[Center for Inquiry]
Who would raise their child with atheist principles? Well, a Harvard University study has found that the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has grown sharply over the past 10 years, to as many as 39 million, twice the number of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Episcopalians combined. Natalie Angier explains why such a choice is the only moral one.

[The Mumpsimus]
Nice essay by Matthew Cheney: Sometimes we think we understand things, but that's only because we tell ourselves stories. How often have you done something that seems odd, and said, 'I did that because ________.' But you know the blank is really blank, despite all the stories you fill it with. The stories are helpful, and they may illuminate a portion of the truth, but a core of mystery remains.

Write what you want to write, how you want to write it. If you like rules, then make some up and follow them. If you don't like rules, then fart in their general direction. But don't try to make everybody else play your little game, and don't pretend "the rules" are anything other than what we know them to be: guidelines that have been useful to some people in the past and may be useful to some people in the future. Following rules doesn't guarantee success any more than breaking them does.

[Multinational Monitor]
One site's analysis of the worst corporations in 2004 (with details of the nefarious acts that won them inclusion).

[SFGate.com]
Fox says it covered up the naked rear end of a cartoon character recently because of nervousness over what the FCC might find objectionable. The latest example of TV network self-censorship because of FCC concerns came a few weeks ago during a rerun of the Family Guy cartoon. Fox blurred out a character's naked butt, even though the image was seen five years ago when the episode originally aired.

[Science Direct]
The two worst kinds of Evil early modern societies could imagine were organized arson and witchcraft. Although both of them were delusions, they nevertheless promoted state building. Networks of itinerant street beggars were supposed to have been paid by foreign powers to set fire in towns and villages. These vagrant arsonists can be regarded as the terrorists of the early modern period. Anyone who ignored the behavioral standards of society ever so slightly could be suspected of being utterly evil. The concept of Evil linked petty, commonplace immorality and the worst crimes imaginable to each other and to the mindless hatred of demons. This pre-modern concept of the banality of Evil was called into question by the legal reforms of the 17th century. It was finally rejected by the enlightenment that negated the imagined continuum of Evil. Or was it?

[wearcam.org]
Here is the Internet Chair with magnetic stripe card reader and spikes that retract when a seating license is downloaded from a license server in response to input from the card reader incorporated into the chair. Is this the future of our society, where everything is rented, nothing owned?

[Guardian]
The damage wrought by the construction of an American military base in the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon must rank as one of the most reckless acts of cultural vandalism in recent memory. And all the more so because it was unnecessary and avoidable.

[Wired]
Lawrence Lessig asks Why extend the copyright on works that no longer have commercial value?

[Yahoo! News]
On the one hand, I'm all for making the great divide more visible; on the other, I can't help but wonder if this does the Nazis one better by getting the "undesirables" and "malcontents" to self-identify at their own expense...

[The Paris Review]
The Paris Review, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, makes available free .pdfs of fifty years of interviews with leading writers.

[The Teaching Company]
College courses from the best professors in the U.S. on DVD and CD. They aren't cheap, but could be a real bargain compared to actual college costs. I'll have to check some of these out.

[Arizona Daily Star]
Here's my new house.

[udargo.com]
Satirical take on how too much of America views the tsunami and its aftermath.

[New York Times]
What do YOU believe?

[Excite News]
Frank Kelly Freas, an influential illustrator who produced sleek, stirring images for science fiction and fantasy books has died at 82.