September 2003

how not to fix the gender gap in English... - BBC [via CR]

stop the boys reading real novels at all

(if girls have trouble with physics, should they get Home Science classes instead?)

an interview with the creator of Google News - OJR [via WMW]

remains of 700kg rodent found - news.com.au

Amartya Sen: democratization != Westernization - New Republic [via Cosma]

problems with Iraq's telco reconstruction contracts - IraqRevenueWatch [45k PDF]

the Mongolian army returns to Iraq after 750 years - Guardian

and how many Polish-Mongolian interpreters are there, anyway?

British troops were shipped to the Gulf on rust-buckets - Guardian

a site about Chitral and the Shandur Pass - shandur.com [via referers]

Al Franken interview: is Bush really religious? - Beliefnet [via MLite]

18 year old Iraqi girl grenaded, left to die - Observer

and the US administration doesn't even bother to record the event

Starbucks is opening its first outlet in France - Guardian/SMH

resistance to occupation is popular in Iraq - Guardian

Joseph Galloway on how Rumsfeld is ruining the US army - KR [via Billmon]

a fascinating new study of the Vietnam war - NYROB

unfortunately it's 1500 pages long, and I have a huge backlog to read after my holiday

Quammen's latest book is on big predators - NYROB - The Song of the Dodo [review]

there's no standardisation of dress sizes - Economist

27 Israeli pilots refuse to carry out strikes against Palestine - GlobeMail [via Agonist]

samba now a complete replacement for NT 4 - Register

a nice collection of Central Asian news and links - Cosma

weekly variations in temperature ranges are presumably anthropogenic - SciAm [via /.]

how authors deal with bad reviews - Telegraph [via CR]

free software and the government of Brazil - brazzil.com

a Parliamentary Free Software Bloc has been formed

why the WTO talks in Cancun failed - D-squared

general Zinni blasts US policy in Iraq - Washington Post/CD [via LAM]

Alan Cox and Linus Torvalds on software patents - EF Finland

an open letter to the European Parliament

Verisign is wildcarding all unresolved domain names?!? - CNET

an excellent Krugman interview - BuzzFlash [via RW]

the constitutional paradox of censorship (in the US) - Examined [via Cosma]

Pokemon banned in Saudi Arabia - BBC [via Islam and Evolution]

"the characters appeared to be based on [the] theory of evolution, which Islam rejects"

I've been emailed links to some older reviews - Harry Potter criticism

with a National Guard company in Baghdad - Nation [via RW]

I'm back from my trip - Iceland - Scotland & the UK