links for 2010-05-17

clever infographic from an IBM researcher depicts changes in default privacy settings over time.

Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state's schools to "throwing them in to the enemy's flames". Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments.

Now Dunbar is on the brink of fulfilling a promise to change all that, or at least point Texas schools toward salvation. She is one of a clutch of Christian evangelists and social conservatives who have grasped control of the state's education board. This week they are expected to force through a new curriculum that is likely to shift what millions of American schoolchildren far beyond Texas learn about their history.

Metropolis magazine has announced the winner of its 2010 Next Generation contest: A brick that doesn't have to be baked or fired, but rather, can be grown.

Fox’s reporting is factually spotty — they assert that Wales is president of Wikimedia, when his own page says he’s chairman of the board — but the gist of the story hasn’t been refuted.