• The sexual habits of British men and women over 40 years old | Wiley InterScience: A large population-based study which provides the first report on the frequency and timing of sexual activity in British men and women. Over 40.
• saving paradise: Liz Mwambui’s blog, written for Nature Seychelles, is a great example of “personal voice” in an NGO’s corporate blog.
• Washing/Moscow Hot Line: A history of the direct communications link which went into service in 1963.
• Encyclopedia Astronautica: A wonderful compendium of information about spacecraft — actual, projected and mythical.
• Google Flu Trends: Google has found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.
• Nirvana vs Rick Astley: Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up | YouTube: A very fine (and scary!) mashup by German-based DJ Morgoth. I’ve had to play it several times now, it’s that good.
• Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin: Research by Laura E Buffardi and W Keith Campbell at the University of Georgia (US) shows that people using social media sites like Facebook can actually tell, just by looking at a person's profile, whether they're narcissistic or not.
• Totally Wasted | Mother Jones: A major feature on America’s War on Drugs. Plenty to ingest. I mean digest.
• The folly of pretence | Daniel Dennett | The Guardian: One of the greatest philosophers of the mind, a man I’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting, explains why everyone needs to move on from “the God question” — including the militant atheists.

• All the ephemera that’s fit to print * | Noisy Decent Graphics: A lovely idea: take all the cool stuff your friends have written in the last year and print it in newspaper format.
• P2P is Killing the Porn Star | Perceptric Forum: Hollywood is not the only casualty of P2P, it seems. A nice essay.
• Business Sense | News.com.au Business: Buried in here is Business Sense TV, some Internet-based video productions. I have a reason for bookmarking this which is 100% Secret Squirrel.
• Twitter Spreads News Of US Airways Crash In An Instant | InformationWeek: Yet another story about Twitter spreading the news of an event before the mainstream media could touch it.
• Victoria Cross citation for Trooper Mark Gregor Donaldson | Department of Defence: The official Australian Army citation for the first Victoria Cross awarded to an Australian in 40 years. Terse, army bureaucratic language hides an amazing story of bravery.
• Child porn laws being turn on their heads – by the kids themselves | The Inquisitr: Child pornography laws were designed to cover situations when an adult was coercing a child into sexual contexts. But what if the “child pornography” in question is “just” teenagers taking photos of each other?
• Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown | NYTimes.com: A task force set up by 49 US attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of online sexual solicitation of children finds that there actually isn’t a significant problem.
• Right Whales, Wrong Whales | Media Watch: It's from September 2008, but a great story about how journalists got it all wrong because they didn’t fact-check with people who know something about whale. There’s also a bonus photo of a whale penis. I rediscovered this story while researching a piece for Crikey.
• Ten things every journalist should know in 2009 | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog: What struck me about this list is that any modern journalist should been across this knowledge well before now. Knowing that your readers are smarter than you on specific topics? Knowing how to use Google’s advanced search? How to use RSS feeds? Are working journalists really this far behind the pace?
• wordpress wiki plugin | Instinct Entertainment: This new plug-in which can turn selected WordPress pages into Wiki-style editable objects could be useful. I should look at it. If I had the time. Would you like to look at it for me and report back?
• BT-1 Bluetooth Webcam for Mac: The new BT-1 wireless webcam streams H.264 video and AAC audio. It’s compatible with Skype and iChat, so presumably it’ll work with Cam Twist and therefore Stilgherrian Live. I want a couple NOW. Available “late Q1″.
• In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates | NYTimes.com: Ted Nelson’s book Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now was an enormous influence on me and many others. He’s now 71, and this piece based on a recent interview is a reasonable introduction to his work.
• How I Use Twitter at Volume | chrisbrogan.com: “At volume, [Twitter is] a bit different. It’s a lot like showing up to a very busy, very loud cocktail party, but also a business meeting, plus a focus group, plus several other social situations. Twitter, unfiltered, is like someone with mind reading powers walking down 38th Street in Manhattan. It’s not especially easy to manage, and it’s very different how things work at this pace. Looking at unfiltered Twitter at this volume just doesn’t cut it.”
• You are the President of Your Career | chrisbrogan.com: One person’s framework for focusing on your goals in an economically tough year. I like the reminder that a “career path” was something for your father, but not for you.
• The Bush Administration’s Most Despicable Act | Time: Joe Klein summarises the Bush II government’s contribution to the wonderful world of torture.

