Rambles Blog at Star Chamber

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War. This is a good reference source to help you debunk or confirm some of the stories that are flooding the web regarding our recent state of war. Found via blogdex.

I like wiki. I use it at work all the time. Here is a New York Times article about somebody who wants to use wiki to write an entire encyclopedia. A wikipedia, if you will.

Matt Welch writes a hell of a war blog. I find almost every entry compelling. This one source is pointing me to huge amounts of useful follow-on writing. Terrific stuff. I love the web.

Did we bring the attack on ourselves? This is not an idle question these days, but a seminal one, critical to all further discussion. Did we bring the attack on ourselves? Truth or Consequences by William Saletan in Slate cuts the concept of “consequentialism” to ribbons. Found via Matt Welch.

Some evidence of the changing world from Google.com. Google Searches Related to 9/11 Terrorist Attacks.

It’s always good to see what other people are saying. We’ve been blowing it in the intel department for years. That goes for our government and us. Time to read sources like Al-Ahram Weekly, an Egyptian paper, to see which way the wind is blowing. Inasmuch as they’re willing to write in English and post to the web, there’s a lot we can learn very cheaply about what the world thinks.

Simon Schama’s essay in the Guardian. “… the best, the only revenge, when you’re fighting a cult that fetishises death, is life.”

MATLAB Programming contest rankings – mastermind

Read this and see if it annoys you as much as it annoyed me: Seumas Milne write in the Guardian They can’t see why they are hated. It’s good to read stuff like this, but that shouldn’t keep you from detesting it. I wonder if Mr. Milne thinks that the English simply don’t get why they are so disliked in Northern Ireland? Found via kottke.org.

I was reading a column in Fortune.com and came across a reference to William Faulkner’s Nobel acceptance speech. I read it. I felt better.