Thanks to American Express for sponsoring my writing today about small businesses. This Saturday, November 27 American Express is presenting Small Business Saturday, a way to honor the local merchants who are the backbone of the economy. They’re of…

Inspired by Mister Jalopy’s/MAKE’s Maker’s Bill of Rights and Platform 21′s Repair Manifesto, the folks at iFixit have created this lovely repair manifesto and poster. They’re on a mission to get this thing up in hackerspaces, workshops, bulletin boa…

From the Boing Boing Flickr pool, This is My Name’s anti-consumerist holiday graphic from 2009, which is also apparently available in sticker form.

idolcoupon

Wal-Mart Worker Crushed to Death on Black Friday; Union Responds …
Wal-Mart already se…

Only a few months after the FDA said that “antibacterial” soaps containing Triclosan might be just as effective as regular ol’ soap, a University of Virginia study claims that alcohol-based hand sanitizers don’t really put a ding in…

[Image: A future site for Austin + Mergold's House-In-A-Can].Architects Austin + Mergold have a proposal for how to reuse agricultural silos and other circular structures of the U.S. farm belt: it’s what they call A-House-In-A-Can.Pitched for a farm in…

This summer has been full of travel, with everything we needed tucked neatly into a carry on sized suitcase. It’s been a great reminder that when you’re surrounded by people you love and beautiful places, you don’t need that much stuff. Now that we’r…

Born out of a lifelong love for the classic Toyota Land Cruiser, the Icon FJ Series is a modern re-imagining of the legendary off-roader. (Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com)

Georgian London, with green squares everywhere

April recently wrote Bike-Happy, Ped-Friendly Cities Less Obese, but how do they get that way? George Monbiot writes that “We are, to a surprising extent, what the built environment makes us,” quoting a …

Just 9 percent of the people surveyed by Trulia said their ideal home size was over 3,200 square feet. Meanwhile, more than one-third said their ideal size was under 2,000 feet. All it took was the housing bubble to pop for people to realize that they …

Each week J. Kenji Lopez-Alt (KA Cuisine and GoodEater.org) drops by with a tool you might want to stock your kitchen with. Kenji also writes The Food Lab column here on SE. You can follow him as The Food Lab on Facebook or

One of my favorite knives …