The new bipartisanship

The new bipartisanship:

North America's forgotten civil war

North America's forgotten civil war:

The War of 1812 is an uncertain affair in American memory and legend. Its touchstones -- the composition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the burning of Washington -- tend to overshadow the roots and consequences of the three-year conflict. Historian Alan Taylor offers a corrective in "The Civil War of 1812," arguing that the United States used the war to consolidate its victory in the American Revolution and become a fully sovereign nation.

No Kinect sex yet, but the potential is there

No Kinect sex yet, but the potential is there: Microsoft's new motion-sensitive controller may not have been designed with adult activity in mind, but to one expert in mashup up technology and sex, it's a no-brainer that the two will eventually meet.

Nissan Leaf Wins Europe's 'Car of the Year'

Nissan Leaf Wins Europe's 'Car of the Year': A jury of 57 journalists chooses the electric car over 40 other models, calling it "the first EV that can match conventional cars in many respects."

Radiation Rings Hint Universe Was Recycled Over and Over

Radiation Rings Hint Universe Was Recycled Over and Over: The Big Bang may be merely the most recent in a series of cosmic births, according to a new analysis of the cosmic background radiation.

MacDailyNews

MacDailyNews: Lion will be the next giant step away from computing as we have known it for the past 25 years."

Full article, with explanations of the four bullet points above, here.

The unexpected genius of Leslie Nielsen - Film Salon - Salon.com

The unexpected genius of Leslie Nielsen - Film Salon - Salon.com: Then came "Airplane!" and ZAZ's short-lived but much-loved 1982 series "Police Squad!," which was reincarnated on the big screen as the "Naked Gun" franchise. Nielsen was reborn as a gray-haired clown. He turned his radio-ready baritone into a comic instrument and played it with gusto.

Scrivener 2.0.2 - Project management, word processing tool for writers. (Shareware)

Scrivener 2.0.2 - Project management, word processing tool for writers. (Shareware): Scrivener is a project management and writing tool for writers of all kinds that stays with you from that first unformed idea all the way through to the first - or even final - draft. Outline and structure your ideas; take notes; storyboard your masterpiece using a powerful virtual corkboard; view research while you write; track themes using keywords; dynamically combine multiple scenes into a single text. Scrivener has already been enthusiastically adopted by best-selling novelists and novices alike. Outline... Edit... Storyboard... Write.

Roseburg couple arrested for public sexual encounter | KPIC CBS 4

Roseburg couple arrested for public sexual encounter: ROSEBURG, Ore. -- A Roseburg Police Department officer was called to the 700 block of SE Jackson Street Sunday evening, after someone reported finding a couple having sex in a backyard visible to the public.

Guernica / Updike Redux

Guernica / Updike Redux: In a previously unpublished interview, John Updike talks about Nabokov and his other literary heroes, why he wrote a book about a terrorist, and why he never expected to be a novelist.

"Boardwalk Empire" recap: Accusations fly

"Boardwalk Empire" recap: Accusations fly: In the penultimate episode of this season of "Boardwalk Empire," Harry Houdini's frequently invoked brother, Hardeen (Remy Auberjonois) finally makes an appearance — upside-down, red-faced and struggling to remove himself from a straitjacket. Later, he performs for a few guests in Nucky's suite, dazzling a smitten Margaret with his sleight-of-hand. "I knew you were deceiving me, but you managed it anyway," she coos. "Deception requires complicity, however subconscious," Hardeen explains. "We want to be deceived."

"Mundus vult decipi."

Why Rosebud?

Okay, everybody knows Rosebud is his sled, -- but, do you know WHY Rosebud is the name of his sled?

Because, in order to really stick it to the Old Man, they were going to make public Hearst's widely-known pet-name for his girlfriend's private parts — "Rosebud."

Takes on whole new levels of meaning now, doesn't it?

It’s official: Google TV is a flop

It’s official: Google TV is a flop: Sony has already slashed 25% off the poorly-conceived 'Google TV'...

The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot

The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot: The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who -- with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI's own undercover agents -- allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon.  Media accounts are almost uniformly trumpeting this event exactly as the FBI describes it.  Loyalists of both parties are doing the same, with Democratic Party commentators proclaiming that this proves how great and effective Democrats are at stopping The Evil Terrorists, while right-wing polemicists point to this arrest as yet more proof that those menacing Muslims sure are violent and dangerous.

But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI -- as they've done many times in the past -- found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a "Terrorist plot" which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI's own concoction. Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts -- and an uncritical media amplifies -- its "success" to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government's vast surveillance powers -- current and future new ones -- are necessary.

And every other step taken to perpetrate this plot -- from planning its placement to assembling the materials to constructing the bomb -- was all done at the FBI's behest and with its indispensable support and direction. It's impossible to conceive of Mohamud having achieved anything on his own.

