The Digest. 09.24.08.

A new Tijuana subdivision, from a photo series called Tijuana Nice, by Alonso Delgadillo. (Image courtesy of el norteño.)

• READ THIS: Our country’s financial mess explained. And guess what? McCain had a (lack of regulatory) hand in it (via bloggy). Plus: The Daily Show explains the explainers.
• Speaking of which, the weak economy is hitting China’s art-fakes market hard.
• Sounds like the Dia Foundation needs to do a little homework on managing land art if they’re gonna be overseeing Spiral Jetty. More here.
• The Museum of Arts and Design, in Edward Durell Stone’s old lollipop building, is open for business in NYC.
• Have a painting? Leave a painting. Need a painting? Take a painting.
• Artist Tara Donovan is a MacArthur genius grant recipient. (Via CultureGrrl.)
• Half of Gagosian’s global sales are to people living in former Soviet republics.
• The Krens-Master Cycle is (Mostly) Over: Richard Armstrong, of the Carnegie, to take over the Gugg. On the story: The Art Newspaper, Bloomberg and the New York Times. In the latter, Armstrong is described as “tall and strapping.”
• Excuse of the Day: It wasn’t attempted murder. It was performance art.
• Shanghai contemporary art fair not as gangbusters as expected. Though Indian art did well.
• Graff of the Day: Raisin, Mishel, Ryngard, Jame, B2M and Oks in France.
• Hilarious vinyl toy video of the day: Rotofugi’s The Collector.
• A video interview with Martha Cooper. (Via Ekosystem.)
• Skateboarding in Kabul. (Via Fecal Face.)
• U.S. Navy to demolish Building 521 in Chicago, a Modernist structure designed by Skidmore, Owings, Merill architects William Priestly and Bruce Graham (of Sears Tower fame) and completed in 1954. Here is the National Trust’s for Historic Preservation’s evaluation of the building. 
• Nicolai Ourosoff on Renzo Piano’s California Academy of Sciences: “It is a comforting reminder of the civilizing function of great art in a barbaric age.” See the photo essay. Plus, lots of photos and a report at Dwell. Related: a story on SWA Group, the landscape design firm responsible for all that rooftop greenery.
• The winners of the White House Redux contest (a.k.a. redesign the White House) have been announced. In first place, a truly inscrutable project whose accompanying architecturespeak has me cross-eyed. (Sample: “In these fantasies and love stories, these relationships and lost histories from Kabul, Little Rock, Tacoma and Peshawar demonstrate and architecture of wit, humanity and originality not previously achieved since writers imagined an architecture of iDeath.” Um, right.
• Your moment of Broke Trek.