This is a great collection of Dawkins quotes.

hey wikiquote is cool
I found this

"Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive music." Marcus Brigstocke

Richard Dawkins - Wikiquote

The riots that have convulsed France over the past week have raised huge questions over the country's ability to integrate its Muslim population - concerns which have implications for the rest of Europe

relates well with the Francis Fukuyama article

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The week Paris burned

Since van Gogh's murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness.

Messy. As recently as 1995 it was the predominate view of the U.S. Embassy to Canada that Canada would break into multiple separate countries within 20 years. Today that outcome is no longer considered likely. The reason is that from the 50's through the 90's the Canadian government engaged in a serious effort to make its various constituants feel as if their national identity represented them. Canada is a lesson in both how to succeed at this, and how difficult it is. This is why I don't have great hopes for Isreal. The jewish identity of Isreal as a state cannot provide a meaningful identity to it's muslim citizens. This will inevitably and perpetually cause tension, unless all of the muslims move out, or the state changes it's identity to become more inclusive, or the state is destroyed. Unfortunately, I don't think Isreal has the cultural maturity to choose the middle path, and I think the other outcomes are terrible in terms of their human costs, and I don't find the status quo acceptable either. I see problems in every direction there.

Can Holland create an inclusive national identity like the United States? I think so. I think England can too. I'm more worried about France.

On the other hand, I bristle at the thought of people being exhiled for preaching. If they advocate violence, then yes, but to attack tolerance as the issue is to invite the requirement that a national identity requires that 3rd generation Englishmen have the same culture as 50th generation Englishmen. This is impossible, and it will create more strife, not less. At the same time I don't think that people who are citizens of a country should operate their own "cultural" legal system. Democratic states should not allow communities to practice Sharia. It is the legal system of the country, and the people's equal footing before it, that makes a binding national identity meaningful. This is the lesson of American history. The constant accumulation of federal power in American history happen precisely because one nation could not exist with radically different legal systems in different regions. There is a balance. Its important for states to be laboratories of democracy, and to reflect slight regional differences, but American history has consistently shown that erring on the side of too much "legal diversity" results in significant tension and perhaps war.

The result must be that what it means to be English must be defined by who England's citizens actually are today. Not who they were 200 years ago, and not who they would like to be, but who they actually are. That identity must be one which every citizen can accept as his or her own identity.

It took Canada 5 decades to get French and English people to live together as a single nation and the project is far from complete. I fear getting Islamic fundamentalists to feel French is a far more daunting task.

Francis Fukuyama - A Year of Living Dangerously

DUBAI (Reuters) - Exploding buildings, booby-trapped cars and bloodied victims are making their debut on Arab satellite television in daring dramas that deal with Islamist militancy in al Qaeda's main breeding ground.

The shows' producers say they are another battleground in the war on home-grown religious zealotry, which many Middle East governments are confronting by crackdowns and media campaigns.

"Al Tareeq Al-Waer", or "The Rugged Path", and "Al-Hur Al-Ayn", or "The Beautiful Maidens", have been airing during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a time of peak viewing in the Middle East.

They both deal with intransigent interpretations of Islam, such as the one espoused by Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and the social problems that push some to extremism.

Editor's Choice News Article | Reuters.co.uk

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's hard-line government said Wednesday it was removing 40 ambassadors and senior diplomats, including supporters of warmer ties with the West, from their posts in a shake-up that comes as the Islamic republic takes a more confrontational international stance.

Iran Removes 40 Envoys in Shake-Up

In a step toward reconciliation on the divided Korean Peninsula, North and South Korea agreed today to compete as a single nation for the first time at the 2006 Asian Games and at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a South Korean Olympic official said.

This is positive, if superficial.

The endgame for Korea is reunification, just like Germany. Sooner or later, the DPRK regime is going to fold. Just get it over with, already!

absolutely

Two Koreas to Compete as Single Nation at Olympics

Acidus wrote:

Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems

Tom will be talking about some enhancements he is working on for Wikipedia at Phreaknic. Looks like this issue is only growing.