Against Health - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Against Health - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education: According to de l'Enclos, if a life in the best of vigorous health is without love, it is no life at all, only a long illness. Even health is illness without love; conversely, there is no illness that love cannot cure or make tolerable. At the same time, love is trouble. Like wind, it troubles the surface of the sea, but it also makes navigation possible. The agitation of love preserves the self, keeps it healthy even when—especially when—it is sick. The risk of love, which so often ends in shipwreck, is what keeps a person healthy.

It may be vital to know that cigarettes are bad for your health, but you might at the same time feel, like Sartre, that life without cigarettes is not worth living.

In the historical debate between mind and matter, mind won and silenced the voice of the body; it interpreted the body in terms of mind and considered it a mute machine that only reason could discover. It is time to recover that corporeal voice, to recast the Epicurean thinking that puts pleasure in the place of thought, that imagines bodily pleasure to be a kind of thinking. Good health will then be understood as a consequence of good pleasure, and adult pleasure will be prized, not tabooed; moderated, not censored; indulged, not feared.

Scientists glimpse universe before the Big Bang

Scientists glimpse universe before the Big Bang:

Jihad at Pioneer Courthouse Square | OregonLive.com

Jihad at Pioneer Courthouse Square | OregonLive.com: But that affadavit notes the following:

-- When Mohamud could not get in touch with terrorists oversees, the FBI contacted him.

-- While Mohamud "spent months working on logistics," Denson's story notes, and "allegedly identified a location to place the bomb," he "mailed bomb components to the FBI operatives, who he believed were assembling the device."  Does that mean Mohamud did not build the bomb?

-- The FBI "operative" was right there with Mohamud on Nov. 4 at "a remote spot in Lincoln County, where they detonated a bomb concealed in a backpack as a trial run for the upcoming attack."

-- And the FBI transported Mohamud to Portland so that he could carry out the deadly bombing.

So, the way this reads, the FBI assisted him any way they could.

"Finishing the Hat": Stephen Sondheim's magnificent musical memoir

"Finishing the Hat": Stephen Sondheim's magnificent musical memoir: For a sizable tribe of acolytes, there is much to worship, analyze, and debate in the self-effacing but nonetheless magnificent, altar-like structure that is Stephen Sondheim's "Finishing the Hat." In the same way that his sharply psychological and intellectually (as well as tonally) challenging musicals created a new archetype for the Broadway theater, this consistently compelling book -- although burdened with an unfortunate spine-sprawling subhead that overly telegraphs his intent: "Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes" -- attempts to define a new form for a musical memoir, one that weaves biography, commentary and exegesis. It succeeds with radiant intelligence and usually cheerful intensity; Sondheim writes with expected clarity and objectivity, but with an unexpectedly open and humble mien. The authorial voice is not that of a man with a brownstone full of accolades, but that of a man who has something meaningful he wants to pass along after more than a half-century of close observation and diligent participation.

Zeta Woof: You Betcha

Zeta Woof: You Betcha

That's something you don't see everyday: One jackass holding another.

CultureLab: Storytelling 2.0: When new narratives meet old brains

CultureLab: Storytelling 2.0: When new narratives meet old brains: "We are our narratives" has become a popular slogan. "We" refers to our selves, in the full-blooded person-constituting sense. "Narratives" refers to the stories we tell about our selves and our exploits in settings as trivial as cocktail parties and as serious as intimate discussions with loved ones. We express some in speech. Others we tell silently to ourselves, in that constant little inner voice. The full collection of one's internal and external narratives generates the self we are intimately acquainted with. Our narrative selves continually unfold.

The language areas of the left hemisphere are well placed to carry out these tasks. They draw on information in memory (amygdalo-hippocampal circuits, dorsolateral prefrontal cortices) and planning regions (orbitofrontal cortices). As neurologist Jeffrey Saver has shown, damage to these regions disrupts narration in a variety of ways, ranging from unbounded narration, in which a person generates narratives unconstrained by reality, to denarration, the inability to generate any narratives, external or internal.

One compelling study used PET imaging to watch what is going on in the brain during inner speech. As expected, this showed activity in the classic speech production area known as Broca's area. But also active was Wernicke's area, the brain region for language comprehension, suggesting that not only do the brain's speech areas produce silent inner speech, but that our inner voice is understood and interpreted by the comprehension areas. The result of all this activity, I suggested, is the narrative self.

If we create our selves through narratives, whether external or internal, they are traditional ones, with protagonists and antagonists and a prescribed relationship between narrators, characters and listeners. They have linear plots with a fixed past, a present built coherently on it, and a horizon of possibilities projected coherently into the future. Digital technologies, on the other hand, are producing narratives that stray from this classic structure. New communicative interfaces allow for novel narrative interactions and constructions. Multi-user domains (MUDs), massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), hypertext and cybertext all loosen traditional narrative structure. Digital narratives, in their extremes, are co-creations of the authors, users and media. Multiple entry points into continuously developing narratives are available, often for multiple co-constructors.

