I just skimmed the debate from yesterday on George Galloway's suspension from the House. It's quite amusing. Though I find Galloway to be politically distasteful - bordering on being an apologist for Islamic fundamentalism, the most evil of all possible imaginable evils - the idea that Galloway's presence in the House of Commons dishonours an honourable institution is wishful thinking (via Londonist).2007-07-24T15:02:42Z
James Dobson, leader of the nutty Focus on the Family, on Harry Potter: "Magical characters - witches, wizards, ghosts, goblins, werewolves, poltergeists and so on - fill the Harry Potter stories, and given the trend toward witchcraft and New Age ideology in the larger culture, it's difficult to ignore the effects such stories (albeit imaginary) might have on young, impressionable minds."2007-07-24T12:41:47Z
Some interesting Harry Potter posts: Mark E. Masden compares the last few books to the history of the twentieth-century (personally, my favourite of the books is Order of the Phoenix, a brilliant satire of the British education system cunningly disguised as a children's fantasy book) and danah boyd has a great report from Cambridge, MA, on buying the latest book from the Harvard Book Store. Warning: nerd out alert. What else? Allusions, fears for the future of post-Harry reading, fandom (warning: spoiler), disappointment (more spoiler) and, of course, the religious right.2007-07-24T12:12:20Z
Ophelia thinks that CFI is a boy's club. It needs the super-un-magic powers of the Skepchicks, shurely? There's also a big juicy article to read, if you are so inclined.2007-07-24T00:54:58Z
As I'm starting again with my machine, I'm reinstalling everything. Here's a list of all the plugins I had on my previous install. Some of them are quite interesting:
I also write for the Citizendium, an online encyclopedia project. If you know about stuff, you should join in. I occasionally produce audio recordings for The Pod Delusion.