Ironically, the original poster suffers from having looked at a particular article at a particularly bad timeslice and gotten an ugly result. The present text of the Bill Gates article is greatly improved. Interestingly, this is exactly the sort of problem that my wikipedia talk looks toward addressing.

Furthermore, its important to understand what wikipedia is and what it is not. Wikipedia is not a replacement for a traditional encyclopedia. This does not mean it isn't useful. A famous engineer's cynicism is: Cost, Speed, or Quality, pick one. An Encyclopedia is a model that picks Quality. Encyclopedias are slow and expensive, but the results are good. Wikipedias are fast and cheap, and the results are not as good.

If you want to teach 11 year olds about the history of Greece, you don't want wikipedia. They may get bad information, they can't easily reference a particular revision (most people don't understand how to do that with wikipedia), and they are going to be exposed to poor grammar and poor structure at a time when you are trying to teach them how to communicate effectively.

If you want to learn about a terrorist incident that occured two months ago, an encyclopedia is of no use. You could turn to the press, but old press articles are hard to find, and Wikipedia is often a vastly more useful resource, because it presents information in a matter of fact way and often draws from a wider array of resources (including press reports which form a primary source material).

Wikipedia fills the gap between the bleeding edge of the headlines and the cast in stone of dusty reference materials in a way that no other resource can. The sooner people realise that every tool doesn't have to solve every problem the better they'll be at figuring out how to make their tools really succeed at the particular things they are well suited for.

it suddenly occured to me that as there needs to be a way of judging, other than the facility of editing it, the quality of ( or usefulness, or a variety of criteria) of articles on wikipedia.
how about a simple facility of voting for articles and obviously articles which consistantly score badly should pop up for review.
although should each edit deserve a fresh score or should past editions be included but weighted according to the edit
that way adding a comma won't remove a particularly good set of scores and thus discourage edits or adding a comma set to zero a deservely bad score.
plus a scoring system is in accordance with wikipedia's democratic philosophy and adds an element of meritocracy.
systems need feedback
plus different writers could get, like the reputation agent, different scores

RE: Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems | The Register

Nearly exact self-similar fractal forms occur do in nature, but I'd never seen such a beautiful and perfect example until, some time after moving to Switzerland, I came across a chou Romanesco like the one above in a grocery store. This is so visually stunning an object that on first encounter it's hard to imagine you're looking at a garden vegetable rather than an alien artefact created with molecular nanotechnology.

Coolest vegetable ever.

Fractal Food

Buster the German Shepherd could have had a great career as a British police dog had it not been for one flaw: his complete lack of interest in fighting crime.

Lazy British Police Dog Relieved of Duties - Yahoo! News

Jello wrote:

Xia Zhang of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and colleagues decided to see what effects a synthetic cannabinoid called HU210 had on rats' brains.

They tested a synthetic cannabinoid that is NOT present in marijuana.

In another study, Barr Jacobs, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, gave mice the natural cannabinoid found in marijuana, THC (D9-tetrahydrocannabinol)). But he says he detected no neurogenesis, no matter what dose he gave or the length of time he gave it for. He will present his results at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington DC in November.

Tests with the real deal show no such signs of 'cell growth in the brain.'

Emphasis on might here.

there are also studies which suggest a link between mental health problems and marijuana
having been a heavy marijuana user in my early 20s and having suffered over the past 12 years bouts of mental health difficulties ranging from psychotic episodes to suicide attempts i would urge caution.
I don't know catagorically that there is a causal link ( i did have mental health problems prior to my drug use) however just as some people are susceptable to becoming alcoholics i believe my drug use triggered problems. I also believe that for the majority marijuana, like alcohol, is not a problem and can be used harmlessly and should be legalised subject to health warnings.

RE: New Scientist Breaking News - Marijuana might cause new cell growth in the brain