Finally, there's the neuro-evolutionary perspective. Gazzaniga suggests that the rise of the brain's left hemisphere interpreter provides the evolutionary advantage of continued reinforcement of a new capacity for relentlessly hypothesising about possible causal patterns, combined with an older, right hemisphere capacity to make probability-based decisions. As Gazzaniga puts it, "Once mutational events in the history of our species brought the interpreter into existence, there was no getting rid of it."

My Thanksgiving Pies

The whole idea of Thanksgiving dinner is that you get to dine on leftovers for the next three days, and no snack is complete without another slice of pie.

My Thanksgiving Pies: Along with the turkey, which shall go in the oven at eight o'clock sharp tomorrow morning with stuffing made from a recipe clipped from The Wall Street Journal, I also volunteered to make the pies. Leslie assured me that, except for the mincemeat, they would be superfluous, since her sister is to bring three more pies and how many pies do you need for eight people? One each seems like a reasonable answer to that question.

Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction - NYTimes.com

Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction - NYTimes.com:

Oprah: Apple iPad is my ‘number one favorite thing ever’

Oprah: Apple iPad is my ‘number one favorite thing ever’: Oprah announced that the iPad is her "number one favorite thing ever"...

Netflix offers $8 streaming-only option

Netflix offers $8 streaming-only option: The company now charges a monthly fee of $7.99 for streaming only, sans DVDs by mail, and at least $9.99 per month for streaming and DVD-by-mail service.

Apple releases iOS 4.2.1

Apple releases iOS 4.2.1: On Monday, Apple released iOS 4.2, bringing features such as multitasking and unified inboxes to iPads, and adding AirPlay and AirPrint functionality to other supported iOS devices.

Netflix raises prices, introduces streaming-only plan

Netflix raises prices, introduces streaming-only plan: Netflix on Monday raised rates for its DVD plans, and also introduced a new, cheaper streaming-only plan.

Nov. 22, 1963: Zapruder Films JFK Assassination

Nov. 22, 1963: Zapruder Films JFK Assassination: A Dallas spectator unwittingly films the assassination of President Kennedy on an 8mm home-movie camera, contributing one of the 20th century's earliest and most significant pieces of user-generated content. The funerary weekend that follows will be telecast by satellite worldwide in the first giant example of the "global village."

Today's Gemini Horoscope from Jonathan Cainer

Today's Gemini Horoscope from Jonathan Cainer: Gemini, Monday, 22 November 2010
Daily, Yesterday, Weekly, Monthly, Year Ahead
Peace, love, harmony and understanding. Tolerance and trust. What a shame we are not highly-evolved beings with elevated consciousness and superior intelligence. If only we were dolphins we might stand a chance of nurturing such qualities. But we are aggressive territorial, itchy, edgy, monkey-men; we love to squabble, to bitch, to gossip, to whinge and to covet. We have to work hard to transcend these urges. This week, though, you get a glorious chance to make contact with your higher self and profit at every level!

How interesting that he starts out with my private mantra - known only to me. And now, to y'all. "Peace, love, harmony, understanding" y'all.

Getting Kratered

Getting Kratered: "For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health, which they drink first, the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness. "Words of wisdom from...

Intel: 1,000-core processor possible | Processors | Macworld

Intel: 1,000-core processor possible | Processors | Macworld: Initial multicore chip architectures depended on a set of protocols that assures that each core has the same view of the system's memory, a technique called cache coherency.

As more cores are added to chips, this approach becomes problematic insofar that "the protocol overhead per core grows with the number of cores, leading to a 'coherency wall' beyond which the overhead exceeds the value of adding cores," the paper accompanying Mattson's talk noted.

Mattson has argued that a better approach would be to eliminate cache coherency and instead allow cores to pass messages among one another.

MacDailyNews: Study finds WiFi makes trees sick; affects all deciduous trees in the Western world

MacDailyNews: "Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands," René Schoemaker reports for Webwereld Netherlands.



"All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected, according to the study by a group of institutions, including the TU Delft University and Wageningen University," Schoemaker reports. "The city of Alphen aan den Rijn ordered the study five years ago after officials found unexplained abnormalities on trees that couldn't be ascribed to a virus or bacterial infection."



Schoemaker reports, "Additional testing found the disease to occur throughout the Western world. In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected."

Bloomberg reviews Samsung Galaxy Tab: ‘Much less than the sum of its parts’

Bloomberg reviews Samsung Galaxy Tab: ‘Much less than the sum of its parts’: Samsung's Android-based Galaxy Tab costs too much and suffers from a general lack of wow...

Let the tablet wars begin

Let the tablet wars begin:

I just bought my first touch-screen computer that's bigger than a phone. It's the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a device with a seven-inch screen running the Android operating system -- the first serious competitor to the Apple iPad, heralding an era of tablet-based computing that is going to change a lot of habits.

