Oh yeah, congratulations Betsy. 

Les wants to know about silicone keyboard protectors. I might buy one next time I'm in the Apple Store. 

Does anybody know if there's any decent resource with audio debates on Iraq? I'd love to hear a decent, historically-informed discussion on Iraq by people who are well-versed in the facts. Reading online discussions and blog comments is a very inefficient way of understanding the issues. This list of links is good, but there's no audio. 

Peter has got cranks! Cranks, y'hear! 

Tom Coates pointed to these many, many maps of American religiosity and affiliation. 

Cameron Reilly went to a talk by Cory Doctorow in Melbourne. Cool stuff. 

Vitamin is a web designy site featuring the work of people like Molly Holzschlag (met), Cal Henderson (also met), Dave Shea (could have met but was too lazy) and ohters. They've got a blog and a podcast and lots of other clever stuff. 

iTorrent lets you download BitTorrent podcasts in iTunes. It's very neat. Apple should build it in to iTunes though. 

Anthony Dick, in the National Review, has an article on FIRE and their "Guide to First-Year Orientation and Thought Reform on Campus". I like FIRE. They are the sensible and principled voice in a debate dominated by acerbic personalities with bland ideas (like David Horowitz and Ward Churchill). 

Homosexuality as contagious disease? Of course not. That doesn't stop them. Facts very rarely do. 

This is just weird. I'm surprised that some nutter like Pat Robertson didn't try and take a potshot at those bunnies. He hates bunnies, that Pat does. In fact, God hates bunnies. 

John Mackay and friends are so silly. Evidence? Well, unlike creationist evidence, there's evidence of the 'silly' proposition in spades. Check out Stephen Bates' article in The Grauniad, for instance. 

The Nation has a long article on the rise of theocratic sentiment in the United States. 

Tom Coates has found a nice chocolate shop in Islington. Looks nice. 

Two-year 'fast track' degrees are comin'. Graduates still more educated than American graduates, probably. 

Windows Media Player 11 will be released before Vista so that "fans won't have to wait until January 2007 to experience the new features". The phrase "plays for sure" (or "playsforsure" if you're not in to the whole space bar thing) is such a load of bull. I spent forty-five minutes Googling trying to find a way to play a Windows Media Player 9 file on my Mac. I gave up and watched something else. Plays for sure, right? 

It seems that we love our blogs. When I started, according to this chart, there were about 4 million blogs. Now there are 35 million! Cool! 

I don't like the trust schools and city academies stuff, but this NUT reaction is pushing it. Also, dont they understand that if you don't have academic selection, you get covert selection whether wanted or not. It will happen, and it will be far less visible than overt selection - and far less fair. 

There's a Flickr group for bestickered Macs. Now to get an OPML sticker for my Mac. 

The Sun has RSS feeds. So if you like that sort of thing, you can read it in your aggregator. 

Nutty Germans are doing the voodoo to try to win the World Cup. 

Americans are being told how to behave abroad. I wonder whether Mr. Bush has read said report. 

eSkeptic has a discussion of Dembski and Shermer's debate. 

Tech Update/Peeve 

I'm now on GPRS again, as I'm going up to London for the Bloggers Meetup which I've been trying to promote. If you are gonna be in Soho at 7pm tonight, please drop by All Bar One on Dean Street. We'd love to see you.

GPRS is now much easier for me to use, since I've set it so that my phone now responds to Menu+6 to rescan on Bluetooth. Motorola's menu system leaves a lot to be desired, and I can now avoid even more of it.

GPRS is running fairly quickly. To be honest, it doesn't feel nearly as sluggy as it used to do. (It's not faster, it just feels faster).

My new LyX install is poppin'. The OS X instructions on the wiki are good, especially now that the whole setup is Univseralised. I'm turning out JuraBib. Now, JuraBib is a good system. It has about three default styles, and they're all good. The problem with BibTex is that there are hundreds of variations for obscure journals but very few really good general purpose humanities styles.

The jureco theme is exactly what I've been looking for. The thing which JuraBib does nicely is that it actually lets you put in 'text before', which is so useful if you are doing lots of "Smith in Jones, 1970" style references, as you can keep a consistent style throughout your document. They all come out like {(Smith in Jones, 1970, p. 4)} rather than before where you had to do (Smith in {Jones, 1970, p.4}). Small difference, but when you're writing lots, it's important.

Next pet peeve: there aren't enough music podcasts without talking. I want soul, R&B, jazz and ambient podcasts without chatter, without artist interviews and sales patter. When I listen to music, I just want the sounds - I'm doing something else most of the time. Voices are off putting when one's working.