The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Link to Stanford University News article, "Wikipedia, if it were run by academic experts, would look like this".

Excerpt: It's September, and as school resumes, so does the wrangling between students and teachers across the country over the reliability of Wikipedia and other Internet sources as fodder for footnotes in research papers.

The debate has been going on for years. When philosopher Larry Sanger left Wikipedia – the project he co-founded – he said its "anti-elitism" was the root of its shortcomings. He said that because pretty much anyone could write anything, expertise was mistrusted and those committed to mayhem or propaganda could too easily dominate the medium.

But he did recommend an online alternative: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

No Recession in the Campaign Finance Industry

"Keep the change."

Link to September 7 AP story, "No recession here: Election spending sets records".

Excerpt (with added emphasis along the way): Turns out politics, for all its focus on the gloomy economy, is a recession-proof industry.

This year's volatile election is bursting with money, setting fundraising and spending records in a high-stakes struggle for control of Congress amid looser but still fuzzy campaign finance rules.

Based on the latest financial reports, House and Senate candidates in this election cycle raised nearly $1.2 billion, well ahead of the pace for contests in 2008, 2006 and 2004.

Races for governor in 37 states — more than half of those for open seats — are also setting fundraising records. Billionaire Republican Meg Whitman leads the way, pumping $104 million of her own money into her campaign for California governor.

And then there's this little tidbit from yesterday's Journal-Sentinel.

In his bid for governor, businessman Mark Neumann badly lags behind rival Republican Scott Walker in fund raising - that is, if you don't count the $2.7 million Neumann has lent his own campaign.

Or this from the Miami Herald's "Naked Politics" blog:

And that was as of July 15th!

"What's it all about....."

"Baptists, Bibliophiles, and Bibles, Oh My!": The 7th Most Popular Floatingsheep Map

LINK

Blue dots = most bookstores

Red dots = most churches

Link to original 11/30/2009 Floatingsheep post.

Link to 9/7/2010 Floatingsheep encore.

The most popular map is titled "The Beer Belly of America", which shows Wisconsin as an almost completely red state.  (More to do with the eyes than politics.)