Ibn Khaldun

The father of information theory and one of the founders of the philosophy of history and sociology (died in 1406 and his writings sound shockingly modern, actually). Facebook summary and the man's actual book, or part of it.

The science of how conversations are ended politely

Cool article about verbal interaction.

Trouble at the Koolaid point

Thoughtful blog post by Kathy Sierra.

Professional victimizers

Here's a thoughtful article about the notion of "professional victimizers" - people literally making money off slut-shaming of innocent women.

Rebuttal points

I almost want to keep a database of rebuttal points to common memes. But that would be work.

Foreign aid comes up a lot. Here are four things you didn't know about it.

IPs used by "North Korea" against Sony

Interesting technical rundown on the IPs the FBI claims indicate North Korean backing for the Sony hack - they're open proxies, used by everybody and his brother.

And speaking of cyberwar (ha), here's a pretty interesting article about sabotage of a Turkish oil pipeline in 2008.

Newsweek on the Bible

That's not what it says. Excellent rundown of the history of how the Bible came to be, and why literalists are misguided.

As long as we're talking about the Bible, the subversive peace of Christmas from the Sojourners, and how Jesus became more magical over time as the New Testament was written. (Bible Study Tools gives us a list in chronological order.) Here are five ways fundamentalists refuse to follow the Bible.

The Houston Unitarians have the full text of the Jefferson Bible for our perusal (PDF), speaking of rationality.