As the Yes Men shift the focus of their projects to climate change, we’re seeing some very good and very funny things. This is a (hoax) press release from the Yes Men purporting to be from the US Chamber of Commerce. It’s integrated right into the design of the Chamber’s site, and all the links lead to Chamber pages. The only tip off is that the URL isn’t the Chamber’s. (If you click on the navigation links now there’s a special warning that you came from a hoax page, but the damage was done.) This press release corrects the Chamber’s stand on climate change, the Chamber of Commerce itself was none too happy about this and released their own press release clarifying their stance.

Summarily, the Yes Men rightly made the Chamber look like idiots, and drew attention to their odd, backwards policy on climate change.

I just wrote that I get way too many things to believe from AG, but they’re usually in my email inbox. Today the post office box had yet another good thing from AG, a July 4th New York Times (“liberal” is an inapt adjective). AG met up with Yes Man Jacques Servin (nee Andy Bichlbaum, Ray Thomas, etc.) in Los Angeles for an event promoting the Yes Mens’ new movie The Yes Men Fix The World at the Hammer Museum. AG managed to pick up a couple NYTs and sent one on to me. The best thing that has come in the mail in quite a long time. Thanks bucky.

The London Review of Books is the only subscription I keep up to a paper newspaper or magazine, and Mary-Kay Wilmer, the editor, is one of the reasons why I’m so insistent that it keep coming. Here’s a good Guardian piece on her and her new book, which isn’t (very unfortunately) coming out in the States until April 2010.

[Photo from the Guardian article. Guardian article via AG, who sends me so many wonderful things every day I can't keep up with them]

Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab brings us Million Dollar Blocks, a series of maps of American cities that show the cost of incarcerating residents of single city blocks. Shown above is Brooklyn, here’s New Orleans.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy brings us a series of posters that “use graphic design to explore and explain public policy” in their Making Policy Public project. Their issues so far include one on predatory equity, a guide to street vending in New York (as seen above), a guide to the port system in the United States that helps longshoremen organize, and a guide to social security. They are good looking, and the idea is excellent. I haven’t read the posters (you can’t see the text online), so I don’t know what their politics are, or how well their topics are researched, so keep that in mind.

In a similar vein, John Aloysius Cogan Jr., executive counsel for the Rhode Island Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner, wrote an Op-Ed in the Times on August 19th about making health insurance policies easier for people to understand.

[via Candy Chang]

In this AP photo of Vladimir Putin sitting in a tree adjusting his hat on vacation, he seems to be wearing Salomon water shoes.

More weird photos from his summer holiday here, buy your own Salmon Techamphibians in Russia here.

Jim Lewis for the New York Times on prison design.

[Photo from the accompanying slide show.]

“The wary humor Israelis felt about Kissinger’s style was reflected in an old matchmaking joke that was told about him at the time. Kissinger decides to play matchmaker and informs a poor peasant that he has found the perfect wife for his son. ‘But I never meddle in my son’s affairs,’ says the peasant.
‘Ah, but the girl is the daughter of Lord Rothschild,’ says Kissinger.
‘Well, in that case…’
Then Kissinger goes to Lord Rothschild. ‘I have the perfect husband for your daughter,’ he says.
‘But she’s too young,’ Lord Rothschild protests.
‘Ah, but the boy is a vice president of the World Bank.’
‘Well, in that case…’
Then Kissinger goes to the president of the World Bank, saying, ‘Have I got a vice president for you.’
‘But we don’t need another one.’
‘Ah,’ says Kissinger, ‘but he is the son-in-law of Lord Rothschild.’”

An Israeli joke about Henry Kissinger told during Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” in the wake of the October War. As quoted from Walter Isaacson’s 1992 book Kissinger: A Biography, published by Simon & Schuster (which I recommend).