It seems that tons of ultra-cool maps have been turning up lately. My newest find: World of Wal-Mart, where countries are sized in proportion to what percentage of Wal-Mart’s products they supply.

I discovered one of the most informative maps I’ve ever seen in Donald Hargraves’ blog. In many parts of the US, you can identify population centers by political bent.

The Helvetica haiku contest winners have been announced. I saw this a few weeks ago but couldn’t come up with anything clever enough to submit. I must concur with Kottke’s favorite: “I shot the serif / left him there full of leading / yearning for kerning”.

My evening just got a little brighter. The web geniuses behind John McCain’s MySpace page learn the hard way that they shouldn’t link images from someone else’s server, especially when using that person’s code without crediting them. Hahahaha.

Top 1,000 books owned by libraries from around the world. Shakespeare has, by far, the most on the list (37), while Dickens (16) is second. It’s also worth noting that there are only 576 unique authors on the list (not counting anonymous writers).

“Our use of language changes over the years [and] it makes our old comics look stupid and that’s funny.” Number 10 is clear evidence that the authors of Wonder Woman had entirely too much to say for a comic strip.

A blog devoted to bizarre, inexplicable CNN headlines from their website’s top stories, like “Cop chases cigar” and “Man with sword mistakes porn for rape”. Umm, wow.

I’m not sure if my sewing machine skills are sufficiently up to snuff for this project, but I absolutely have to try my hand at Betz White’s cashmere bunny tutorial before April 8. Love, love, love.

Jacob Nielsen discusses ten of the most prolific usability bloopers from film and television. “In the movies, checking your mail is a matter of picking out the one or two messages that are important to the plot. No information pollution or swamp of spam. No ever-changing client requests in the face of impending deadlines.”

I started with Timothy McSweeney’s “Things I Desperately Wish Women Would Say to Me on First Dates” list and moved onto many others, like “Considered but Discarded Names for the Indie Band Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin” and “Alternate Titles for House of Flying Daggers”.

Heather Bailey’s studio is so fabulous. It’s basically what my studio aspires to be.

Truly top-notch post from Heather in response to recent Britney Spears behavior (and accompanying media hype). “I am surprised that no one has brought this up yet, that no one in the media who is hounding her has taken a step back to consider that she might be on the brink of something disastrous, tragic for both her and her children. I can honestly say that if I had filed for divorce from my husband within the first year of Leta’s life that there is no way I would be alive today.”

Like anyone needed another reason to love Jenna Fischer. Highly recommended for aspiring thespians and stage-phobics alike. (P.S. TV Guide desperately needs a print stylesheet.)

Disturbingly accurate illustration of online dating. As Katie responded, “Don’t we all look good in print?!”

So nerdy that I’m equally embarrassed and impressed: A collection of photos that visually illustrate HTML tags.