Scientists Convert Information Into 'Demonic' Energy - FoxNews.com

Scientists Convert Information Into 'Demonic' Energy - FoxNews.com: For the first time, scientists have converted information into pure energy, experimentally verifying a thought experiment first proposed 150 years ago.

Hacker Builds Floating Jedi-Training Remote Droid

Hacker Builds Floating Jedi-Training Remote Droid: A hardware hacker has made his own gravity-defying replica of the Jedi Training Remote from Star Wars, the one that fires laser bolts for Luke to intercept when first aboard the Millennium Falcon.

Universe's Quantum Weirdness Limits Its Weirdness

Universe's Quantum Weirdness Limits Its Weirdness: The weirdness of the universe at tiny scales may self-limit how strange quantum physics can be, according to a new study by an ex-hacker and a physicist.

CERN scientists trap antimatter

CERN scientists trap antimatter: Researchers have produced and captured antihydrogen atoms using strong magnetic fields in the Alpha experiment at CERN.

typo analysis - bookforum.com / in print

typo analysis - bookforum.com / in print: Though I never read the book cover to cover, the Chicago Manual of Style took up a lot of brain space during my copyediting years. Section headings suggested good titles for poems or chapters: "Mistaken Junction" (5.63), the vertiginous "Words Used as Words" (6.76). Ostensibly a reference work, it was really a form of secret potent literature, offering some of the challenges and unconventional pleasures of the sort of doorstop-shaped fiction I was consuming back then anyway.

Patti Smith wins National Book Award for nonfiction - National Book Awards - Salon.com

Patti Smith wins National Book Award for nonfiction - National Book Awards - Salon.com: Smith became the rare rock star to win a competitive literary award (Bob Dylan has win an honorary Pulitzer) and the one-time punk rocker offered an old-fashioned tribute to books. She begged publishers not to let the printed page die in the electronic age and recalled working decades ago at a Scribner's bookstore, stacking the National Book Award winners and wondering how it would feel to win one.

"So thank you for letting me find out," said Smith, 63, who now claims an award previously given to Rachel Carson, Gore Vidal and Joan Didion.

First antimatter atoms created and trapped - UPI.com

First antimatter atoms created and trapped - UPI.com: Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have trapped and held 38 anti-hydrogen atoms in place, each for a fraction of a second, the BBC reported Wednesday.

National Book Awards: Rocker Patti Smith takes nonfiction prize - latimes.com

National Book Awards: Rocker Patti Smith takes nonfiction prize - latimes.com: "I've loved books all my life," a teary-eyed Smith said as she took the stage at the gala ceremony in New York City. As a clerk at Scribner's Bookstore, she said, she shelved the National Book Award winners. "I used to wonder what it would feel like" — and here the musician, whose many awards include a place in the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, had to stop to regain her composure. "Thank you for letting me find out."

Wisconsin man accused of shooting TV over Palin dance

Wisconsin man accused of shooting TV over Palin dance:

A rural Wisconsin man blasted his television set with a shotgun after watching Bristol Palin's "Dancing with the Stars" routine Monday night, saying he was fed up with politics and Palin wasn't a very good dancer, according to court documents.

Apple’s iOS has nearly three times more games than previous 25 years of gaming combined

Apple’s iOS has nearly three times more games than previous 25 years of gaming combined: How big is iOS as a gaming platform? Very big...

Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth

Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth: Researchers at Stanford develop a new imaging method that enables visualization in unprecedented detail of the myriad connections between nerve cells in the brain.

Mac 911: When permissions won't be repaired

Mac 911: When permissions won't be repaired: If you habitually check or repair disk permissions (which, honestly, you don't need to do) you'll find some errors repeated over and over. Apple's advice: Don't sweat it.

iPhone app reveals that sex makes us happiest

iPhone app reveals that sex makes us happiest: Psychologists at Harvard publish results from their widely used Track Your Happiness iPhone app, declaring that "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

The Insanity Virus | Mental Health | DISCOVER Magazine

The Insanity Virus | Mental Health | DISCOVER Magazine:

Cable losing subscribers in record numbers

Cable losing subscribers in record numbers: Cable networks lost 130,000 subscribers in the third quarter...

"Green Lantern" Trailer Debuts

"Green Lantern" Trailer Debuts: The "Green Lantern" trailer has arrived introducing movie audiences to the world of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps. While it mainly focuses on Hal, the trailer also offers a glimpse of Oa and Hector Hammond.

Statistics don't lie, do they?

Statistics don't lie, do they?:

GefenTV Auto Volume Stabilizer keeps TV volume level

GefenTV Auto Volume Stabilizer keeps TV volume level: Gefen's GefenTV Auto Volume Stabilizer with Digital Audio Decoder stabilizes your TV's audio signal, giving you a consistent volume level while you channel surf.

