The BBC's Internet site competes with commercial sites too much, says a Government report. The BBC has already agreed to close down a number of its offerings. more inside

Curious, George: I've been H@x0red! Two of my websites were hacked last week. As far as I can tell, the hackers just changed the index.html file; they didn't alter any other file in my directory. How did they get access to my index file? Should I be worried? How can I prevent this in the future? more inside

The Creatures In My Head. A new funny, scary, sad, sweet creature every day.

Morning glory. The desolate Gulf of Carpenteria area of Australia is an empty region full of marshy salt flats, and it's prime crocodile country. It's also home to one of the most exotic cloud patterns on the planet, the morning glory. The town of Burkshire invites tourists to see them, scientists document and study them, and glider pilots are drawn to them (excellent trip logs!) Morning glories may also be occurring in the western Atlantic, most notably on Canada's Sable Island.

Angelina Jolie won a reprieve for a forest near her home in Cambodia from a planned hydroelectricity project. Jolie, who is a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador as well as an actress, pledged $1.3 million to protect Cambodia's forests last year. more inside

Curious George: Buh-Bye They say that breaking up is hard to do. And they're right, dammit. Honesty or feelings? In person or by post? more inside

"The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life." Is it really a brave new world? We're not talking about just drugs anymore. ("As a rule of thumb, it is profoundly unwise to take crack-cocaine.")
So, do you really want to be happy for the rest of your life?

Cruelity To Animals People should not dress their dogs up to look like sunflowers. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if these pets went all Cujo on their owners.

Language construction kit "...intended for anyone who wants to create artificial languages-- for a fantasy or an alien world, as a hobby, as an interlanguage."

Sherlock Holmes Radio Plays I've been listening to these while doing some house repairs. 30 minutes each, varying in quality, most with great-in-a-terrible-way advertising, but chock full o' Sherlocky goodness! more inside

Court Creates Snoopers' Heaven. A federal appeals court has ruled (PDF) that an e-mail provider did not break the law when he copied and read e-mail messages sent to customers through his server, setting a precedent for e-mail service providers to legally snoop on their customers' e-mail.

Heated interview with Irish journalist Carol Coleman. This is what TV news is supposed to be like! The whole show is great, in fact! [Link to page where you can stream the interview or the individual segments. .smil file, which is apparently a Real Player extension.] If you don't have broad band, here's a transcript of the interview.

The must-read books in just 400 words. The Observer's take on popular books. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton gets a particularly scathing going-over, and Katie Price's Being Jordan closes with the lines: "I'm tired of being 'the girl who gets her tits out.' Maybe it's time to drop my knickers." Ouch.

Funky braille T-shirts that feel "kind of like rows of tiny nipples." Say naughty things while being groped! (Totally, delightfully SFW)

"Kerry Picks Gephardt" Where did the NY Post get its information? Other sources are all saying it's Edwards, so who's mucking with the Post?

Free in every bottle of Miller Lite - a Dead Mouse - A Missouri Judge quaffs a refreshingly cold amber beverage only to find a whole crunchy raw unboned real dead mouse at the bottom of the bottle. What does he do, ladies & gentlemonkeys? Why, he screams like a little girl, that's what he does. Nicked from Obscure Store more inside

Mulla Nasruddin Hoja. (spelling varies)This week sees the festival in Aksehir which celebrates, the arch-joker of the Islamic world. Turks claim he is buried in Aksehir, but Afghans and Iranians believe him to be one of them, while he is equally famous in Albania, North Africa and many other countries . There are absolute shedloads of Nasruddin stories on the Net, ranging from the traditional to more modern gags. This thread has some interesting links, and the Mefiots put together a creditable array a couple of years ago.

HICKY-BURR!
Amazing, newly reissued Bill Cosby and Quincy Jones JazzFunkJam album, circa 1969. Check the sound samples.

Forget Spiderman. Forget Batman. It's Superduperman! more inside

Reality and Conscious Experience: Could I see red where you see green? Tailing off the "What the #$*! do we know" post. Often people wonder whether someone could have an "inverted spectrum", that is, where I see red you might see violet and vice versa. Some also think of so-called zombies who are functionally completely like us, yet have no conscious experience. Does this mean we have our own reality or that we have different perceptions of the same reality? If the spectrum was configured just right or totally absent, no one would ever know, right? Far from being weird -- these are questions that some top philosophers and scientists have been seriously thinking about since at least John Locke. The set of questions revolves around what philosophers call qualia. more inside