"So, just a suggestion: if you want a relationship that lasts, don't rely on god, lawyers, and social pressure to force it to work. Love and reciprocal trust are the only chains that last, and the only ones that make you feel happy while wearing them."

Facebook and Twitter empower all groups—not just the pro-Western groups that we like. To put it in a more formal framework: not all social capital created by the Internet is bound to produce "social goods"; "social bads" are inevitable as well. The political scientist Robert Putnam, who was instrumental in promoting the notion of "social capital" in popular discourse, was not blind to such possibilities. In "Bowling Alone," his most famous book, he explicitly cautioned against the "kumbaya interpretation of social capital," stating that "networks…are generally good for those inside the network, but the external effects of social capital are by no means always positive."

"Uniform policy is increasingly taking an absurdly draconian shift in its approach to the decisions kids make about how they wear their hair, banning any style more interesting than that you would ordinarily find on an Abbey National correspondence clerk clad in a Next business suit. Uniform policies nowadays are uniformly filled with such pitifully and vehemently ignorant statements as "patterns cut into the hair are not acceptable". Not acceptable to whom? Or, "hair colour will be restricted to that found in normal hair". And normal means what, exactly?"

"Now, you might want to show your Wow to family and friends. You might want to show your Wow, even, to other people out there in the world. But the site is neither messaged or built that way. It's an archetypal example of the corporation wanting to do something community-enabled and just not getting it: 'Hey customers! Send your most special memories to our corporate PR department!'"

"It's 2045 and nerds in old-folks homes are wandering around, scratching their heads, and asking plaintively, "But ... but, where's the Singularity?" Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge--who originated the concept of the technological Singularity--doesn't think that will happen, but he explores three alternate scenarios, along with our "best hope for long-term survival"--self-sufficient, off-Earth settlements."

But the whole episode reminded me that, in spite of the Web's seemingly secure and consumer-friendly facade, there is still some Wild West left out there. And 4Chan is the OK Corral. So like a middle-aged Australian businessman going on walkabout, I decided to spend a couple of weeks embedded in this famously depraved, raucously fertile community.

"I wonder if it ever occurred to these people that the reason the music of these interesting and alternative bands is being recruited is because their fans are now the ones calling the shots. In other words, we have arrived! Of course the ad is trying to sell you something and by using a band you like, attempting to gain your confidence by exploiting the band's integrity for a commercial end. So what? You're not a fuckin' moron are ya? You see through that, don't ya?"

"We all know some: parents who can't stand each other, but have made a hard-headed decision to stay together nonetheless. They are exactly the kind of people who would be glued back together by Cameron's policies if they succeeded in their goal. It turns out their children do worse than any other group – including those of divorcees or single mums. If you are raised by arguing parents who stayed together only for you, then you are 33 per cent more likely to become a binge-drinking teen than if you have a single parent, for example."

"Put bluntly, right-leaning talk's audience is dying off. A recent profile of Limbaugh by Vanity Fair claimed that the average age of his listeners is 67 and rising. Fox's average viewer is said to be in their seventh decade. In a changing world, against a President catapulted to power with a staggering majority of the youth, they may (in the long term) turn out to be onto a losing bet."

"But by referring to "professional politicians", Griffin is presumably suggesting we should elect amateurs instead. Maybe that's why the advert's so amateurish. Maybe that's why all the BNP representatives in the ad read their lines so clumsily, like DFS employees in a bank holiday sale commercial circa 1986, or recently revived chemical coma patients being forced to recite barcode numbers at gunpoint. It's deliberate incompetence. Don't vote for those nasty slick parties. Vote for a shoddy one! Never mind the extremism, feel the ineptitude."

"The best way to respond to what-aboutery is to state a simple truth. Say it slowly: there can be more than one bad thing in the world. You can oppose American atrocities, and Chinese atrocities. You can be critical of Israel, and of Islamism. You can condemn Dubai's system of slavery, and the fact people are detained without trial in Britain. You can stand independent of governments - including your own - and criticize anyone who chooses to abuse human rights. The world is not divided into a Block of Light, and a Block of Darkness; you don't have to pick a tribe and defend its every action. "

"If the project had been sequestered at Fox, if Fox had any say in the matter, Watchmen simply wouldn't exist today, and there would be no film for Fox to lay claim on. It seems beyond cynical for the studio to claim ownership at this point."