The Beatles arrive on iTunes | iPod & Entertainment | Playlist | Macworld

The Beatles arrive on iTunes | iPod & Entertainment | Playlist | Macworld:

Meditate for Maximum Relaxation

Meditate for Maximum Relaxation: Mediation isn't just something for yogis or crystal-collecting new age fanatics. It's also something for overworked, gadget-loving geeks.

What We Wish Apple Would Do With iTunes

What We Wish Apple Would Do With iTunes: ITunes is one of the most successful software packages in history. It would seem to be a terrific platform for transforming the media landscape -- if it weren't such a bloated, hard-to-use, overloaded mess.

Movie Soundtracks Mimic Primordial Sounds of Animal Distress

Movie Soundtracks Mimic Primordial Sounds of Animal Distress: To convey suspense, drama & horror, designers of film soundtracks unknowingly produce the same essential sound patterns of animals under duress.

Nov. 16, 2000: ICANN Haz 7 New Top-Level Domains

Nov. 16, 2000: ICANN Haz 7 New Top-Level Domains: ICANN, the global body which decides such things, determines that the web-naming convention should include seven new top-level domains — those few letters that follow the dot in a website's name. Thus are born .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name and .pro. The world shrugs.

Mathematica 8.0 - Advanced mathematics, visualization, and more. (Commercial)

Mathematica 8.0 - Advanced mathematics, visualization, and more. (Commercial): Mathematica... Whether it\'s simple calculations or large-scale computations, programming, or presenting, Mathematica is the tool of choice across the technical world. Throughout industry, government, and education, two million people - from students to Nobel Laureates - use Mathematica to achieve more.

Hewlett-Packard runs out of Slates

Hewlett-Packard runs out of Slates: HP's new Slate 500 is now back-ordered, which the company attributes to "extraordinary demand." One report says it planned only 5,000 units but got orders for 9,000.

Meanwhile, Apple sells 3 million iPads in 80 days.

Facebook's new in-box brings MS Office support

Facebook's new in-box brings MS Office support: Newly unveiled messaging service does a lot of things, including native support for Microsoft's Office document formats. The feature isn't yet live for most Facebook users, but will be soon.

The fascinating morality of "The Walking Dead"

The fascinating morality of "The Walking Dead":

"The soul of man is a dark forest," wrote D.H. Lawrence in "Studies in Classic American Literature." In civilized life, that forest stays mostly hidden, thank goodness; that's why they call it "polite" society, quote marks optional. Stories let us explore the wooded interior -- especially horror, science fiction and fantasy, pop culture's version of ancient folk tales. AMC's horror series "The Walking Dead," based on Robert Kirkman's comic book series, is one of the better folk tales out there. As horror and as drama, it's workmanlike, sometimes more than that. It's slow and drab, its performances range from B-movie sturdy to wooden, and the non-American actors' accents slip with distressing regularity. But as a case study in situational ethics, it's terrific.

Apple teases iTunes-related announcement for Nov. 16

Apple teases iTunes-related announcement for Nov. 16: Apple on Monday altered its homepage and the front page of the iTunes Store to tease an iTunes-related announcement coming on Tuesday.

Welcome to your hamster cage!

Welcome to your hamster cage!: Dave Winer explains. "They make a wide variety of colorful and fun cages for hamsters that are designed to keep the hamster, and their human owners, entertained for hours. When you get tired of one, you can buy another. It's looks great until you realize one day, that you can't get out! That's the whole point of a cage. "And that's what Facebook and all the rest are. "When they say you get to use their social network for free, look for the hidden price. It's there. They're listening and...

Thousands hit the streets for Veterans Day parade

Thousands hit the streets for Veterans Day parade:

The weather was beautiful as thousands of people lined the streets of downtown Roseburg Thursday morning for the annual Veterans Day parade.

I was there. Pictures here.

Coach Bell approaching record: 'I can’t sit still'

Coach Bell approaching record: 'I can’t sit still':

The Roseburg Indians enter playoff action picking up another win against Grant of Portland Friday night--but their chief is also reigning in the record books.

 

He started as football coach at RHS the same year I started high school — 1970. He's still there. I am not — having managed to graduate — eventually.

Facebook's Project Titan: The Gmail killer?

Facebook's Project Titan: The Gmail killer?:

The war between Google and Facebook is going to get even uglier. TechCrunch predicts the latter will announce on Monday the launch of a sleek, integrated e-mailing service, tauntingly calling it the "Gmail killer."

Rare ‘Apple-1’ computer sold by Steve Jobs from parents’ garage goes on sale for £150,000

Rare ‘Apple-1’ computer sold by Steve Jobs from parents’ garage goes on sale for £150,000: The first ever Apple computer that company founder Steve Jobs sold from his parents' garage...