• Social networking comes of age, sort of | MISaustralia.com: Renai LeMay’s article for the Australian Financial Review, based on material gathered at PubCamp.
• IT List | Skippy’s List: “42 Things That I Am No Longer Allowed To Do in IT”, beginning with “1 Not allowed to randomly rickroll users upon login to the application”. Somewhat amusing.
• Seven dirty words | Wikipedia: The seven English words comedian George Carlin listed in his monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”, and a history of the furore this routine started.
• 7 things you can’t say on the Internet | evolvingWe: Following comedian George Carlin’s death, Josh Legard compiled this list. Read it, digest it, help prevent groupthink.
• La Boheme – Restaurant Reviews | smh.com.au: I’m told we should go to this restaurant some time. Gotta love a review which starts, “Those of us who fancy a bit of porcine action…”.
• Direct Note Access :: celemony_: Peter Neubäcker’s new Melodyne version 2 software can identify and edit individual notes within polyphonic audio material. This is extremely cool, and extremely important.
• Top 500 supercomputers: Welcome to the petaflop generation | NetworkWorld.com Community: Welcome to the petaflop generation. The new most powerful supercomputer in the world is IBM’s US$100 million Roadrunner system at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.

• Webby Nominees 2008: Nearly 70 categories, with lots of truly excellent things to explore.
• Saasu.com | the web finance engine: I've been using this online accounting software for nearly a year after dumping MYOB. I've been very happy. They've just launched a new version and it's very swish.
• Overheard in the USA: A new blog which collects random eavesdroppings of stupid Americans.

• The Newseum: The interactive museum of news, including "today's front pages" for 500+ world newspapers.
• TV Fugly Awards: An "alternative" to Australia's Logie awards for TV.
• Eurovision Song Contest – Belgrade 2008: Official website of the Eurovision Song Contest.
• The Bugle | Times Online: Weekly news satire audio podcast from the UK.
• The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Richard Hofstadter's article from Harper's Magazine, November 1964. Paranoia Politics isn't new.
• Twitter Rulez! (via Todd Langowski) | Newick: An apt sign spotted in workplace.
• Plugger: Australian Business News: A customisable aggregator for Australian business news.
• Secondary DNS Service: An inexpensive service which provides secondary domain name servers.
• The seriously inconvenient truth on drugs | the Daily Mail: UK Daily Mail columnist Andrew Alexander puts a cogent case for the decriminalisation of recreational drugs.
• A second summer of love: 20th anniversary of acid house: The Guardian's retrospective on the acid house Summer of Love of 1988.
• The Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report 2008: A 20-page report on the state of the open source software world in Australia. A freely downloadable PDF and is redistributable under a Creative Commons BY-ND license.

Of all the writing about the 5th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, one of the more interesting pieces is by Mary Ellen O’Connell (pictured) of Notre Dame Law School. In Learning from the Iraq War: The Wisdom of International Law, she argues that the most tangible lesson is that the US ignores international law at its peril.

Going into Iraq, we ignored the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization. Once in Iraq, we ignored the Hague Regulations, requiring us to put a stop to looting and to make only necessary changes to local law and government. We ignored the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit secret detention and abuse of prisoners of the kind we saw at Abu Ghraib.

The talk on Iraq is all about what went wrong, whether the surge is working, and when we can get out. We hear virtually nothing about international law and look set to repeat our mistakes. Violating the law has cost our nation and Iraq dearly. It has denied us the guidance of rules based on long experience and moral consensus. We have lost standing in the world, a literal fortune, and precious lives. Rather than internalizing the lesson of law violation in Iraq, we continue to defy the law in serious and self-destructive ways.

At some point, sooner or later, America needs to understand that international law does indeed apply to everyone — including America. Otherwise any US action against any other nation breaking the law is nothing but hypocrisy. (Hat-tip to Blog Them Out of the Stone Age.)

It’s part of a Time cover story from last year, An In-Depth View of America by the Numbers, which also includes What We Believe (31% of Americans believe in an “authoritarian God”, for example, while it seems only 6% don’t believe in God), Denomination Nation (exploring which kind of Christians live where) and Who We Are (which, being American, starts off by talking about race).