"We understand that the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a civil rights icon and a dear friend of LGBT Americans, will close the inauguration ceremony. But would any inaugural committee say to Jewish Americans, "We're opening with an anti-Semite but closing the program with a rabbi, so don't worry"? "

Mike Godwin (General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation) provides an interesting afterword on the recent Internet Watch Foundation's blocking of a Wikipedia article.

"But there's another reason that these new media tell stories in different ways from their old media predecessors: They're telling different stories."

"Unfortunately, high-speed communications and bold initiative do not always go hand in hand. With such an abundance of information available simultaneously at all levels, micromanagement can creep unnoticed into the chain of command and pull it apart."

Five months in, Nick Clegg gets mad.

An attack/search on/for identity.

"Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace."

"Now we are creating a new fog of mythologies -- about a "dictator" who isn't one, about "appeasement" that is completely inapplicable, about nuclear weapons that don't exist, about a country that is "evil" -- that make it seem like we must do something."

"it is a curiosity that, quite possibly, the more we listen to what some people say, the less we know about what - or even if - most people think."

"As reader Thomas Olson noted, "What irks even more about the swill he [Bill Thompson] publishes on the BBC website, is that there is no place for public feedback, so us common folk can call BS on his rant in real time for the world to witness. BBC is sti

"At last I realised that I didn't really disapprove of [Paris Hilton] at all. She's too valuable. She's our example, today, of the person who exists to prove that wealth for its own sake is utterly pointless."

"I will stand up and say a few words during the evening and I know that's when the emotion will really kick in. I can't imagine looking people in the eye knowing it is the last time I will see many of them."

"You say you can't deal with all this stuff? My reply is that you can't afford not to. Why choose - yes, choose - to create a painful life? Why work so hard...to get so little? You deserve so very much more..."

"What the entertainment industry is trying to do is to use technology to contradict that natural law. They want a practical way to make copying hard enough to save their existing business. But they are doomed to fail."

"The absurd (and unfounded) criminalization of Berdovsky and Stevens is part of an über moral tale with a discernible target: General deterrence, as rationale and goal."

"It isn't the features you can see in Vista, or the lack thereof -- it's the priority shift at Microsoft's core."

"At the end of the show, I concluded with this remark: 'The weirdest thing about weird people may be how normal they are.'"

"Alexander Hosch looks at the uneasy marriage between autocrats and star architects."

Brief article on "The legacy of Robert Anton Wilson."

"John Reid ... I no longer think of a thousand words. I think of one."

"The books that I savor are full of brilliance and wit and wonder. Why people don't read science fiction and fantasy continues to baffle me."

"Constance patiently explained that a lady never, ever grabs the bottle of wine to pour her own drink. She must wait for her host or another man to pour it for her." Fuck France.

"Wouldn't it be grand ... if we could find a Star Wars virgin to actually sit through the marathon and write about his or her experience?!"

On why Lost sucks (atm?).

An argument for the aestehtics of windfarms.

Chuck Norris on the Chuck Norris Facts.

The editors of Scientific American give up.

An interesting comparison between what books did for society 500 years ago and what computers might do for us in the near future.

"If you view is that SL has certainly not attained status of de facto standard as the ‘3D web’ - how are we to know when something has? What characterizes the tipping point when a n other wizzy 3D tech becomes the 3D tech?"

"Linden Labs, its creator, likes to constantly trumpet the idea that SL represents new opportunities for real-world companies to make money virtually, but that’s simply a flat-out lie."

Thoughts on WoW from an ex-player.

"Not a branch of Christianity, not a form of Christianity, but something with absolutely no connection to Christianity at all. It's a separate religion."

“30 days left for activation!” Click. Yes, I would like to activate Windows over an active internet connection, now that I have one. No, I would not like to register with Microsoft. Yes, I have read the privacy statement and agree to give up my comput