High-Speed Video Reveals Cats' Secret Tongue Skills

High-Speed Video Reveals Cats' Secret Tongue Skills: High-speed videos reveal the strange technique and delicate balance of physical forces cats use to lap milk from a bowl. Unlike dogs, who use their tongues as ladles to scoop water into their jaws, cats pull columns of liquid up to their mouths using only the very tips of their tongues.

10 Comics Ready for Prime Time - Comic Book Resources

10 Comics Ready for Prime Time - Comic Book Resources:

Nov. 11, 1856: Bessemer Becomes the Man of Steel

Nov. 11, 1856: Bessemer Becomes the Man of Steel: Englishman Henry Bessemer receives a U.S. patent for a new steelmaking process that revolutionizes the industry.

YouTube: 35 hours of video uploaded every minute

YouTube: 35 hours of video uploaded every minute: YouTube is enjoying strong growth, the company announces. Currently, people are uploading 35 hours of video every minute. That's a big jump from just last spring.

Liefeld Resurrects "Zombie Jesus"

Liefeld Resurrects "Zombie Jesus": The "Deadpool" co-creator's latest original series takes the zombie genre to truly biblical proportions. Rob Liefeld spoke with CBR about "Zombie Jesus" and other webcomics he's planning to publish in the near future.

Jonathan Rée - Antichrist | New Humanist

Jonathan Rée - Antichrist | New Humanist: To anyone who met him in his prime, Friedrich Nietzsche looked like a genial old-style man of letters: a quiet, dapper, unworldly bachelor, kind to children and exceedingly polite. But those who kept up with his prodigious output of books – he wrote more than one a year once he hit his stride in the 1880s – knew that the mild manner concealed incandescent ambition. The gentle professor liked to think of himself as a wild beast on the rampage, an intellectual terrorist who was going to “divide history into two halves”. His mission: to destroy the last vestiges of Christianity by means of a free-spirited “philosophy of the future” – a brave new pagan philosophy heralding a brave new pagan world. “I am no man,” he said. “I am dynamite.”

All Life on Earth Could Have Come From Alien Zombies

All Life on Earth Could Have Come From Alien Zombies: Life on Earth could have grown from the broken remains of alien viruses that, although dead, still contained enough information to give rise to new life.

Galactic Core Spews Weird Radiation Bubbles

Galactic Core Spews Weird Radiation Bubbles: The Fermi gamma-ray telescope has detected a weird, dumbbell-shaped bubble of radiation pouring out of the Milky Way's center.

Why the Democrats lost

Why the Democrats lost:

Nov. 9, 1888: Jack the Ripper Strikes for the Last Time ... Or Does He?

Nov. 9, 1888: Jack the Ripper Strikes for the Last Time ... Or Does He?: Mary Jane Kelly is carved to bits by the most famous serial killer in history, who then vanishes. His identity has never been discovered, and despite the best efforts of modern forensic science, there's a good chance it never will be.

As of Jan. 1, smoking in Roseburg parks could cost you $1,500

As of Jan. 1, smoking in Roseburg parks could cost you $1,500:

Although some Roseburg city council  members want to revisit the fine, one thing is certain: as of the first of the year, smoking and the use of chewing tobacco is banned in all Roseburg parks.

Will Netflix destroy the Internet? - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine

Will Netflix destroy the Internet? - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine: According to Sandvine, Netflix accounts for 20 percent of downstream Internet traffic during peak home Internet usage hours in North America. That's an amazing share—it beats that of YouTube, iTunes, Hulu, and, perhaps most tellingly, the peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol BitTorrent, which accounts for a mere 8 percent of bandwidth during peak hours.

That stat has huge implications for how ISPs manage their lines. If 2 percent of Netflix customers account for one-fifth of the traffic on North American broadband lines, what will happen when more and more Netflixers begin to watch movies during peak times?

"They Live": Jonathan Lethem explains a cult classic

"They Live": Jonathan Lethem explains a cult classic: "They Live," John Carpenter's 1988 cult classic, is a fairly subversive piece of work. The  film, which combines sci-fi, horror and satire -- and includes one of the iconic fight scenes in movie history -- is an allegorical treatise on the evils of capitalism, set in a Los Angeles populated by evil, conspiratorial and wealthy aliens. The film, despite a mixed original reception, has developed a rabid fan-boy following over the last few decades, and now Jonathan Lethem, the author of "Motherless Brooklyn," "The Fortress of Solitude" and, more recently, "Chronic City" has written "They Live," a meticulous, scene-by-scene analysis of its many, many layers. (If you haven't seen "They Live," the film has apparently also made its way online here.)

Take your iPad on stage with the iKlip

Take your iPad on stage with the iKlip: IK Multimedia's iKlip is a universal microphone stand adapter for the iPad that secures your iPad to virtually any microphone stand for optimal on-stage viewing.

What we can learn from procrastination : The New Yorker

What we can learn from procrastination : The New Yorker: He was always about to send the box, but the moment to act never arrived. Akerlof, who became one of the central figures in behavioral economics, came to the realization that procrastination might be more than just a bad habit. He argued that it revealed something important about the limits of rational thinking and that it could teach useful lessons about phenomena as diverse as substance abuse and savings habits.

