Links for 2009-10-25

Damian Pope's talk at the Quantum to Cosmos festival. I'm tempted to steal the grain of sand thing.

"[I]t does raise the question of whether there are any genuinely good, genuinely political novels out there. Since we're coming up on the weekend, I'll throw this out as an open thread (I have a few nominations myself, but don't want to bias the sample). Have at it."

"My impression is that parents really believe these videos are good for their children, or at the very least, not really bad for them," Ms. Rideout [of the Kaiser Family Foundation] said. "To me, the most important thing is reminding parents that getting down on the floor to play with children is the most educational thing they can do."

""I thought all white people had a Cherokee great-grandmother," the old AIM guy told me, sublimely deadpan. The barb in that joke is a deadly serious complaint having to do with wannabes and the misappropriation of culture.

Tim LaHaye loves Israel the way wealthy hippies love turquoise jewelry and dream catchers. He loves Jews the way James Arthur Ray loves Native American spirituality. Which is to say he appropriates Judaism for his own ends, disrespecting it by usurping for himself the respect it is due, twisting it into what he wants it to be rather than what it is."