watch this one with the family or if you find non-subtle sexual innuendo against your sensibilities.

The video, directed by Josh and Andy Duensing, contains the same perfect mixture of catchy, fun, stupid and offensive that it should. Watch It and get the record.

You're likely familiar with the work of Mike Mitchell even if you don't realize it. He is the man behind the I'm With CoCo image that sprung up during the Conan O'Brien NBC debacle. His work is filled with pop-culture references and usually takes a bit of a macabre, twisted or just ridiculous take on its subjects. Be sure to browse into the archives - you don't want to miss the gems in the 2009 work.

The Wall Street Journal has a curious article on The Future of Punctuation - basically it explores ideas like the Interrobang or a new implementation of the Pilcrow. In the spirit of this idea:

Such marks are symptoms of an increasing tendency to punctuate for rhetorical rather than grammatical effect. Instead of presenting syntactical and logical relationships, punctuation reproduces the patterns of speech.

I can honestly see a lot of these catching on... especially assuming that they don't require a ton of work to actually type.

• Responsive Elements that retain their aspect ratio - quick little primer on making sure your responsive designs don't get all distorted as you size them down. Nothing mindblowing but some very quality, solid information.
• Animate.css - a batch of pre-made plug-n-play CSS animations. The demos are nice and the crazier ones near the bottom are kind of unbelievable that they're all CSS.

Another week, another playlist. Again, for those of you reading this via Google Reader - go here until VHX gets whitelisted. For the rest of you, just enjoy!

• Pumpkin Sexydance - this should be saved for next weeks Halloween playlist but it's just too damn good. The best part is, obviously, the dance but the fact that there are a myriad of YouTube variations using different songs makes it an endless vortex of entertainment. Here's the original but the Daft Punk works so much better...
• LSD Fail - this guy looks like an actual zombie, amirite?
• Sneaked vs Snuck - Jennifer Garner attempts to correct Conan and he fires back.. perfectly. Yea, this is from 2009 but it's new to me so it's still amusing.
• Grandma Mushmouth - I am sure this lady is sweet as can be but that completely insane voice is too ridiculous not to enjoy. Thank goodness for the translation in the comments.
• Top 20 5 Second Films - there are a few rather work inappropriate snippets in here but they're only five seconds, so it's worth the risk. Great compilation.
• Nuclear Bomb Slow-Motion Simulation - the animation is nuts but be sure to also check out the orthographic and perspective slices.

BONUS

• It's The 90's! - never forget when it was the 90s.. this video won't let you.
• Beyonce Lets a Fan Sing - not quite the success story you're expecting.
• Karate Dog Trailer - I dare you to watch this over the weekend.

Have a great weekend!

There are plenty of great shots from The Gentleman Amateur but I'm a complete sucker for a well done double exposure.