Since open-ended tasks with distant deadlines are much easier to postpone than focussed, short-term projects, dividing projects into smaller, more defined sections helps. That’s why David Allen, the author of the best-selling time-management book “Getting Things Done,” lays great emphasis on classification and definition: the vaguer the task, or the more abstract the thinking it requires, the less likely you are to finish it.

(Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.)

The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: “Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.”

Arts & Letters Daily (05 Nov 2010)

Arts & Letters Daily (05 Nov 2010): Procrastination: under its antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all... more

"I too am tempted to eff the ineffable," writes Roger Scruton. "I want to describe that world beyond the window, even though I know that it cannot be described but only revealed"... more

Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate 11/4/10 9:00 PM

Review: Roku Players

Review: Roku Players: If you're a fan of a content stream not supported by Apple -- Major League Baseball and Hulu Plus come to mind -- you'll find that Roku’s broader selection of third-party content is a major advantage.

Mushroom season: 'The boost to the economy is fantastic'

Mushroom season: 'The boost to the economy is fantastic':

Each fall, from September to November or until the first snowfall, the population of Chemult, Ore., temporarily swells from 120 people to as many as a few thousand with an influx of mushroom pickers.

Apple iPad 3G Is Wired's Mobile Product of the Year

Apple iPad 3G Is Wired's Mobile Product of the Year: From its addictive, gesture-based interface to its steadily flowing 3G, the iPad has Wired editors smitten.

'Invisible' Material Can Now Fool Your Eyes

'Invisible' Material Can Now Fool Your Eyes: Tech journalists and military dreamers have talked about real-life invisibility cloaks for a while. They may finally be ready to happen.

Jawbone Creates a Wireless Speaker With Serious Boom | Product Reviews | Wired.com

Jawbone Creates a Wireless Speaker With Serious Boom | Product Reviews | Wired.com:

Comic Life 1.5.4 - Create comics for posting on the web. (Demo)

Comic Life 1.5.4 - Create comics for posting on the web. (Demo): Comic Life (Deluxe Edition) is the highly acclaimed fun, easy, and powerful application that expands what you can do with your digital photos. With page and panel layouts, streamlined image selection, cropping and placement of authentic speech balloons, customizable captions, and special effects lettering, Comic Life gives you numerous ways to explore your creativity. Liven up holiday snaps, tell a story, even create how-to guides!

Adobe Flash Player 10.1.102.64 - Web browser plug-in, now with H.264 GPU decoding. (Free)

Adobe Flash Player 10.1.102.64 - Web browser plug-in, now with H.264 GPU decoding. (Free): Mac OS X hardware decoding support On Mac computers, hardware decoding of H.264 video in Flash Player is available with Mac OS X 10.6.4 and later on hardware supported by the Mac OS Video Decode Acceleration Framework (such as the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M, and GeForce GT 330M). Whether hardware decoding will engage for a specific video is determined by the Mac OS Video Decode Acceleration Framework.
Mac OS X 10.6 required for 64-bit support.

T.S. Eliot and the Demise of the Literary Culture

T.S. Eliot and the Demise of the Literary Culture: After attending one of Eliot’s readings in New York in 1933, the critic Edmund Wilson wrote to the novelist John Dos Passos: “He is an actor and really put on a better show than Shaw. . . . He gives you the creeps a little at first because he is such a completely artificial, or, rather, self-invented character . . . but he has done such a perfect job with himself that you end up admiring him.”

In his criticism, Eliot wrote much that was prophetic of the age in which we now live. As early as the 1920s, he remarked “on the vague jargon of our time, when we have a vocabulary for everything and exact ideas about nothing.” He foresaw the rise of “the half-formed science [of] psychology, [which] conceals from both writer and reader the utter meaninglessness of a statement.”

He wasn’t accusing modern writers of immorality, or even amorality, but of ignorance “of our most fundamental and important beliefs; and that in consequence [contemporary literature’s] tendency is to encourage its readers to get what they can out of life while it lasts, to miss no ‘experience’ that presents itself, and to sacrifice themselves, if they make any sacrifice at all, only for the sake of tangible benefits to others in this world either now or in the future.”

Lack of Flash Gives MacBook Air Two Extra Hours of Battery Life | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Lack of Flash Gives MacBook Air Two Extra Hours of Battery Life | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably—as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02—with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions.

Atheism and the Enlightenment: In the name of godlessness | The Economist

Atheism and the Enlightenment: In the name of godlessness | The Economist: We still hate our bodies, he says, still venerate suffering and distrust pleasure.

This is the message of Mr Blom’s book, hinted at but left unstated until the closing chapters. He believes the Enlightenment is incomplete, betrayed by its self-appointed guardians. Despite all the scientific advances of the past two centuries, magical thinking and the cultural inheritance of Christianity remain endemic.

