The world now has seven billion people. A video from NPR helps us to visualize how that happened so quickly. Yeah, you already know how it happens, but this video uses visual metaphors. Link -via I Am Bored

Scrolling through the list of great science fiction and fantasy reads below will feel like a journey back in time for some of us, a voyage of discovery for others. But novice or veteran, everyone loves a contest. So, let the voting begin!

Here’s how: Everyone gets 10 votes. Select your top 10 favorite titles, and then scroll down to the bottom of the poll and click “Submit.” Feel free to lobby for your favorites in the comments. We’ll be back in about 10 days with the results.

Even deciding on just ten will be difficult! Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Chris Silas Neal)

Especially for National Public Radio fans, these eight Valentine images are full of in-jokes. Link -via Buzzfeed

Talkin’ bout National Public Radio, here’s a tremendously fun video clip produced by its CEO Vivian Schiller, for the All Things D Conference, explaining the secret sauce of National Public Radio’s success: "NPR-ness."

Wait till you see Peter Sagal of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on Chatroulette …

Rockwell used photos, taken by a rotating cast of photographers, to make his illustrations… Rockwell never kept it a secret, but for some reason this little fact has been neglected in recent decades. Although he may not have clicked the shutter, Rockwell directed every facet of every composition.

A newly published book, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera (Little, Brown and Company, 2009), and an exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum provide further insight into this process and offer acknowledgement to the photographers involved in the process.

Those who feel the lack of freehand drawing somehow diminishes Rockwell’s status as an artist should be reminded that painters as famous as Vermeer and Caravaggio are thought to have used the camera obscura to compose their works.

NPR link, via Photo District News, via (ovo).  Photo credit Norman Rockwell Museum.

Years before Sesame Street, Muppet creator Jim Henson made a very similar monster who ate snack foods and computers in television commercials. The basic look and spirit were there, but the character we know today was still a ways off.

Enter puppeteer Frank Oz. For nearly 30 years, Henson and Oz were an extraordinary team. Cheryl Henson, Jim’s daughter and the president of the Jim Henson Foundation, says the two men shared a subversive sense of humor. Their Muppets were regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show.

It was later, on a Muppet game show, that the cookie-fixated creature we know emerged, Oz says. The winning contestant was offered the chance to choose a prize: a vacation, a new house, $10,000 cash, or a cookie. He chose the cookie — and the Cookie Monster was born.

Om nom nom nom … COOKIEEE!!! … Link | The Cookie Monster Interview [embedded YouTube clip]

Liana Maeby [pictured at left] is a blogger who’s fascinated by the complex and memorable names of the correspondents on National Public Radio: Renee Montagne, Korva Coleman, Lakshmi Singh, Sylvia Poggioli, Corey Flintoff.  How cool would it be to have a name like that?

Liana and her boyfriend Eric decided to try it out by devising a formula for creating their own custom-designed NPR names.  The rules are simple; here’s how it works:

"You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name.  Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited."

So Liana is now Liarna Kassel, and Eric is Jeric Bath. 

Lots of folks on Twitter devised funny NPR names for themselves, like Pamelda Fondo, Stefsan Swakopmund and Marmilyn Zug.

NPR’s Monkey See blog caught wind of the game and invited readers to leave their NPR names in the comments. 164 people did, but a lot of them just aren’t that good.

I’m convinced that Neatorama readers can come up with better NPR names.  Wanna try?

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

The day after Christmas a number of years ago, I was driving down a country road in Texas. And it was a bitter cold, cold morning. And walking ahead of me on the gravel road was a little bare-footed boy with non-descript ragged overalls and a makeshift sleeved sweater tied around his little ears. I stopped and picked him up. Looked like he was about 12 years old and his little feet were blue with the cold. He was carrying an orange.

Read the rest at NPR. Link (via Metafilter)