/ General

Links You Should Follow

Politics:

With the use of terror as a political weapon growing to be the norm, both for terrorists and elected officials, Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, offers a clear review different viewpoint of the alleged plot in Britain, pointing out facts that most other news outlets have neglected (such as the fact that most of those detained by British police didn’t even have passports, which would make getting on a plane with anything a near impossibility).

“The UK Terror plot: What’s Really Going On?”

Music:

James Kim, over at Cnet.com has a great article regarding digital rights management. If you are like me and hate the fact that most online music stores restrict downloaded content to one proprietary form (Itunes) or another (WMP), there is some great info here. The highlights are the stores that enable you to buy non-restricted formats:

There are actually a bunch of Web sites, stores, podcasts, and other places that cater to those looking for good DRM-free music. In addition CNET’s own music.download.com, there’s musikethos.org, where you can download a broad range of classical music and other music in the public domain or authorized to be used under Creative Commons licenses. There is also Audio Lunchbox, an eMusic-like site offering loads of indie-based MP3s. We like Live Downloads, a site where you can download recordings of live performances in either MP3 or uncompressed FLAC. And there’s Magnatune.com, which states: “No major label connections. We are not evil.” You might not be able to download Shakira or Gnarls Barkley from these sites (though you can stream some songs for free), but you’ll get Ulrich Schnauss, Starlight Mints, and other indie faves.

Read “Rallying Behind the Emusics of the World” for more great information.

Humor:

Actually, this is kind of scary-funny, but you should check out H.E.R.B – Had Enough Religious Bullshit!! For those who are religious, this site is not anti-religion, it is anti-theocracy. Of course, that naturally lends itself to being anti-Bush… a very, very good thing in LtL’s opinion.

Futurism/Speculative Science:

An interesting set of propositions, and definitely some food for thought can be found in David Brin’s essay “Singularities and Nightmares.”

I’ll be back soon with the second part of my Lars von Trier essay and some more music extras.

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