• Pope adviser calls UK a Third World Country, deploys racism, then says atheists are aggressive – “The Vatican said the cardinal had not intended ‘any kind of slight’, and was referring to the UK’s multicultural society.” Well that’s okay, then. (Not.)
• Why parents can’t do maths today – Article on how they teach arithmetic in British schools. I think the interesting thing is that approaches to both long division and multiplication are now more heuristics than algorithms.

“Daybreak,” this weeks PhotoFriday, is a tricky challenge for me. I’m much more likely to be around at sunset than at day break. What can I say? I’m just not a morning person. But I will concede that getting up early, or at least not sleeping well, was worth it to see sunrise over the Himalayas.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Round.” I’m entry number 229.

• Catholics, it’s you this Pope has abused – Why even Catholics should Protest The Pope.
• There’s more to colour than meets the eye – Nice discussion of colours and what they “mean.”
• Compromising Twitter’s OAuth security system – " What it comes down to is that OAuth 1.0a is a horrible solution to a very difficult problem. It works acceptably well for server-to-server authentication, but there are far too many unresolved issues in the current specification for it to be used as-is on a widespread basis for desktop applications. It’s simply not mature enough yet." This is pretty much what I found implementing OAuth for Yahoo! in Yummy.

It’s nearly four years old now, so I do expect the odd beach ball occasionally. When my MacBook is doing something hard or complex or just opening iTunes, it often shows its “I’m too busy to respond to you right now” indicator. But this time it was different. The beachball appeared and didn’t really go away again. Sure, it occasionally hid but as soon as I instructed the machine to do anything it would return.

I thought that this image of some slide film would be appropriate for PhotoFriday this week. It works (to my mind) for two reasons. First, the theme is “Round” and the shape of the film canister is, well, round. Secondly, Fuji Sensia is in the news as it has been discontinued. It’s quite sad news. In the days before I went digital it’s the film that used the most.

• Introducing iOS Beta Builder – Make distributing beta versions of iPhone software so much easier.

“Warm,” this weeks PhotoFriday, is a bit of an alien concept here in the UK so I had to go a little further afield in order to find a picture to represent this weeks theme. This was taken in Tennessee, USA.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “The Street.” I’m entry number 215.

• This Summer’s Sexiest Images From Saturn – Wow. Amazing images from Cassini.

This weeks PhotoFriday, “The Street,” was one where, unusually, I had quite a few options that I was happy with. In the end I figured that it had to be somewhere where pretty much all of life happens on the street. There were a few images taken in Vietnam that came close, but I like this one in Havana, Cuba, because everyone was completely oblivious to my presence; life goes on even when there are nosey tourists with cameras.

• Pope merchandise – “The pope is visiting the UK soon, and the merchandise is already on sale, but it’s rubbish. This week’s challenge is to show the Vatican what they should be selling to mark the occasion. God will be delighted.” (via @bengoldacre)
• The Creativity Crisis – “The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded.” It’s always bugged me when people refer to ’the creatives’ when talking about designers or artists. This is why! But back to the article… it’s interesting that you can “teach” or at least encourage creativity.