TL;DR - "A lot of porn is bad, here's some that's not."

"Photographer Peter McBride traveled along the Colorado River from its source high in the Rocky Mountains to its historic mouth at the Sea of Cortez. In this Yale Environment 360 video, he follows the natural course of the Colorado by raft, on foot, and overhead in a small plane, telling the story of a river whose water is siphoned off at every turn, leaving it high and dry 80 miles from the sea."

"Formulating a unified theory of the built environment may require that the built environment be understood as a complex social-ecological system, where multiple-related metabolisms interact at different scales."

"The last few years, possibly since the introduction of Europe-wide televoting, it is being suggested that the voting results of the Eurovision Songcontest are (getting) more related to geographical location or common history than to the songs performed by the artists on the event. This page is dedicated to a modest analysis at Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) about the extend to which these suspicions are genuine."

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."

"In Berlin alone, hundreds of complaints are made each year about noise levels in kindergartens and children's playgrounds. Some day-care facilities have even been forced to close after local residents have gone to court in search of a quiet life. Now Berlin's local government, the senate, has passed a law giving children the right to be noisy, the first law of its kind in Germany."

"Many countries are debating whether they should have population policies. Here are two – very different – examples of nations that rapidly reduced their birth rates."

"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?"

Government officials in south-east China have ordered workers to cover a 1,000 ft long steel bridge in butter to prevent citizens from using it to attempt suicide. ... "Since we put up the butter there have been no problems with these attention seekers."

"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."

"After a wave of ugly rhetoric and dubious policies, a number of northern Italian councils run by the far-right Northern League (Silvio Berlusconi’s biggest coalition partner in government) have gone on the rampage against anything foreign. Top of the list, the town of Capriate, 20 miles from Milan, where the council announced a ban on kebab and ‘ethnic’ shops from the town centre."

"A second possible basin of attraction is a system of decentralized, cooperative communities, whose relations are based on affinity—because we all share the same biosphere—and which maintain a high level of connectivity with one another. This form of social organization is perpetually open and always seeking new connections. In the spirit of complexity theory—and unlike previous revolutionary movements—this system embraces no determinism. The logic of autonomy allows the components of the system to optimize their own connections, and so connect to people, materials, passions and places in a manner that takes optimal advantage of material and energy flows."

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.

"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."

"the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, a group headed by three former presidents—Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico—published a report arguing that the violent crime and corruption generated by drug prohibition is undermining democracy and that the drug war has “failed”. They called for a public debate on alternatives, including treating drug use as an issue of public health rather than criminal law, and decriminalising marijuana."

"A month ago on the eve of ROFLcon, I interviewed the founder of 4chan for a magazine story that never ended up running. ... 4chan is actually one of the most robust, complex, annoying, disgusting, illuminating, perverse, fascinating online communities ever created. It is the direct or indirect source for many of the strangest internet memes: RickRolling, LOLcats, Sarah Palin's email hack, Anonymous, Chocolate Rain, and many other minor and major feats of esoterica (i.e., fucked up weird porn)."

"A man who fathered a child for a lesbian couple angrily confronted a group of Fathers 4 Justice protesters today as they demonstrated with a banner against 'Lesbo Dads'"

"FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Enjoy our FREE photo samples from FOX News below! We have over 10 years of the hottest babes on TV."

"We call on all governments to: 1. Procure only information technology that implements free and open standards; 2. Deliver e-government services based exclusively on free and open standards; 3. Use only free and open digital standards in their own activit

the guide ... kindly describ[es Engllish] as "animal-loving, tea-drinking, charity donors" whose "warmth is in the humour". But ... "The English have become obedient consumers rather than active citizens, with brand loyalty the nearest thing to religious/

"...But the decay and death of old laws can be just as important, even when they're unobserved. The story of our obscenity laws highlights where, exactly, American laws go to die."

"Women own 28 percent of all non-farm businesses in the US, while minorities own 18 percent of such businesses. When it comes to TV and radio, though, Free Press found that these percentages plummet."

"A new constitution is being prepared to replace the current one, introduced after the military coup of 1980. The document describes women as a vulnerable group needing protection."

"When the Vietnam war was at the level of the Iraq war today there was almost no opposition. Public protest of the Iraq war is far beyond that of the Vietnam war at any comparable stage. People have just forgotten."

"In the battle to tame 'neighbours from hell', one scheme is at the cutting edge of government strategy. Amelia Hill was granted unprecedented access to see how violence-prone families are helped and given hope."

"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."

"A Hartlepool man is facing jail after he urinated on a disabled woman who lay dying in the street. The 27-year-old shouted "this is YouTube material" as he degraded Christine Lakinski, 50, who had fallen ill, magistrates heard."

"The internet and other new forms of gambling have not led to an increase in people having a flutter since 1999, a Gambling Commission study has found. In fact, due to a drop in the National Lottery sales, the numbers of people gambling fell from 72% in 1

"The shop owner is a friend of mine, and he'll be the first to tell you that selling PC games in Korea is a dead end; he makes his money by selling console games, the kind that aren't copied so easily."

"You cannot hope to prevent users from exercising their fair-use rights. It is impossible to make unbreakable encryption; every key will be broken. The stronger the keys are, the stronger the determination of those who want to break them, JUST BECAUSE THE

"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."

"By the age of three, children from disadvantaged homes are up to a year behind in their learning than those from more privileged backgrounds"

Well duh.

"Chavs are the foot soldiers of corporate consumerism. They wear branded kit, congregate around halls of bland consumerism – shopping centers, cinemas, fast food outlets – and target anyone who stands out. ..."

"A Polish man has woken up from a 19-year coma to find the Communist party no longer in power and food no longer rationed ... 'What amazes me today is all these people who walk around with their mobile phones and never stop moaning," said Mr Grzebski. 'I'

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised ... is a 2002 documentary about the April 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. A [Irish] television crew ... happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez during

A great source for street /internet/etc slang definitions.

"In all, 57% of the teenagers had not used contraception, and 51% of the older women - and this small difference was not statistically significant."

"The sooner we move towards a secular society the sooner words like homophobia will start becoming anachronistic."

Blog on building online communities and related matters.

Based on the 5 Geek Social Fallacies.

Shit! Goths! Where?! On the Beeb!

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

More motivational posters.

Kharijism and Cultural War

Dance, Monkeys, Dance

What would a lads mag produced by feminists look like?

Heteronormativity is a term used in the discussion of sexual behavior, gender, and society, primarily within the fields of queer theory and gender theory to describe (and frequently to criticize) the manner in which many social institutions and social pol

A must read.

Opinions on what the cities and society will be like in 2050.