Free textbooks!
Article: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-textbook18-2008aug18,0,4712858.story
Discussion: http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/08/19/1316227.shtml
Example: http://www.lightandmatter.com/books.html

On a related note, SiSU looks interesting: http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/
As you might know, I love the flexibility of HTML+CSS(+JS). I'm also a wannabe fan of S5 (file format), Leo (text editor) and the LaTeX class beamer. If you know of any other one-source-many-uses projects, let me know :)

We were talking in the forums, and I remembered about The Eatpoo Guide for Art desperados, which is a pretty good intro for newbie (and maybe not-so-new) artists: http://eatpoo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27

Is animal sacrifice good for law enforcement? http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/08/csi-deuteronomy.html

Apple love-hate for developers: http://stevenf.com/archive/on-the-app-store.php

What all parents should do for their children: http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=557

Religiously irreverent lyrics contest - winner gets a sexy book! (Non-poetic people also take a look ;) http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/08/this-one-should-be-fun-in-fact-i-think-we-can-make-it-into-a-game--------let-us-worship-like-the-druids--running-naked-thr.html

A small study finds that female relatives of gay/bi men have more children than those of straight men. They come up with a theory to explain it, but I'm not convinced: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/dn14543-bisexuality-passed-on-by-hyperheterosexuals-.html

Eugenics!
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list3.pl
http://www.dnai.org/e/

Apple is doing well, the stock market believes; nerds discuss why: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/14/0257244

And, apparently, being pretty has measurable benefits (imagine that!): http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg19926694.600-humans-are-biased-towards-the-beautiful.html

A discussion about allowing doping in sports: http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/08/13/1957200.shtml
As one commenter says, "sportmanship is hard to find in professional sports, but it exists at other levels." I think it's a natural result of athletics turning from a discipline into an entertainment industry too popular for its own good. We, as a society, have lost perspective somewhere along the way :/

And in other news, we have... robots with braaains! (well, almost) http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19926696.100-rise-of-the-ratbrained-robots.html

Time tracking with Lego: http://jexp.de/blog/archives/16-On-LEGO-Powered-Time-Tracking;-My-Daily-Column.html

How do you run without legs? Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNPPbn19UkQ

Eee rocks, but Asus doesn't know what to do with it, says Eric Sink: http://www.ericsink.com/entries/eee.html

Birds! Art! Yay! http://lunaroca.blogspot.com/

Perhaps a bit too peppy, but oh well... http://www.girleffect.org/

Evidently, beauty is not all about sunshine and butterflies: http://community.livejournal.com/feminist/3157649.html http://guyaneseterror.blogspot.com/2008/08/i-aint-pretty.html

And now, for something completely different...

Textual pacman: http://pac-txt.com/
Solitaire: http://worldofsolitaire.com/?source=games
"Chat": http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php?action=detail&id=1059

Greta Christina insists that living for the moment and spending every day as if it were your last is unwise, and suggests living in the moment and spending your life as if it were your last instead: http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2008/08/living-each-day-as-if-it-were-your-last.html

Awwwwww! *melts* Not work-safe: http://www.metalandmagic.com/modules.php?set_albumName=oddities&id=bluewangs&;op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

The benefits of writing fanfic: http://ali-wildgoose.livejournal.com/349726.html

Really nice sketches (somewhat NSFW, maybe?): http://eatpoo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=281

On the gap between modern students and the academia: http://burntoutadjunct.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-is-not-research.html

An unorthodox view on attention and productivity: http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/06/in-praise-of-distraction.html

Somewhat applicable to believing in Elftown and such: http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2008/08/on-changing-culture.html

"He was a good kid," says a killer's lawyer. Reminded me of http://www.amazon.com/Our-Guys-Perfect-Research-Masculinities/dp/0520205960 , too. http://shrewdnessofapes.blogspot.com/2008/08/14-year-old-pleads-not-guilty-in.html

Bitter insights into the world of science: http://youngfemalescientist.blogspot.com/

An overview and analysis of some of the turning points in the history of copyright: http://news.oreilly.com/2008/08/how-copyright-got-to-its-curre.html
The article itself keeps a "centrist", non-judgemental attitude to the issue, but some of the comments point out why that might be a difficult position to maintain.

The explanations and examples are rather IT and software-oriented, but not too geeky for a "normal" person to understand.

Bonus: Legal realism

Greta Christina explains that reading about sex isn't much fun when the author is more embarrassed by the subject than you are: http://blog.blowfish.com/culture/greta-christina-tee-hee-you-said-bonk , and recommends http://books.google.lv/books?id=iNKw0XuaSxoC for a healthier writer's attitude.