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A chart of musical influence depicted as the London Underground

PDF file for download, a poster is 8 pounds. I really want one.

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Wikipedia entry on the Drazi from Babylon 5. I find this instructive and comforting in the days preceding Superbowl Sunday here in fair Seattle.

I was feeling sort of okay with Google launching in China after reading their statement to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus until I saw this. And then I became very very angry and then depressed.

Text of Bono's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, at which the president was in attendance. An extended excerpt:

[I]t’s not about charity after all, is it? It’s about justice.

Let me repeat that: It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.

And that’s too bad.

Because you’re good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it.

But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.

Because there's no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn’t accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the Tsunami. 150,000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, "mother nature." In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe.