Ask Engadget: Best home espresso machine?

I have a pretty boring job. I’m not complaining, but I’ve just been looking for a good espresso machine for home use
to get me going in the AM. Semi-auto is fine, but full auto’s probably a little much, and it needs to be something
that works well, won’t require a lot of maintainence, and that the wife won’t kick out of the kitchen because
it’s so ugly. I hear the Rancilio Silvia has the best bang/buck, but is there anything else out there worth the cash?

The truth is that these are the most non-violent kids we have ever had, and they all own Playstations. The government is so desperate to find some youth crime to crack down on that they’re strip-searching kids for 10 bucks while locking up 11 year-old girls for throwing rocks and eating french fries. The most peaceful generation of Americans in recorded history is being shoved through metal detectors, having their civil rights violated on a daily basis, are the victims of unreasonable search and seizure, and are treated with constant suspicion.

The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games - Game Revolution (via Mental Flossing)

Yes it’s a rant, but if the stats he’s got there are actually accurate, it paints a very different picture to the one we normally get. So what’s going on here? Why have those statistics been dropping and is it the same here in Australia?

Video games Australia Buy video games from stores in Australia

Such a cool idea: ESV Bible Blog - The Bible and Google Maps. My wife was mentioning something like this the other day: Google Maps has the serious potential to revolutionise education, especially history & geography, but even social science (or HSIE or whatever it’s being called now). Chicago Crime is a perfect example of this, using freely available crime stats (do Australian police forces release any data like this?) to generate a human-usable interface.

The potential is virtually limitless. As I noted earlier, within a day someone had already generated a hack that showed the location of the London Bombings, and the Google Earth program allows users to post custom locations with notes on their forums which are then translated into actual, viewable data on everyone’s copy of Google Earth.

Teachers could clearly demonstrate to students locations, statistics, narratives, etc in a format that easily accessible to the students. Does anyone know of teachers already doing something like this?

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Bus firm takes car sharers to court

…a group of French cleaning ladies who organised a car-sharing scheme to get to work are being taken to court by a coach company which accuses them of “an act of unfair and parasitical competition”.

Please, someone tell me that this is a joke. Please?

Nick Bradbury has announced that Nick FeedDemon 1.6 Beta 1 is available for FeedDemon users with a purchased copy. Heaps of updates including the built-in synchronisation with NewsGator and the long awaited update inactive groups option.

If you already own a copy of FeedDemon, go download it. If not, go buy it.

LONDON TERRORIST ATTACKS : 7 July 2005