Pirates

When most of us think of Pirates, mostly visions of swashbucklers from old Disney movies like Captain Kidd or Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow spring immediately to mind. Indeed, images of peg-legged characters sporting eye-patches who can drink a yard of ale and harbor evil intentions for all ye' wenches, have tended to romanticize or otherwise color our impressions of these seafaring scallywags.

In reality, pirates have captured our imaginations in a variety of ways through the years. They also come in a variety of types. Baseball has the Pittsburgh Pirates, the music industry blames Music Pirates for a downturn in business due to free downloading.

Getting back to those colorful sea bandits, though, piracy on the waterways of the world is actually a very real and continuing threat, as demonstrated by incidents in and around the waterways of countries like Somalia.

In the blogosphere, you can find information on all types of Pirates. There are any number of blogs devoted to Johnny Depp, for example. Music piracy is discussed at places like Business Week. Bucs Dugout is a site devoted to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

On a more serious note, you'll find information about the real-life Somali Pirates at the CounterTerrorism Blog, as well as one of the Somali Pirates home movies at Lede Blog.