National Geographic Magazine - WildCam AFRICA

Video feed of an African watering hole. Very cool.

frontline: a class divided | PBS

frontline: a class divided | PBSOne day in 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power thirty years later.
The day in question was the day after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Trademark Blog

The Trademark Blog - links to interesting trademark issues and dsiputes.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Mind-Boggling Stupidity

Mary Hudak, I would ask that you revisit your commitment to sentience and, for that matter, Sparkle Motion.

Lance Mannion: How to be morally superior to a Liberal

Lance Mannion: How to be morally superior to a Liberal. I wish I lived in the safe suburbs.

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Supply Side in a Nutshell

The Daily Show's Rob Cordry on the circle of life

Placeopedia.com - Connecting Wikipedia articles with their locations

Placeopedia.com - Connecting Wikipedia articles with their locations
No commentary necessary.

Some links

• A list of interesting US Supreme Court rulings with a summary of the case.
• Find the Landmark - a game using Google Maps.
• The filthiest version of The Aristocrats that you have ever heard.
• Colorcode - a map of english based on the colour of images found when searching for that word.
• Hey Brad! - printers and guns.
• This guy writes to 100 US Senators and askes them to tell him their favourite joke.

International Talk Like a Pirate day, arrr...

Ahoy, mateys!

It be International Pirate Day, so ye'd best learn t' swear like a seafarin' hearty , translate yer mutterings into Sea-dog-ese, find yer true Buccaneer Name, or jus' get yersef a dandy lookin' 'iPatch'.

What'ere ye do, keep yer scurvy mitts off me grog and get on wi' confoundin' yer friends and loved ones. Or make 'em walk th' plank - yer choice.

Tragic... the gathering

as one commentor said: "My panda was sad until he saw this. Then he ate my neighboor. "

Katrina: The Gathering

(personal favorite: "Serendipitous News Crawl - do 3 damage to target creature " (red card...)

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Beloit College Mindset List: 1918

3. They have never lived in fear of an Indian Insurrection.

The real heroes and sheroes of New Orleans

OK, SocialistWorker Online isn't my primary news source - good reading though: The real heroes and sheroes of New Orleans
Carlo - read it anyway, even if it makes you feel all dirty.

How I failed the Turing test | BlogCadre

fratburger86: oh come on. say something sexy.

jmstriegel: seriously, i think you want to talk to someone else.

fratburger86: i knew it!!!

fratburger86: you are totally a robot!

MoJo Blog: The Other Abu Ghraib

Thank God™ that the poor suffering US corporations will able to make a little money from Iraqi farmers. Wouldn't want to encourage indiginous recovery and self-sufficiency now would we? You don't build client states that way.

Philips unveils e-Reader with rollable display

The Inq reports progress.

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Dreaming A New New Orleans, Version 1

Dreaming A New New Orleans, Version 1. I hope some of these people are consulted before Halliburton is awarded the contract to rebuild the place.

Although that is probably what will happen. They will be consulted. Then Halliburton will rebuild, completely ignoring anything they have to say.

Unfogged

[Edited] A self-identified white guy blogger comments on the looting and the shooting and raises some very salient points - as a gamer I have to agree with him them.

Seriously, stipulate that you have guns and ammo at home, but you're worried supplies will run low, and you know from personal experience watching TV this whole fucking week that you are totally on your own. Are you telling me you'd wait there like a putz? 'Oh the government will come soon.' With your children? You wouldn't go down to crowbar the front off the CVS? You're lying. All these 'shoot-to-kill' warbloggers can kiss my ass. They would be the first ones out there, if they had the guts to go outside. More likely they'd die with cheeto dust on their hands in the basement, having just won convincingly at Risk.

Come the rapture and I claim Place Alexis Nihon - Pharmaprix, IGA, Canadian Tire, Sports Experts and Radio Shack all-in-one. A lot of entrances though. Any better suggestions?
Reached via Making Light

Being Poor

John Scalzi reminds us that not being able to buy whatever we want whenever we want it doesn't make us poor.

New Orleans web coverage: Looting or finding?

Links to the Yahoo! news images. New Orleans web coverage: Looting or finding? Yahoo has apologized for any appearance of racism. They still haven't changed the captions yet though. I'm archiving them for posterity.

For the record

I have no problem with teaching Creationism/ID in public schools. Provided that it is taught in the context of religious studies ( Comparative Themes In Creation Myths would be an interesting class, for example) or in terms of historical thought/philosophy. (The Edgware Road: Protestant vs Catholic Propaganda In The Previous Millenium)

One side can be wrong

Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, and Jerry Coyne have written an article in The Guardian about the "teach both sides" argument for ID.
One side can be wrong. The money quote:

If complex organisms demand an explanation, so does a complex designer. And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea that God (or the Intelligent Designer) is simply immune to the normal demands of scientific explanation. To do so would be to shoot yourself in the foot. You cannot have it both ways. Either ID belongs in the science classroom, in which case it must submit to the discipline required of a scientific hypothesis. Or it does not, in which case get it out of the science classroom and send it back into the church, where it belongs.