Link Banana

Inspired by the now-defunct Life magazine, The Boston Globe has introduced a great section of high quality picture-stories on it’s website.

(via Waxy, who points to Kokogiak’s announcement)

Speaking of clichés… Kill the Cliché tracks tired words that predominate in news stories.

(via FP Passport)

There was definitely a time when I would have scoffed at a service like this, which provides an RSS feed to tell you when your favorite bands are releasing new albums. Given how many near-misses I’ve had recently, I believe the service may well be worth signing up for.

(via clusterflock)

More bad news:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday suspended peace talks with Israel following a spasm of violence in the Gaza Strip that has left more than 100 Palestinians dead since Wednesday as Hamas has continued its campaign of rocket strikes.

The Economist offers a handy guide for totalitarian bureaucrats looking to make it hard to speak against them. It’s a troubling and useful look at the state of media freedom around the world.

Despite the flourishing of alternative media, such as satellite television and internet blogs, that challenge once-impregnable state monopolies on the flow of news, governments keep finding new ways to suppress contrary views. Whereas the dictatorships of old snuffed out opponents or chucked them in jail, today’s softer incarnations achieve similar silence by subtler means. Hyper-regulation via catch-all laws, plus financial carrots and sticks, tend to replace cruder direct control.

Salon’s got the best-looking and most-informative (if slightly slower than others) results page I’ve seen — though I’m disappointed by the lack of a Huckabee cartoon. If you’re looking to see the results roughly as they come in, this is what I’d watch.

Having said that, if you can’t handle the delay, CNN does seem the most up-to-the-minute.