Links, Links, Links

I've put up an initial set of links in the sidebar. If you have more that you think should be there, then mention them in this comment thread or otherwise tell me about them. Sites should be either discussing utilitarianism itself (e.g. Utilitarianism Resources) or be discussing matters which are important from a utilitarian perspective (e.g. UN IRIN). Here's an overview of the current link list:

Wikipedia
The Wikipedia article on utilitarianism, which is a good place to start for anyone who doesn't already know what that is. The article (in its current form) has good content on the history of utilitarianism, types of utilitarianism, and common criticism of utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism Resources
An extensive list of links about utilitarianism, mainly from a philosophy perspective.

Utilitarian Philosophers
An extensive collection of works by and about the following prominent utilitarian philosophers: David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, William Godwin, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, R. M. Hare, and Peter Singer.

UN IRIN
United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks. An excellent source of humanitarian news. "IRIN's principal role is to provide news and analysis about sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia for the humanitarian community... IRIN is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but its news service is editorially independent."

allAfrica
A great news site for anything going on in Africa. It aggregates content from a wide variety of news sources and organizes it into various topics. Sections on sustainable development, peace, and business/technology are particularly good. A lot of the content is on Africa's pressing humanitarian situations and often tumultuous politics, but sections like sports and soccer are good reminders that there is more than despair on the content.

Oxfam International
A leading worldwide humanitarian non-governmental organization (NGO). Noted utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer is a strong supporter. (As am I.) "Oxfam works with communities, allies and partner organizations, undertaking long-term development, emergency work, research and campaigning for a fairer world. Oxfam works on a broad range of issues, including trade, conflict, debt and aid, and education."

Neuroeconomics blog
Blog of the Center for the Study of Neuroeconomics at George Mason University. It defines neuroeconomics as "an interdisciplinary research program with the goal of building a biological model of decision making in economic environments." It's not exactly utilitarianism, but interesting nonetheless, and with considerable overlap to parts of the work I hope to discuss here, namely the biological underpinnings of social phenomena. Neuroeconomics is not without its dark side, either. As one commenter puts it: "Seems like it will only add to the arsenal of Market Researchers, who have already done immense damage to our livelihood in their attempt to quantify humans."

Real Climate
A top-notch team blog from a group of climate scientists. It covers climate science but avoids the question "So what should we do about it?" (To my surprise, the movie An Inconvenient Truth does the same thing.) Climate change seems so important, I had to include something about it, but I don't know any good websites discussing its implications. Any suggestions?

Daily Kos
A massive team/community blog with a loose theme of supporting the US Democratic Party. While I hope that this website will feel inclusive to people of all political ideologies and nationalities, I wanted to include something political in the links because many political matters have large effects on quality of life. DailyKos is just the best politics site I'm familiar with. Yes, it does reflect my personal bias in both ideology and nationality. But DailyKos is also a massive (its readership is in the hundreds of thousands) community of people trying to make the world a better place, and I may occasionally post there to share ideas from and generate interest in this website.

Happy Planet Index
An interesting project which ranks countries by a happiness to environmental impact ratio that they developed:

HPI = (life satisfaction) x (life expectancy) / (ecological footprint)

I recommend taking the survey to calculate your own value. I got a 59; the world average is 46; USA is 28.8; they think 83.5 is a reasonable target. I think the survey is slightly flawed but pretty good overall.

Update September 23, 2006
Adding PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). There should be a link to somewhere in the animal welfare/animal rights community, since the handling of non-human animals is a primary concern here. I don't know if PETA is the best site to link to, but I believe it to be prominent and reputable within this community. Personally, I dislike how groups like PETA often use tactics designed to make us feel bad, because these bad feelings are, well, bad, and they seem to not achieve the goal of making us more sensitive to the well-being of animals. Instead, I prefer a more polite conversation. So note that this link is an endorsement not of the organization but of its underlying goals.