Tenebrae Link Roundup

Ever since I saw Bo Lozoff speak a couple weeks ago, I have been obsessively reading the newsletter for his Human Kindness Foundation, A Little Good News.

The newsletter is compelling reading, full of letters from people in prison, whom Lozoff works with extensively. Their stories of spiritual transformation are so hopeful, coming as they do from people who have done terrible things and lived terrible lives.

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Then there's this amazing and well-written story by Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi of Iran (registration required, damn you, New York Times) about the day she was working on some legal documents and found a discussion of how her government wanted to kill her.
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Research from Tufts University shows that white people get smarter in the presence of people of other races. I guess I will be going off to do my Masters degree at Howard University, then, because I can use all the help I can get.
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I have an unquenchable love for genius Tamil composer A.R. Rahman. His tunes combine traditional Indian instruments with modern dance beats and the result has made him the most popular composer on the Indian subcontinent. He has sold over 100 million albums.

Check out what is quite possibly the best video ever shot on top of a train - Chaiyya Chaiyya from the movie Dil Se.
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And in closing, I don't know what took me so long to find Fark. Drew Curtis's daily weird and funny news link roundup is worth reading just for his hilarious descriptions of the articles.Thusly:

Minister links hip-hop to Satan, claims heavy metal started it all, when everybody knows it started with disco

And

Cornell Biology Department to offer course on intelligent design. Two-month schedule starts with lecture on "Great Breakthroughs in Intelligent Design Research," followed by 59.5 days of lunch