It seems the mysterious “Sheikh Haron”, who rose to prominence after sending letters to the family of a dead Australian soldier, is someone [pdf] called Ayatollah Manteghi Boroujerdi. Sheikh Haron is Ayatollah Manteghi Boroujerdi. He was born in Boroujerd. He is the son of Muslim cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hossein Manteghi Boroujerdi who was the student... Read More

Timothy Noah remembers Benazir Bhutto in Slate: I called her Pinky. She called me Pooh Bear. As Aspen Institute seminars droned on, we’d scribble anagrams of the participants’ names. “Had ingrain id,” I jotted during one particularly tedious lunch while Indira Gandhi extemporized about textile exports. “Rid hairy piranha disdaining,” Pinky replied in a flash,... Read More

Techcrunch has a scathing report on the Australian government’s new plan to filter the internet in this country: The Australian Government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet. … As recently as the week prior to the election, Labor Party candidates were... Read More

According to some research [pdf]: The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the... Read More