Congratulations to Al Gore (and the IPCC) for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I see that the BBC ‘most recommended comments’ page on the topic is, as always, full of right wing nuts.
I wonder whether the right-wing noise machine that is the BBC Have Your Say feature is a bad sign for (a) the BBC’s ability to get user interaction right, (b) the future of politics or (c) the future of the human race. Or (d) all of the above, I suppose.
I don’t normally read SomethingAwful, but I do like the Art of Wikigroaning.
The old sobersides at Time magazine try to explain lolcats, I can has cheezburger, in ur base killing ur d00ds, etc.
Bloggers come in for a bit of French stick in a series of articles at Le Monde. Apparently:
Nous sommes victimes de “la résurgence d’une idée selon laquelle le collectif est le summum de la sagesse”.
and a lot worse besides.
Interesting article by Danah Boyd on Apophenia Blog (here), points out a growing social division between young MySpace and Facebook users.
The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.
MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.
Some interesting discussion in the article and on the related blog post about what this means. Via MetaFilter.
Bill Thompson’s latest BBC article combats the ludicrous scare-mongering of the Sindy and others, who claim that Wi-Fi systems rot your brain, cause cancer, and are the reason for unsightly ear hair.
A series of photos of Helvetica, the font of the 20th century, via MetaFilter.
Update: A useful web design resource on the fonts real people have available is here. Also, a list of fonts you might want to use if you’re bored of Helvetica.
Did you know there’s official Internet guidance (an RFC) on what name you should give your computer?
Not a debate, here.