I blog and I vote, contrary to some of the ideas poked here. But democracy means nothing if democracy brings about authoritarianism. If America voted, democratically, to get rid of the First Amendment, that's not an enviable result. The statement "Democracy works" is only stated when democracy produces the same result as determined by a person's ethical or political beliefs. Democracy means that tax collectors steal my money, police officers spy on me and governments shuffle my name around. Democracy sucks, liberty rules. For liberty to arise via democracy, we need blogs. It enables some fundamental questioning of things which neither the political or media establishment wants to question. Parliament will debate the best way of colelcting tax. The media will too. Neither will debate whether the government have any moral authority to steal money. That requires the Internet. 
Dave's been at the zoo, and he's got pictures and video (QT).
Ophelia has a good article on the New Statesman article which features numerous quotes from Andrew Copson, an acquaintance of mine.
Ooh, there's progress on the Universal Frontier.
Oh yes, after two months I've finally got LyX working on my MacBook Pro. I can now do academic work on this here laptop. There have been a few changes to get it running on Intel. The interface for LyX 1.4.1 is nice, but what would be even more cool if there was an editable outline. There's an outline view which is cool, but the ability to drag it around would make it perfect. The Apple+T command is nice even though it goes through ps2pdf rather than pdflatex or dvipdfm (and ps2pdf throws me lots of errors when I load it with my BibTeX file).
I've just been reading a few of the responses to the Judas text. It's really quite amusing. "This was written ages after Jesus!" Indeed, but so were the damn Gospels, fools!
No candy for me, Lisa. Took the dogs for a walk, drunk from the NewsRiver and had a lovely tasty dinner.
Oh my, I hate these people. They want to abolish private property, but only on Sundays.
Rep Ron Paul (R-TX): "Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion-- a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000!"
Want to see unintended consequences? The London Borough of Camden provides.
Foundation schools goons are involved with the peerages-for-sale debaclé.
Hmm, I wonder why Skepticality is listed under "Religion/Inspiration" on the Podshow directory...
Oh, there's madness at Microsoft. Fiji? Vienna? Both are beautiful places, but we must see the Vista first.
Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian has an interview with nutjob feminist Catharine MacKinnon. Tongue twister? "If you've got that material being sold, there are people who are not intimate to the experience who are experiencing it. How equal is that? Your sex is being bought by somebody over there. You're now a thing in relation to people experiencing you sexually. How equal is that?"
Could Bush be a net benefit for ideas people? Nice idea, but I'm just too cynical.
Missed the Rapture? No worries! (Via Majikthise)
I've just subscribed to Gary's Trial by Fire because of posts like "Blogging May Need an Ethics Renaissance" and "Windows Vista: Past Its Due Date Already".
They're chattin' with Chomsky in Science & Theology News (which has an RSS feed, interestingly).
Another example? Oh yeah, those nutters at the Air Force Academy are demonstrating some good Christian ethics.
Let's see, another case of Christian Ethics in action. Bitter? No, just depressed - in real life - by the actions of certain subscribers to said doctrine.
This video has been flitting about the net for a week or so now, but it's great: Fitter and Happier.
