A weekend website dump

I was going to post a long learned article this afternoon, but the weather's to good for that, I've got a magazine to edit, and I've got a rake of sites open in my Firefox tabs that I meant to write about at some stage but still haven't, some of which have been open only for hours and some have been open for days, (and for most of which I can't remember who deserves the hat tips) so how about I just post all the links for you to to surf as you wish, and I'll come back to you later. Let me know which are worth more attention here.

• Working backwards through the open tabs, the most recent site still open is Tickets Direct, where I made sure I could get in to see Hello Sailor, Hammond Gamble and Th'Dudes tonight at the St James.
• Here's a full-colour poster from 'Junk Science' about Al Gore's film: 'The Real Inconvenient Truth - a Global Goring'.
• Farrar rounds up reactions to National's crawling appeasement of environmental extremism. Naturally, he's overlooked my own reaction.
• Terry Dunleavy from the Climate Science Coalition challenges TVNZ to balance its "alarmist Doomcasting" about global warming. “TVNZ chose to broadcast a hugely exaggerated claim about global warming by an American supporter of global warming, James Hansen, on precisely the same day that Mr Hansen was being denounced in the U.S. Senate, by Senator James Inofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. I challenge TVNZ to balance the record with the following except from Senator Inofe’s speech,” said Mr Dunleavy.
• And here's Senator Inhofe's speech, which begins, " I am going to speak today about the most media-hyped environmental issue of all time, global warming..." Senator Inhofe posts here about media reaction to the speech. Bidinotto liked it.
• New film Mine Your Own Business "exposes the dark side of environmentalism. The documentary hacks away at the cosy image of environmentalists' as well meaning, harmless activists." The film's website is here.
  

  Mine Your Own Business is the first documentary which asks the hard questions of foreigners who lead campaigns to "save" remote areas from development. Their answers are often disturbing, with racist overtones, but we, in the west, blindly support such campaigns that want to keep people in poverty. Now for the first time "Mine Your Own Business" asks local people about their lives and what they want for the future.

• Sign the online petition to help save 18-year-old Iranian girl Nazanin, sentenced to death by the Islamic Republic of Iran for "fatally stabbing one of three men who attempted to rape her and her 16-year-old niece in a park in Karaj (a suburb of Tehran) in March 2005. She was seventeen at the time." What the rapists failed to do, the Islamic Republic of Iran is attempting to finish. There are currently 218124 signatures in total.
• Tze Ming Mok needs taking to task. The lesser life expectancy of Maori has nothing to do with the life choices of Maori, she says, it's all a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi. Sheesh.
• The website of Organica Architettura, an Italian-based website promoting organic architecture worldwide (and I'm happy to say I'm part of it all).
• Richard Dawkins TV shows 'The Atheism Tapes' and 'A Brief History of Disbelief' are online at Google Videos. One hour each. I'm not yet sure how they're divided up, but my correspondent tells me a) they're superb, and b) they're here: Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Let me know what you think.
• Telecom. The Kiwi Pundit has a look at Telecom Derangement Syndrome, an affliction that he says seems to have struck "some normally sensible members of the blogosphere, most notably David Farrar."
• Concrete. The story of a high-tech upgrade for this great material (one that so richly rewards the application of human imagination, and that punishes so severely its lack): Electronic concrete!
• The truth about the nineteenth-century's robber barons is that they were neither robbers, nor barons.
• Organic architect James Walter Schildroth outlines an architect's services. "Modern architecture implies far more intelligent cooperation on the part of the client than ever before. Rewards being so much greater in a work of art than by any "good taste" of the usual client, the wisdom of human investment now lies in "the home as a work of art." Correspondingly, the architect becomes more important than ever. The dwelling "as-a-work-of-art" is a better place in which to be alive..."
• Wagner and Wagnerism is reassessed by the 3 Quarks team, and this site has some Wagner Bayreuth podcasts!
• Richard still thinks I shouldn't be taking swipes at university philosophy departments. "My previous comments, he says, "should have convinced you that you've been misinformed about them. Your continued low opinion of them seems to indicate a close-mindedness (or intellectual "passivity", if you prefer) of the damnable kind." Do they? I've still to respond, and I do intend to, but feel free to offer your own thoughts.
  

There. That should keep you surfing. Enjoy!