Just a quick post to say that I’m away on holiday to Mallorca for the next week, so I won’t be blogging until 6 July at the earliest. I have quite a few interesting articles I’ve found this morning but I don’t have time to blog them right now, so watch this space next week. [...]

“When Stanford’s ethicists first heard the proposal for humanized mouse brains, they were grossed out. But after thinking it over, they tentatively endorsed the idea and decided that it might not be bad to endow mice with ‘some aspects of human consciousness or some human cognitive abilities.’ “ From an interesting Slate article on transgenic [...]

Ars Technica takes a look at the recommendations made by a Canadian Parliamentary committee on copyright infringement and piracy, which effectively amount to a Canadian DMCA. However, it turns out that all the data the committee have based their recommendations on are out-of-date and have no empirical evidence to back them up. And for a [...]

“If Facebook adds e-mail, IM, and RSS, it’s one step closer to becoming as comprehensive as Yahoo! and as popular as MySpace. The rest of the Internet might as well surrender.” Christopher Beam argues on Slate that, despite the newly-launched Facebook applications platform opening up a whole host of possibilities for the site, it needs [...]

“China has the right to development, and the right, too, to truck for oil with sovereign governments in the Third World. But China is easily important enough, in 2007, for its growth and development to be in the whole world’s interest.” James Woudhuysen writes on Spiked about China’s right to develop. As I’ve said before, [...]

“More than six out of 10 people regularly commit crimes against the government, their employers or businesses, research suggests … Keele University researchers said it showed petty crime was rife among the middle classes and exposed the ‘law-abiding majority’ to be a myth.” Not exactly unexpected, but interesting nonetheless. From BBC News, here.

I came across these on Jyte, a “mini-Digg” site where users vote on whether they agree or disagree with each other’s claims. Jyte is here. First (bottom) claim by Le Très Révérend Zebediah Love, here. Second claim by nic, here.

“The US House of Representatives has voted to overturn a ban on aid to overseas groups practising abortion … Earlier this week the White House said he [Bush] would veto any legislation weakening current federal policies on abortion … The ban, introduced in 1984, prohibits US contraceptive aid being sent to foreign family planning clinics [...]

Australia is to ban alcohol and pornography in all 45 aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to try to curb child sex abuse. In echoes of the colonialism of days past, the Australian government will take control of the administration of currently autonomous aboriginal areas for the next 5 years to implement their policy. While [...]

“Smokers will be prevented from fostering children under the age of 5 once the smoking ban comes into force on July 1, The Times has learnt.” This is ridiculous. Rather than simply banning foster parents from smoking inside the house or nearby their foster children, they are to be barred from fostering under-5s at all. [...]

“Lord Ashdown, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, was offered a job in Gordon Brown’s first cabinet, he said today … [Brown] wants to show that his appeal can spread to Middle England by taking support – and politicians – from the centre ground.” A bizarre twist in party politics. From The Guardian, here.

“Across three days, at least 100,000 handsets will be powered up at the on-site Chill n’ Charge tent [at Glastonbury] … The facility is free and will not feature any logos of the mobile phone network which is providing it … However, its choice of colour for the canvas – bright orange – might give [...]

Another hilarious comic from xkcd, here

Marcel Berlins argues that no British referendum should be held on the EU semi-constitution because the vote would be less about the treaty and more about British membership of the EU. I agree that no referendum is required, not because (as Berlins suggests) people would vote on the “wrong” thing but rather because we need [...]

“It is as if they have fallen into a crevasse between justice and charity, from which there is no way out. Although this was a made-in-China and consummated-in-Britain tragedy, no one wants to take responsibility for the consequences.” The families of those who died in the Morecambe Bay disaster face financial ruin. Crippled by debt, [...]

“Early sales indicate that DRM-free music is noticeably more popular than DRMed music, EMI senior VP Lauren Berkowitz recently told Bloomberg.” Who would have guessed? Users prefer it when they aren’t told how they can use the songs they’ve paid for. From Ars Technica, here, via BOL, here.

YouTube is to launch nine local-language sites, including in the UK and Ireland. This seems like a sensible move – people generally prefer to have services which are tailored to their region rather than one mammoth worldwide site – but I’m wary that it might change YouTube too much. One of the reasons the video-sharing [...]

“News Corporation has discussed swapping MySpace, its internet social networking unit, with Yahoo! in return for a 25 per cent stake in the enlarged group.” This deal would be massive, giving News Corp increased exposure on the Internet while struggling Yahoo! would gain the most-visited site in the world. From The Times, here, via BBC [...]

“Thousands of BBC staff around the world will observe a vigil on Wednesday marking 100 days since the kidnapping of Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston … On Monday a deadline for his release, set by Hamas, passed without progress.” The continued captivity of the only Western reporter permanently based in Gaza is not only terrible for [...]

“Veterans of the software industry have, hardcoded into their DNA, the assumption that in any fight between a platform and an application, the platform will always win.” Marc Andreessen writes a must-read post about the Facebook Platform, looking not only at the aesthetics, coding and business sense behind it, but also at the terminology it [...]