These are my links for January 20th through January 23rd:

• [toread] Dan O’Connell: I genuinely miss
 great music TV | | Independent Arts – News, notes and quotes on the Arts world – Blogs – Hello you! I wrote a blog about our TV show for the @theindynews Last 3 shows are on Wednesday night, C4.
  tags: none
• Why the left needs to keep the faith | Hynd’s Blog – ‘Politics and religion should not mix’. This is the mantra that is lazily wheeled out by self congratulating lefties as they marvel in their own enlightened wisdom. I come across well meaning social progressives who openly shun the role of faith based organisations as either an evangelical force that should be scorned, or, at best, a tool by which individuals can act out their selfish desire to please the big man upstairs. This lingering stereotype of faith based organisations not only alienates billions around the world who see their faith as their primary moral compass but also pragmatically restricts social movement’s ability to bring about the change they are so desperate to see.
  tags: politics religion peace cooperation
• Girls can love computing; someone just needs to show them how | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional – Thanks to the ubiquity of the internet and social media sites like Facebook, children and young adults, girls just as much as boys, now handle laptops and smartphones confidently, taking for granted their ability to use such highly complex technology without much effort.

  Why is it then that the other end of this spectrum, the side which produces technology rather than just consuming it, is still widely regarded as a a "boys only" club?
  tags: computer_science girls women technology

• Will Cameron’s call for popular films mean more silent comedies? | Stewart Lee | Comment is free | The Observer – David Cameron's advice to the British film industry is at odds with the nature of creativity
  tags: stewartlee film uk
• Internet Regulation & the Economics of Piracy | Cato @ Liberty – One reason is that they already are recapturing much of that revenue through “complementary” purchases. As Oberholzer-Gee observes, recording industry numbers show large increases in concert revenues corresponding to the drop in recorded music sales. That suggests that, as people discover new artists by sampling downloaded albums online, they’re shifting consumption within the sector to live performances. In other words, people have a roughly constant “music budget,” and what they don’t spend on the albums they’ve downloaded gets spent on seeing that new band they discovered. For the firms that specifically make their money from the sale of recordings, that may seem like cold comfort, but if we’re concerned with the music industry as a whole, it’s a wash. Something similar might occur with respect to purchases of merchandise based on licensed film properties.
  tags: piracy internet music film