The Revitalist

A beautifully illustrated piece from Good Magazine looks at the etymology of world capitals (via Planetizen). It's a nice reminder that our cities are very much connected with their physical and historical surrounding, e.g. the Elephant's Trunk and the City of Wells.

Physics works! The human pendulum demonstration.

Here's another one for the "The Web Is a Wonderful Thing" file: an eccentric physics professor at MIT has become an internet star via iTunes U. His enthusiastic and creative in class demonstrations (see pendulum demo above) are a natural crossover to the online world. So, if you've got a little free time, check out Prof. Lewin's physics lectures and expand your mind.

On a more related note, there are all kinds of lectures available on iTunes U for free, including a lecture series entitled City Visions: Past and Future from MIT's Urban Studies and Planning department. 

So the votes are in, and Springfield, Vermont has won the Simpsons Movie premiere. A total of 14 cities/towns named Springfield submitted videos declaring their Simpsons connections. Viewers voted at USAToday.com (you can watch all the videos), and Springfield's mayor (bald head, white shirt, blue pants) chasing a giant pink donut through town was clearly the fan favorite. Springfield, Mass (video featured Sen. Kennedy sounding awfully like Mayor Quimby) came in fourth in the polls. The winners get to host the US premiere of the movie, complete with yellow carpet, on July 21st.

Snapshot of Boston area, houses for sale on craigslist in the $300k-$500k range.

After falling down the rabbit hole of other people's blogrolls, I stumbled on a very cool new mashup of Google Maps and craigslist housing ads, called HousingMaps.com (via Grow-a-Brain). The site maps houses for sale, for rent, sublets, and rooms for rent on craigslist and maps them onto Google Maps. One cool feature is that when you click on a pin, a popup shows the craigslist ad heading, price and any photos included in the listing; you can then click through to the ad. You can filter the maps by types of listing and price ranges. This site would be super helpful if you're not overly familiar with an area and don't know the streets and neighborhoods mentioned in the ads.

"Every day brings new challenges from cheeky extension plans which would deprive a neighbour of their natural light which the planning officers have to make a decision on, to the illegally-built granny annexe at the end of someone's garden which the planning enforcement officers are going to have demolished.  Nothing evokes more emotion than when the environment in which you live is threatened with change, and the planning office staff appear as heroes or villains in equal measure."

Britain's BBC One has commissioned a documentary series about city planners (via Cyburbia). The series will follow the council planning departments of Barnet and Barking & Dagenham, two boroughs of London. The commenters on Cyburbia seem to think it will be thrilling stuff: "It could rival 'The Office' if its like my workplace."