So who's on LinkedIn? The NYT sums up users in this way:

The average age of a LinkedIn user is 41, the point in life where people are less likely to build their digital identities around dates, parties and photos of revelry.

LinkedIn gives professionals, even the most hopeless wallflower, a painless way to follow the advice of every career counselor: build a network. Users maintain online résumés, establish links with colleagues and business acquaintances and then expand their networks to the contacts of their contacts. The service also helps them search for experts who can help them solve daily business problems.

The four-year-old site is decidedly antisocial: only last fall, after what executives describe as a year of intense debate, did the company ask members to add photos to their profiles.

That business-only-please strategy appears to be paying off. The number of people using LinkedIn, based in Mountain View, Calif., tripled in May over the previous year, according to Nielsen Online. At 23 million members, LinkedIn remains far smaller than Facebook and MySpace, each with 115 million members, but it is growing considerably faster.

Here's a link to my LinkedIn profile.

From the BBC:

Lithuania's parliament has passed the toughest restrictions anywhere in the former Soviet Union on the public display of Soviet and Nazi symbols.

It will now be an offence in the Baltic state to display the images of Soviet and Nazi leaders.

This includes flags, emblems and badges carrying insignia, such as the hammer and sickle or swastika.

Correspondents say equating Soviet and Nazi symbols in this way is certain to infuriate Russia.

From the BBC:

National Geographic has produced a film based on the book

A book about global warming has won this year's Royal Society prize for popular science writing.

Mark Lynas' Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet has already been turned into a TV programme and is now almost certain to experience a jump in sales. The book explains how Earth will change for every degree rise in temperature - from droughts to mass extinctions.

Mr Lynas was presented with the winner's £10,000 cheque at a ceremony hosted by the UK academy of science.

The award is one of the major publishing events of the year in the UK. Previous winners have included Bill Bryson, Stephen J Gould, Roger Penrose, and Stephen Hawking.

Six Degrees uses published scientific data and interviews with leading researchers to illustrate the changes we could witness in a warmer world.

Professor Jonathan Ashmore, the chair of the judges, described the book as "compelling and gripping".

"It presents a series of scientifically plausible, worst-case scenarios without tipping into hysteria," he said.

"Six Degrees is not just a great read, written in an original way, but also provides a good overview of the latest science on this highly topical issue.

"This is a book that will stimulate debate and that will, Lynas hopes, move us to action in the hope that this is a disaster movie that never happens. Everyone should read this book."