[SnowCrystals.com]
These pictures show real snow crystals that fell to earth in Northern Ontario, Alaska, Vermont, the Michigan Upper Peninsula, and the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. They were captured by Kenneth G. Libbrecht using a specially designed snowflake photomicroscope.

[Guardian.co.uk]
Secularists in the West say to the apologists of the religions: your beliefs are your choice, so take your place in the queue. They also say: you've had it your own way for a very long time—and committed a lot of crimes in the process—and you still fancy yourself entitled, but you aren't. You don't smell too good at times, so don't try to tell me what I can read, see on TV, do in my private time, think or say. In fact, keep your sticky fingers off my life. Believe what you like but don't expect me to admire or excuse you because of it: rather the contrary, given the fairy-stories in question. And when you are a danger to the lives and liberties of others, which alas is too frequently the wont of your ilk, we will speak out against you as loudly, persistently, and uncompromisingly as we can.

[The Wall Street Journal]
After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.

[Ecstatic Days]
Jeff VanderMeer's “60 Books in 60 Days” encounter with the Penguin Great Ideas series. From mid-December to mid-February, he will read one book in the series each night and post a blog entry about it the next morning.

[Guardian.co.uk]
Barack Obama, perhaps the most literary president-elect of recent years, has chosen his friend, the poet Elizabeth Alexander, to read at his inauguration on 20 January.

[bitloot]
Bitloot is a new way to fund open source projects using the internet.

[Gourmet]
In this exclusive online feature, you’ll find the very best cookie recipe from each year of Gourmet’s history. The project is a fascinating window into the magazine’s past—and a testament to this country’s culinary evolution over the last 68 years.

[Guardian.co.uk]
There's no real evidence to suggest that religion is hardwired.

[Techskeptic's Data Daily]
A list of secular charity and aid groups.

[The Washington Post]
Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black. We call him that—he calls himself that—because we use dated language and logic. After more than 300 years and much difficult history, we hew to the old racist rule: Part-black is all black. Fifty percent equals a hundred. There's no in-between. Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president. He is more than the personification of African American achievement. He is a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go. Why don't we recognize this as the revolutionary wave that it is? Why can't we find words to describe it? Why do we continue to resort to the tired paradigm that calls a biracial man black?