David Weinberger, author of "ClueTrain Manifesto, posits an interesting thought provoker here. In 50 years, when our grandchildren look back on how we conducted our life and culture in the early 21st century, what will they be amused/horrified by?

My ideas:
American arrogance in global affairs (neo-imperialism)
Antagonism (civil/social/religious) towards non-hets
Failure to constructively engage the developing world
The inequities of capital punishment

An article in a Saudi Arabian english publication posits and supports the theory as to why Bin Laden no longer exists.

Dr. Dudley Woodberry, one of the west's foremost Islamic scholars, provides some
good background from an evangelical Christian perspective on the roots of the current situation in the middle east.

Desmond Tutu expresses his perspective that I find verbalizes some of the feelings that I have about the situation in Palestine/Israel. In a comment piece in the Guardian (a liberal, republican -- i.e., anti-monarchy -- newspaper in the UK), he writes about Apartheid in the Holy Land.

Richard Florida, a professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University and a columnist for Information Week, arrives at some surprising conclusions in his article: "The Rise of the Creative Class" . He started out researching why initiatives to improve the economic lot of Pittsburg had come to naught and discovered an interesting demographic trend and set of markers for determining the economic success of a city. He offers a "Creative Index" for cities. Tulsa, by the way, made the top 10 (barely) of medium sized metro areas (500K-1MM pop.) DesMoines (!?) is number 2 in small sized metro areas (250K-500K). Austin and SanDiego are numbers 2 and 3 in the large sized metro areas (1MM+). This is great food for thought.

Suzy Hansen interviews Todd Gitlin on his views of Americans, the Media and Culture. I found this article in Salon via Cursor.Org which provides (at least) an alternative to the prevalent view of America as the unfairly aggrieved nation and Israel as acting always in justified self-defense. I don't think the real picture is so simple.

Is Islam to Blame? "As president of the American Muslim Alliance, political scientist Agha Saeed has spent much of his time since September 11 trying to answer one pressing question: Why?" This is an excellent article in the East Bay Express discussing living as a Muslim in post 9/11 USA.

A UK government agency charged with conserving and promoting British rural life: The Countryside Agency - Home page. In addition, the Rambler's Association provides lots of information about how to get out and about in the UK (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland).

Oh, what a hoot! I recall reading Irani authors complaining about how western culture and media were imported into Iran and, implicitly, played a part in the reaction that led to the revolution. Now, I read in the New York Times Magazine an article entitled: The Satellite Subversives about how expat Iranian's, based in the Great Satan, are using the media to speak truth into their culture. Where's the Voice-of-America funding when ya need it?

So sad. One of my favorite websites has gone under. I wonder where I'll find my commercial fixes now? Every once in awhile, I intone "... and the beaver is truly a noble animal..." which elicits some pretty strange reactions. I used to be able to direct folks to the Molson "I Am A Canadian" rant commercial which "explains it all". Drats, not anymore.

Intel is sponsoring something called "The Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer Program which is similar to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI@home) screen saver project.

The idea is that you download a screen saver which links your computer (just the spare processing power) into a network for the use of medical researchers working on today's thorniest problems like anthrax research, cancer research, alzheimer research and so on. So if you've got Internet access and DSL or Cable, you might want to check into it.

I draw your attention to an excellent article by Philip Yancy in CT, Strengthening Our Weakest Link, pointing out some of the foibles of the evangelical ghetto. Yancy quotes Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary and makes observations about the irony of some of folks that Wheaton College chooses to honor.

Here's an excellent article discussing Islam and [western] Modernity. This touches on topics that were explored in a class I took last semester entitled Mass Communication and Society.

I can't believe how incredibly crummy some people are. Last week, I went to review my personal website and discovered that somebody had broken into the server, deleted a number of websites (including my personal one) to free up diskspace and loaded a porn video onto it.

Scum.

Just got back from a holiday in Estes Park where we stayed south of town. What a blessing! This is our fourth trip there since 1994 ('94, '96, '98, '01). I love the day hiking, the scenery, the elk and the paucity of tourists.

I learned something about what happened in Lithuania ten years ago and 55 years ago after WWII at: Email from the Baltics. Certain people involved in the oppression in Lithuania are now in Chechnya on the other side. Marcus Warren speculates on what they learned.

As to his higher nature, the farmer believed in God - that is he tried to do what God required of him, and thus was on the straight road to know him. He talked little about religion, and was no partisan. When he heard people advocating or opposing the claims of this or that party in church, he would turn away with a smile such as men yield to the talk of children. He had no time, he would say, to spend on such disputes: he had enough to do trying to practice what was beyond dispute.
-Geo. MacDonald "Salted with Fire"

Now this is cool. Using John Brockman's methodology of taking a bunch of interesting, leading edge thinkers, stick them into a room together and see what happens. About The Reality Club is website supported by Brockman which does just that.

An Edge interview with
Edge: GEORGE LAKOFF, somebody whose books I want to read. He is the author of Metaphors We Live By (with Mark Johnson), Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind and others.

A great article at Computerworld about how eBay User Interface design is managed and rolled out.