Happy Tyrannicide Day!

Well, it's once again the Ides of March, which means it's Tyrannicide Day!

Horton Hears an Evangelical (Linkage)

Ok, this I have to let you know about.

From No More Hornets: Horton Hears an Evangelical, featuring such lines as:

In a place known as Whoville the folks got distraught
When Horton the elephant said what he thought.
“The oddest of oddities isn’t as odd
As people believing that there is a god.”

and

We’ll drive you from Whoville; we’ll send you away.
Or else we will force you to worship and pray.
A person’s a person, no matter how small
But an atheist isn’t a person at all!”

Linkage

Game Criticism, Why We Need It, and Why Reviews Aren't It.

New blogs

Just a couple more links today:

Greta Christina's Blog. I came by this atheist blog through the post Atheists and Anger.

Ebon Musings has the Ten New Commandments. By the same author is Daylight Atheism.

Copying William Gillis (linkage)

via William Gillis: Shawn Wilbur has made Liberty (1881-1908), one of the most important Anarchist publications, available as PDFs in an archive. Should be interesting and fun. (Post on Human Iterations)

also via Gillis: LOLTheorists. My favorite (that would be Adam Smith, btw):

Article Links for a Hot and Humid Tuesday

Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical Interface - Everyone involved in making software should read this.

Social Software and the Politics of Groups - Interesting short article discussing how software developers design for a single user, not for groups, and how this can affect the success or failure of that group's goals.

Representation Versus Depiction - An old (in web terms) essay about the differences and advantages of representation (eg, text, icons) vs. depiction (eg, photographs).

"Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace"

danah boyd (web site http://www.danah.org/) presents an interesting discussion of American class divisions, their effect on social networking site usage, and vice-versa. "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace".

Interesting New Yorker article on Linguistics

Here's an interesting article from the New Yorker. It's about a remote Amazonian tribe and how different their language is from other known languages.

"Interpreter"

David Morgan-Mar's Comments on Atheism and Morality

Over at Irregular Webcomic, David Morgan-Mar has, with today's strip, a rather insightful bit of commentary on morality and atheism, and the difference (he supposes) between reasoned morality, that is, a moral code reached through introspection and thought, and authoritative morality, that is handed down from some authority, generally a deity.

Wil Wheaton on Gene Roddenberry and Sci-fi

I've got nothing substantial to say about this, but Wil Wheaton hits the nail on the head with his latest Geek in Review: Gene Roddenberry: Boldly Going Where No One Had Gone Before (warning: suicide girls is generally considered not safe for work...).

More Doctorow, with some Queer

Every time I read Doctorow, I think to myself, "Yeah!" (or, at least, "Hey, that's really interesting") So, here's "In Praise of Fanfic", "The March of the Polygons: How High-Definition Is Bad News for SF Flicks", "You Do Like Reading Off a Computer Screen", "How Copyright Broke", and "Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet," all from Locus Magazine Online.

And, for a perspective on queer publishing and community, Scotty Nola at Queer and Loathing in America writes "Burning Bridges". For the record: I don't read queer books (although I adore science fiction) for exactly the reasons stated in the article: it's always all gays, or dealing with coming out, or blah blah blah gay blah. NOT INTERESTED. Have queer characters, have them be the protagonists, but don't make it the primary focus; I've got enough gay drama as it is! The Front Runner satisfied that itch, thank you very much.

Linky Linky

It's time, once again, to share some of the links I've found whilst trolling the 'tubes.

Cory Doctorow, renowned sci-fi author and blogger, tells us why the 'information economy' isn't about selling information in How Hollywood, Congress, And DRM Are Beating Up The American Economy.

Dresden Codak is a bizarre but extremely compelling scifi/fantasy(?)/surreal webcomic by Aaron Diaz (not the 'Latin sensation', apparently).

Cheetah is a python-based templating engine that I'm seriously considering using, and CherryPy is a python web-framework.

And, of course, there's the Open Letter to Parents Who Bring Their Children to Extremely Violent Horror Films.

Free Software and Forking

Just a couple of essays on forking and Free software.

The first is the Right to Fork, and why it is important in the Free software community.

The second is the Fear of Forking, or Why Linux Won't Fork.

As an extra bonus, I'll also point you to "Corrupted Downloads: What is to be done?" in case you have problems downloading things with IE, and Make Your Open-Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else., in case you're trying to decide on a license to use (or just in general. It includes a nice appendix on the XFree86/xorg split), and finally, the GPL is a License, not a Contract.

Terry Hancock on Why Free Software is Important

In a recent blog post at Free Software Magazine, Terry Hancock explains (some reasons) why free software is important, and why we should spend our time promoting it and working on it, even though there are "bigger problems to worry about" in the world.

I would still point out that there are many other things that one could do, including protests (among others), although some are not terribly effective. Nevertheless, long-term planning and creating stable, ethical and expandable communities and methods for the future to build on is certainly worthwhile.

More linkage

How Genesis 1 should have been written and How to recognize an imaginary friend.