Link Banana

I sometimes fancy myself rather spartan, but living with only 100 things — as Dave Bruno is trying for — sounds like a bridge too far.

“Stuff starts to overwhelm you,” says Dave Bruno, 37, an online entrepreneur who looked around his San Diego home one day last summer and realized how much his family’s belongings were weighing him down. Thus began what he calls the 100 Thing Challenge. (Apparently, Bruno is so averse to excess he can’t refer to 100 things in the plural.)

(via kottke)

Worst title ever? In any case, Strange Maps has a striking maps of where federally-owned land in located around the United States. You may be surprised to know that Nevada has the most (84.5%), while Connecticut has the least (0.4%). And no, neither number is a typo.

Portfolio has an interesting piece about the state of property rights in China. Though I think Mr. Kurlantzick may be overreaching in suggesting revolution, how few rights people have is mildly jarring to American sensibilities.

Very few of the evictions in China would qualify as legal in other countries, and even in China the legality is murky. Because the state technically owns all urban land and the average Chinese citizen simply owns the right to live on the land for a time, government officials have massive leverage on homeowners and can force them to leave their property without paying much—if anything—in compensation.

The Columbia Journalism Review has an interesting-but-annoying resource that lets you see what major media organizations own what. The tool’s thorough and useful, but it’s not terribly good at giving you a quick overview of who the big players are. But it interesting to see, for example, that Cox owns lots of local newspapers and local network affiliates, while Comcast owns none.

Here’s a worthy idea for a Sunday:

A Zen master lived a simple life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.

The master returned and caught him. “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.

Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”

I confess I also liked it because it reminded me of something I wrote.