Way of the Mind has an excellent entry on anti-intellectualism. 
Dianaism: the fact that, even seven years later, people are still selling newspapers with Diana stories.
The excellent Skeptics in the Pub event is going to sunny Leicester. Excellent! Leicester and the Midlands could really do with the the sort of skeptical fun we've been having in London.
Oh my, this Stephen Colbert clip is pure genius.
The question on everyone's mind - is Pat Robertson gay? No, he's allegedly a tranny chaser. What? You know. When you link to something with something else in the link text. Like, erm, miserable failure and it links to the home page of a miserable failure. I can't quite tell you what it is, otherwise it doesn't work, but if you think about it for a second, you might catch on. If you do, join in the fun. Yes, it's "tranny chaser". Why? Because Pat Robertson likes trannies, supposedly. 
I've just tried to do a word count for my blog. It's telling me that I've posted around 39,000 words on here, but that's not a very accurate calculation.
Literary theory is getting everywhere. Even LiveJournal.
Marc Canter: "Nobody is gonna stay on MySpace for more than a year or two. They'll get bored and they'll move on."
I don't get the "weapons argument" 
An example of this would be what Holly Finch wrote yesterday:
On closer examination, it becomes apparent that although the fighters themselves originate from their host countries the weapons do not. Israeli people may be fighting Lebanese extremists, but it is American weapons which are trying to outdo their Iranian supplied counterparts.
I find this argument conspiratorial. Everything comes from everywhere. The computers being used in this war were probably put together in China using software designed by Americans, and the Israelis probably drive around in cars designed in Japan and manufactured in Europe.
I mean, surely it's helped by the fact that American companies are hardly going to sell weapons to Hezbollah and Iranian companies are hardly going to sell weapons to Israel - because there are laws no doubt in place to prevent those manufacturers from selling weapons to those people. This type of observation seems to be nothing more than "globalisation exists" rather than some big conspiracy. Occam's razor, y'know.
Need to have your nationalism rinsed out?
Have a look at the last Panorama (2nd August) - nationalist football thugs from England.
The "beautiful game" seems to get doused in more mindless violence and hooliganism at every international competition.
When I see things like this, it reminds me why not calling myself English or British is a good idea. I just happened to be born here, but please, don't call me British. England is a hundred drunken lunatics lobbing beer bottles, lobbing plastic chairs at their "enemies", setting light to flags and beating up foriegners. Such an "identity" is something I want nothing of.
