Densely packed urban cores lead to less traffic fatalities, lower rates of foreclosure and are generally safer.

An argument for keeping tech support in house. It allows you to give your users the best possible experience.

Adam Werbach at The Atlantic writes a guide to the basics of using Twitter.

What journalism looks like in North Korea. Fascinating read about how information slips and moves through the margins.

Alan Taylor curates photos from the earthquake in Japan at The Atlantic's In Focus blog.

Office as cafe.

How the United States could find itself on the wrong side of history with Egypt.

The Atlantic surveys a recent study that focuses on how individual states compare in international math score rankings. The results are fairly surprising. It all goes to show that for schools more money brings more problems.

"And what truly worries me about Wikileaks is not the immediate damage that has been done by the release of this sort of information, but the fact that the latest drop has created an enormous, nearly unanimous backlash in the United States.

Most of the libertarians I know are ambivalent, for heaven's sake--if you can't get the libertarians united on actions that increase transparency, you've sure as hell lost the rest of the country. That's a ripe environment for new laws that reduce transparency. Maybe we'll be less effective--but we'll also be less free."

Very cool story about using social media for trying tracking down a missing person.

Pretty interesting syllabus for a communITP course at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Alexis Madrigal lists his takeaways from Nick Denton's explanation of the changes coming to Gawker's format.

"As new cases of autism have exploded in recent years—some form of the condition affects about one in 110 children today—efforts have multiplied to understand and accommodate the condition in childhood. But children with autism will become adults with autism, some 500,000 of them in this decade alone. What then? Meet Donald Gray Triplett, 77, of Forest, Mississippi. He was the first person ever diagnosed with autism. And his long, happy, surprising life may hold some answers."

Wonderful profile of Joe Biden.

From Super Soakers to solar electricity.

Ron Paul's resurgence into the national spotlight as a force behind the tea party.

Bold investigative journalism in Ghana.

"I think the site's gameability, though, generated what our own John Gould calls "microhate." Casual users still visited the site but they were frequently mildly annoyed. Users knew that they were practically excluded from participating actively in the site. Or worse, their contributions were worthless, despite the site's nominal "democratic" voting methods."

"That first hour of the day, Apple and Google employees are banging out emails and getting ready for the day, not sitting in traffic carrying out a set of repetitive, low-level, and occasionally dangerous tasks to maneuver their exoskeletons southward."

The Italian city of Oderzo is pursuing some alarming increases in vigilante protectionism in order to guard against rising immigrant populations.

Nicholas Carr is getting a bit paranoid about Google and web services.

"Confessions of a fake businessman from Beijing."

Some small towns in the American South are offering incentives for Jewish families to move and resettle.

The SEC is working harder to understand and regulate the impacts made upon financial markets by algorithmic trading.

Perhaps we should not be as afraid of terrorist organizations as we are led to believe.

A background on some of what is causing a slowdown in the number of new drugs released to market every year.

New York's new "School of One" presents an interesting model for individualized education and learning.

What happens to the relative openness of the web that we've grown accustomed to in an era when apps come to dominate content and interaction?

A project to build the most environmentally-friendly home, and to open source it upon completion.

"What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences."

Michael Kinsley dissects the Tea Party movement in the United States and calls it out for what it is: a selfishly-motivated movement that is largely politically incoherent.

"Conventional suburbs are overbuilt and out of favor. In cities and suburbs alike, walkable neighborhoods linked by train are the future."

The story of an Afghan refugee that made it into space.

"Haiti’s famed Barbancourt rum factory has survived by taking self-sufficiency to an extreme."

"Do China’s grand designs promise the transformation,at last, of a star-crossed continent? Or merely its exploitation?"

"This is the story of how federal authorities blew the biggest anti-terror investigation of the past decade—and nearly destroyed an innocent man. Here, for the first time, the falsely accused, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, speaks out about his ordeal."

America faces some difficult decisions going forward if it is to lessen the prevalence of obesity.

Clay Shirky discusses his reading habits and sources of news and knowledge.

Feature story from The Atlantic about the Confiker Worm and it's spread through millions of computers.