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Trains evoke all kinds of nostalgic memories of trips through Europe and Alfred Hitchcock movies, but as America supposedly suits up for the era of high-speed rail (great idea, but you’ll forgive us for doubting that it will ever actually happen), it’s probably about time we got our train knowledge in order.
mental_floss has the perfect [...]

Admittedly, recession stories are one of the more tiresome news trends these days. Sadly, strangely, the current financial crisis and global tidal wave of foreclosures also makes for some hauntingly beautiful and eloquent photography opportunities. Boston.com rounded up a terrific collection of 35 Sad Photographs of the Recession, our favorite of which is David McNew’s [...]

Okay, so there are probably way more than 10,000 people featured on this encyclopedic Google map created by Prop 8 Maps to give the names, addresses, activities and contributions of everyone in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City who helped pass California’s ban on same-sex marriage last year.
As with many web phenomena, we’re [...]

A few years back (we can’t say how many) we took an American Politics 101 class during our freshman year of college and learned all about the American tradition of Gerrymandering. Aside from the tactical partisan redistricting practice’s funny name, we didn’t think a whole lot of it, and the knowledge quickly sank into an [...]