links for 2008-12-23

"When a Continental Airlines Boeing 737 skidded off the runway at Denver airport on Saturday, the 155 passengers and crew might have been understandably preoccupied with how they would escape from a plane that was being engulfed by flames. But for software engineer Mike Wilson the first priority was to report on his disrupted travel arrangements to his followers on the blogging site Twitter."

"The novel is "The Catcher in the Rye" for young Muslims, said Carl Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture."