A Wealth of Information to Impress your Friends

Kidding. But the BBC's country profiles are informative, well-written, and guaranteed to take up as much time as you have to read them. The information is compiled by BBC Monitoring, the portion of the BBC that scans world media in over 100 languages. It's really a wealth of information, with an overview section for each country followed by "Facts," "Leaders," and "Media." By the time you're through with this you'll be able to pass the diplomatic service exam.

Happy reading

My Favorite Wikipedia Article

This article has a special place in my heart. I wrote a lot of it, and in typical Wikipedia fashion I have to periodically defend it from idiots. When I began working on it it was little more than a stub. It has since attained Featured Article status, for which I sponsored it.

If you don't know what the heck a Kakapo is, it's probably even better than you would have guessed. Kakapo are the world's largest, and only flightless, parrots. They blunder blissfully through the forests of isolated New Zealand islands, pigging out and calling with loud 'booms' for mates. Sadly, there are only 87 of these special birds left, having been hunted and predated to near extinction. The New Zealand Department of Conservation is working diligently to defend the Kakapo from such diverse threats as rats, stoats, cats, infection, injury, and even avian flu.

Give this article a try, even just for the sheer strangeness of it all.

Reading Material

Since I spend so much time sitting at home, I decided to collect free, internet-available reading material for others like me. It might be useful, it might be interesting. It might be a big bore. Give it a shot.