Link roundup for 3 October 2007

Friendly Atheist has a funny interview with Pastor Deacon Fred.

Here's what can happen when you write in a language you don't quite know.

I guess a life of prayer, penance and quiet contemplation isn't quite what it's cracked up to be.

Check out Russia's new island.

Richard Dawkins discusses the logical connection between faith and evil.

Our screwed-up sense of aesthetics: Could this political poster (click image for larger version) have appeared in the United States? Of course not; naked images, even of healthy and attractive people, are deemed offensive and unsuitable for display in public in this country. No such objections, however, seem to apply to billboards depicting ghastly flayed corpses (yes, that image and others like it have appeared on billboards here in Portland).

Here's why there hasn't been so much news about Iraq in the media lately.

China admits that the Three Gorges Dam may be a disaster in the making. Well, what do you expect, when one of the most gigantic engineering projects on Earth is undertaken by a country which apparently can't manufacture a Thomas the Tank Engine toy safely?

Here's some optimistic speculation about Iran, and about that mysterious Israeli raid on its Syrian catamite-state.

Hillary Clinton has a powerful new ally in her quest to become President: many Christian Right leaders are so incensed at the prospect of a non-fundamentalist-nutjob Republican nominee that they are seriously considering doing for her what Ross Perot did for her husband. (Update: based on this, the impact could be substantial.)

The GOP isn't doing so well with big business these days either. But on the bright side, the era of Christian Right dominance over the party may be ending (found via Seething Mom).

Was Ahmadinejad really wrong to say that Iran doesn't have homosexuals?

Want to do something about the savagery in Burma? Here's one option -- help put pressure on the junta's backers in Beijing.

An ancient and ugly demon is rearing its head in Europe again.