Beautiful "audio slide show" (need a better name for that) about the closing of the South St. Paul stockyards.

If you want more of the back-story, the news article is here.

Bruce does his annual "state of the world" conversation with Jon Lebkowsky and others on The WELL.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the NYT:

It is often said that Islam has been "hijacked" by a small extremist group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said to be moderates.

But where are the moderates? Where are the Muslim voices raised over the terrible injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing to stand up and say, in the case of the girl from Qatif, that this manner of justice is appalling, brutal and bigoted - and that no matter who said it was the right thing to do, and how long ago it was said, this should no longer be done?

Usually, Muslim groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference are quick to defend any affront to the image of Islam. The organization, which represents 57 Muslim states, sent four ambassadors to the leader of my political party in the Netherlands asking him to expel me from Parliament after I gave a newspaper interview in 2003 noting that by Western standards some of the Prophet Muhammad's behavior would be unconscionable. A few years later, Muslim ambassadors to Denmark protested the cartoons of Muhammad and demanded that their perpetrators be prosecuted.

But while the incidents in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and India have done more to damage the image of Islamic justice than a dozen cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the organizations that lined up to protest the hideous Danish offense to Islam are quiet now. . . .

When a "moderate" Muslim's sense of compassion and conscience collides with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful thinking.

Via Jonathan Adler at Volokh.

If you can see this in person probably wait until then, it’s much more powerful as an experience.

Posted by Tim Bray to ongoing.

Caught in pixels for your, well, not pleasure exactly. I’m talking about the World
Press Photo Contest Winners’ Gallery. If you have any kind of a heart, there are pictures here that will tear holes in it. And some that are just insanely pretty.

A 5min bit on BBC's The World, reporting on the [corporate] censorship of Jonathan Hexner's video art piece "I Like America and America Likes Me" which was to be displayed on the Axel Springer building in Berlin. You can view the video piece on The World's website (you might want to download that and play in quicktime unless you have a browser window wider than 2016px).

Via David Post at Volokh.

A 737 hits an executive jet, the 737 goes down killing 155, and the executive jet is fine to make it to an airport?

Story at BBC News.

Update: Joe Sharkey of the NYT who was on the executive jet, tells his story.