• "The following is a list of 99 free games (in no particular order) that I’ve enjoyed this calendar year, nearly all of which have been released in 2009 or very late in 2008. So why don’t you take a break from funding corporate overlords and see just what a feast there is out there in the wide world below the big ticket level—all you can lose, really, is just a little bit of time." Turns out I've played a lot of these. Many are good; some are excellent.
  • "My 12 year old daugh­ter uses a com­pletely unfil­tered Inter­net con­nec­tion. She also has root access to the net­work at home and to the com­puter she uses. Yet she’s never encoun­tered any of the prob­lems Sen­a­tor Con­roy and the likes of Sen­a­tor Field­ing seem to believe are ram­pant — no nas­ties, viruses, stalk­ers or any other unde­sir­able in sev­eral years of using the Inter­net unfil­tered and mostly unsu­per­vised. And you know why? _Good rules and decent par­ent­ing_ (well, cer­tainly the first and hope­fully the second)." Man, Australia's conservatism is getting rather scary.
  • "Landscaping overgrows, walls develop mildew, ceilings cave in—a building can be shut down, but that doesn’t make it go away. Brian Ulrich’s photographs of closed-down malls and big-box retail stores reveal the potential ghost towns lying inside successful shopping complexes all across America." Wonderful pictures; striking, strange, and sad all at once. And: all a little bit "Dead Center".