Conference on World Affairs. Founded in 1949, free and open to the public, discussing many many issues that affect us today. Notables who've spoken at it include R. Buckminster Fuller, Henry Kissinger, Roger Ebert, Andy Ihnatko, and Arthur Miller. more inside

trendalicious! "trendalicious is a near real-time view of website popularity trends as reflected by the del.icio.us social bookmarking service. All URLs that have been posted by a minimum of two people in the past fifty minutes are displayed, ranked by the total number of recent posts. more inside

Amazon directory of free MP3 Downloads "Amazon has put together a single page listing all the free, no-DRM MP3s you can download from their site, as promos for CDs." And it updates every six hours. (Via Boing Boing.)

Stop trying to protect me from myself. There is a new treaty aimed at reducing smoking related deaths, which are listed as the number two highest preventable killer, just behind hypertension. more inside

Engelbert Humperdinck - SuperSpy Well....not really. The NSA apparently does some training, and although they normally use fictional names, this time they decided to use Engelbert Humperdinck's name. Then the speculation began. more inside

Curious George: Self Help I'm taking a psychology class, and we have to compare some self help book/video/system with as much science as Psychology has to offer. So, does anyone have any self help they can recommend? more inside

Curious George: Can we make a difference? [American Election] Ok, the general feeling is that there's going to be an October Surprise, or maybe several. The purpose of the October Surprise, for those who haven't been paying attention, is to present the country with information that is damaging to the other candidate (or helpful to the presenting candidate) without giving enough time for the other candidate to respond adequately. The question is, does that have to hold true any more? more inside

SpaceShipOne wins the X-Prize. For the first time, a commercial space ship has made it repeatedly into space and returned within a short period of time. As a consequence, aside from making history, they win the $10,000,000 X-Prize to get their company going on the dream of space travel for tourism and industry. more inside

Curious George: Why don't you vote? This question is for all Monkeys in democratic societies: Why don't you vote? more inside

Al Franken and Others starting "Progressive Radio Station" Bored with talk-radio being dominated by Conservatives, and perhaps seeking some profit along the way, Air America Radio is launching a new network at the end of the month in New York, Illinois, and California. There will also be simultaneous broadcasting over the internet, for the rest of the interested population. more inside