Darwin's Notes and Thoughts Go Online

via NPR Topics: Books on 4/24/08

Studying Charles Darwin's documents has evolved from visiting the library at Cambridge University to visiting a Web site. The British university has just made a trove of about 20,000 papers from Darwin's life and studies accessible online.

Man Trapped in Elevator for 41 Hours, Ruins Life

If it was fiction, it would read somewhere between Colson Whitehead's dreamy "The Intuitionist" and Don DeLillo's "Falling Man."

The security camera video is tough to watch, and makes you wonder: what, exactly, are security cameras for?

Towards a Gentler Atheism

I've really been enjoying Chad Orzel's posts on his moderate form of atheism. He points out that the mythological aspects of religion are really only part of its popularity, and that morality and community are at least as important. It's easy to criticize the mythology, but angry atheists really have nothing to offer people who value the community or moral aspects of religion, and end up putting theists on the defensive about the whole shebang. Seems better to talk about the morality of atheists, and to do what we can to build secular communities. Orzel's posts are scattered and linked around, but he says it very well.

Too busy for beauty?

Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour?

Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone

Having no kids myself, I can't imagine how protective, or overprotective, I might be of my own offspring. But it certainly seems, in recent years, more and more acceptable to take overprotectiveness to (what used to be) the extreme. Of course, as with many trends, there seems to be a backlash, or at least a vocal minority who are quite okay with letting their kids lose and then find themselves.