I’m working on a couple of posts that are a little bit more substantive – but I ain’t there yet so here’s some links this week. It’s also a carbon tax free zone (more on that later).

You would think that getting a group of former jihadists, neo-Nazi skinheads, Irish extremists and US gang members together for a conference would be something you’d only see in a Bond movie. As it turns out, Google is interested. Shawn Donnan explains on Slate.com

If you haven’t heard of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, chances are it’s because you only read News Limited Newspapers. Jonathan Holmes on Mediawatch sums it up and looks at the Australian implications.

And some very thought-provoking articles about gender and social media:

• Recently no-longer-anonymous blogger Amy Mullins talks about how people act online when they perceive you as male on ABCs Unleashed. Check out her blog here. 
• Randall Monroe (of XKCD fame) discusses how Google + forces you to publish your gender for all to see.
• Lisa Wade on Sociological Images looks at how some people call bullshit on public advertising by posting on it – and sharing the images. (Lisa is also a Lindy hopper and has a number of posts on race and historical videos taken out of the context of the time) The anonymous subversion of the public advertising for a different purpose is intriguing – it reminds me of an installation piece done by Sydney (now Hong Kong) artist Julia Burns.
• New Scientist reports on a tool that analyses text and determines whether the writer is female or male (and it’s right 85% of the time, which is pretty darn suprising). This blog post scores neutral 96%, Amy Mullins’ most recent article scores 56% male.

Late last week the winners of the Seattle Vintage Jazz Dance third annual Swing/Jazz Dance Music Video Contest were announced. The first place winner is fantastic:

I’ve already written about the ‘working families‘ phenomenon. Now the Sydney Morning Herald’s economics editor, Ross Gittins, explores how poverty (lack of income) is just one of the features that creates social disadvantage.

Sue Hoffman on The Drum argues that temporary protection visas actually increased boat arrivals, particularly of women and children.

With the final election results in and Antony Green back in the country he’s posted a bunch of statistics on his blog.

And Ben Goldacre in The Guardian notes “how often children are able to spot bullshit, and how often adults want to shut them up”.

This week Ross Garnaut released an update to his climate change review. If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing there’s an excellent summary (and he pulls no punches on what the coalition should be doing) on The Drum.

Someone has made me a search engine. (Alright – it’s for all nerdy types out there but it is way cool)

Massimo Pigliucci on Rationallyspeaking.org asks some questions about the US Prison system and why we lock people up. This is despite violent crime in the US going down – which could have interesting causes as Kevin Drum writes on Mother Jones. Do we need to be asking the same questions in Australia? There are currently about 30,000 people in Australian gaols. That’s only 0.1% of the population but the number of people in gaol is growing at almost double the speed of population growth, even though in Australia violent crime is also down.

I often forget living in the city with its bright lights and pollution how beautiful the nights sky can be. As an example I’ve come across this video of time lapse photography at the Very Large Telescope in Chile. It’s pretty amazing. Check out Phil Plait’s blog for some commentary.

And if you’ve ever wandered what it would be like to be on a starship tumbling through space you can stop – because we are, as this edited version shows wonderfully.

Chris Moody in Mother Jones talks about how ideology trumps facts. He explains how people deny facts when they are in conflict with their beliefs. It’s no wonder then that climate sceptics don’t change their minds, but it does happen as Brian Merchant finds out at Slate.com. The key? They need to change their minds on the politics first; the facts second.

The anti-intellectual attitudes evident in the climate change debate may have a root in working class ‘boganism’ in our public schools as Geoff Strong explains in the National Times.

Dan Cass examines on The Drum the culture of hate speech in climate politics how this could both shut down legitimate debate and pose real physical dangers to green activists and politicians.

And ever fancied telecommuting by blimp? Tobita Hiroaki and colleagues at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo have made it possible: