If you're following the situation in the Ukraine, you may enjoy this first-person account from Kiev.  "It has become clear to any observer that this crowd is bound to win."  Amazing.  Before the blogosphere, there was no way to get this kind of reporting unfiltered. 

Man, is it cold.  We're talking Montana / Minnesota cold, not just Southern California cold.  As in frost on the car and gloves and jackets and boots and brrrr...  What's up with this?  Surely it is colder than usual in late November?  (Maybe Al Gore gave another speech on global warming.) 

I watched the Denver / Oakland football game tonight, taped from Sunday.  They were playing in the snow, in 18° weather, with a wind-chill of 6°.  I love watching football in the snow - from the warmth of my family room.  Okay, maybe it isn't that cold.  (Right now it is 35° here.) 

Do you enjoy Tom Coates' Tom Stafford's and Matt Webb's weblogs?  Then check out their new book Mind Hacks, "tips and tools for using your brain".  I love it. 

This equation explains a lot. 

Do you like Joel Spolsky?  Then mark this date; he's doing a NetSeminar on December 2 (Thursday), about social software.  I'm going to "attend" just because I like his writing. 

Ottmar Liebert is pondering a podcasting subscription service.  You know I love his music; I for one would subscribe immediately.  What's interesting is that with all the noise about podcasting, there is no well-defined way to do this.  The only simple possibility is to assign subscribers a unique URL for downloading the feed, but there is no way to perform authentication.  Adam?  Dave?  Andrew?  What sayeth y'all? 

Brent Simmons ponders The Virtues of XML-RPC.  If you're not a nerd, feel free to skip, if you are, click through - you'll enjoy it. 

In this corner, Jay Rosen claims the press is Not Up to It, in the other, Stephen Waters writes Journalism Is Up to It.  Interesting debate.  [ via Doc Searles ] 

If you're a Firefox user - and you should be - you should check out Luke Hutteman's comments on Firefox and his must-have extensions.  BugMeNot and NukeAnything look pretty useful!  (Don't worry, Microsoft, Firefox is not a platform :)