Via Dave Winer

When the Pulitzer Prizes were announced recently some bloggers took to arms about the award bestowed to the Associated Press for photography.

Conservatives often claim liberals are just a bunch of whiners. Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

Via Jason Kottke

A terrific discussion about Sebastiao Salgado‘s photojournalism through the years. It's an audio-visual presentation. So, turn your speakers up!

Via Arun Venugopal

“You must apply to the Guggenheim Foundation to be considered in one of its annual competitions for Fellowships. The Foundation receives from 3500 to 4000 applications each year and is able to make about 220 grants. No one who applies is guaranteed success in the competition. There is no pre-screening. Applicants will be matched against others working in their own field and then against all others in the competition in a rigorous selection process. The work of artists will be reviewed by artists, scientists by scientists, historians by historians. The Foundation has a network of several hundred advisers who either meet at the Foundation offices to look at applicants' work or receive application materials to read locally. These advisers then submit reports on their ranking of the applicants in their respective fields. After this review, a final Committee of Selection weighs the applications field by field and determines how many awards to make in each area.”

Four desis have won the coveted Guggenheim Fellowships this year.

Pico Iyer, Writer, Santa Barbara, California: Reflections on the fourteenth Dalai Lama.
Rohinton Mistry, Writer, Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Fiction.
Santosh Srinivas Vempala, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Algorithmic convex geometry.
Meenakshi Wadhwa, Curator of Meteoritics, Field Museum, Chicago: Analysis of solar wind returned by the Genesis spacecraft.

Via International Journalist's Network

Online voting is now open in an international competition to honor the best blogs that defend freedom of expression.

Paris-based press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is organizing the competition, in cooperation with the Deutsche Welle news agency. The aim is to recognize bloggers in various parts of the world who often put themselves in danger by defending free expression.

Anyone can vote once in each of six categories: Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Iran, and International.

Iran, as the only country that has its own category in the contest, has been a difficult place for those speaking out on the Internet. The Islamic state has sought to restrict Weblogs even as they have grown in popularity and influence. Authorities there routinely arrest and imprison bloggers who openly defend the right to speak freely. Recently, RSF reported that authorities arrested one blogger’s pregnant wife after she publicly defended her husband for promoting free speech.

To vote for a blog, visit the following website.

Via Sendhil Revuluri, Math Teacher, Bronx Academy of Letters

The Bronx Academy of Letters, a new, small public high school, is looking for teachers of English, math, chemistry, social studies, Spanish, and special education. We're looking for diverse, capable, hardworking teachers who will relish the excitement and challenge of being part of a growing school community.

The Bronx Academy of Letters opened in 2003, infusing a rigorous, interdisciplinary, college-preparatory curriculum with literary themes. Currently enrolling ninth and tenth graders, our school will continue to add ninth-grade classes each September until 2006, at which point the school will house about 300 students.

Teachers emphasize literacy and clear writing across all subjects and serve as student advisors. Special assemblies and field trips expose students to New York's rich literary and publishing world, there is an emphasis on student participation in after-school activities including publications, and writers in residence are on hand to support the faculty.

Please see the call for teachers and the rest of our site for more information. If you are interested, send a résumé and cover letter to hiring@bronxletters.org.

All positions begin in Fall 2005. All instructors must be certified to teach in New York City. (If you are not yet certified, you may be interested in the New York City Teaching Fellows.