MacDailyNews

MacDailyNews: "The study, undertaken by Coverity, revealed 359 flaws, with 25 per cent of of them being ranked as 'high risk.'This ranking meant they were likely to cause a security breach or crash a device running the operating system," Scott reports. "Andy Chou, chief scientist and co-founder of Coverity, said... 'a significant number of these defects are the high risk types that our customers typically fix before shipping their products to market.'”

How the AK-47 Rewrote Rules of Modern Warfare

How the AK-47 Rewrote Rules of Modern Warfare: Originally engineered to reinforce state power, the AK-47 has powered some of the most dramatic revolutions. Author C.J. Chivers reviews the history of what he calls the most deadly and disruptive technology of the past century.

Dudley concedes, Kitzhaber wins historic third term

Dudley concedes, Kitzhaber wins historic third term:

Republican Chris Dudley conceded the race for governor to Democrat John Kitzhaber Wednesday in an evening news conference.

 

Mind-Reading Scanner Could Record and Analyze Dreams, Says Brain Researcher | Popular Science

Mind-Reading Scanner Could Record and Analyze Dreams, Says Brain Researcher | Popular Science:

Holographic Telecommuting May Soon Be Possible

Holographic Telecommuting May Soon Be Possible: A new holographic display can transmit three-dimensional movies from one location to another almost in real time. If Princess Leia had to send her "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope" message from Earth today, it would now be technologically possible.

Netflix Streaming Gives You What You Want, Right Now

Netflix Streaming Gives You What You Want, Right Now: Netflix is well on its way to fulfilling the promise of digital media: whatever you want, wherever and whenever you want it.

With more than 20,000 movies and TV shows, completely free to subscribers, viewable on more than 100 devices and counting (what’s up, Apple TV?), Netflix is well on its way to fulfilling the promise of digital media: whatever you want, wherever and whenever you want it. But it’s the little touches that really blow us away. Want to pause an episode of 30 Rock on your TV and finish it tomorrow on your computer? You got it. Didn’t catch why everyone’s laughing at Tracy? Just slide the scrub bar to rewind. Blu-ray disc has a 30-day wait? Stream that sucker in HD, right now. Suddenly, checking the mailbox for the little red envelope seems, well, primitive.

Wi-Fi, meet the TV antenna | Wireless - CNET News

Wi-Fi, meet the TV antenna | Wireless - CNET News: The technology, named Ngara, allows up to six users to occupy the equivalent spectrum space of one television channel (7 megahertz) and has a spectral efficiency of 20 bits per second per hertz.

Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard - Lapham’s Quarterly

Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard - Lapham’s Quarterly:

William Blake's America, 2010 - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

William Blake's America, 2010 - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education: Meanwhile, rich Americans plunder the nation, taking all they can get and then diving in for more. The Selfhood is so scared of the future, so isolated and loveless, that it is constantly grasping for security. Its fear makes it almost entirely without conscience. The only thing that might save the Selfhood is to surrender its aggressive individualism and seek solidarity with others through compassion—but this possibility is one that the Self cannot and will not understand. The Self believes that if it could only get to the next rung of wealth, the next tier of society, the next level of recognition and success, then all would be well.




A High Romantic, one might say, is someone who believes passionately in the idea that by joining, sexually and spiritually, with the beloved, one can be transformed into a higher, better version of oneself and help to transform the beloved as well. Blake believed this literally: He tried to make his marriage to Catherine a conjunction of soul mates. He also commits himself to a more complex version of the idea in his poems. There the poet figure is in constant search for the Emanation, the female being who can give him erotic and creative energy.




Love for sale! That is perhaps the greatest oxymoron. Love is never for sale, but sex always has been and will be. The Internet is probably the greatest market for sex without love that has ever existed. Hunger for pornography epitomizes the erotic life of the Selfhood in its current state. Porn is exciting, isolating, and attractive. It uncouples physical desire from the desire of the spirit, denying the very existence of the latter. Someone addicted to porn is someone who has given up on the possibility of a transforming love. Such a love involves risk—the risk of rejection, the risk of shame. The Selfhood is frightened of both these things, so it denies the possibility of erotic renovation and plays it safe.

Mark Twain: not an American but the American | Sarah Churchwell | Books | The Guardian

Mark Twain: not an American but the American | Sarah Churchwell | Books | The Guardian: Instead of cupboards and skeletons, the unexpurgated autobiography offers the "storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head"; not the "facts and happenings" of Twain's life, but his voice. Fortunately for us, perhaps more than any other writer Twain was his voice; the result, for all its frustrations, is a revelation.

Arts & Letters Daily (03 Nov 2010)

Arts & Letters Daily (03 Nov 2010):

Willam Blake's "London," written two hundred years ago, rather grandly reveals us to ourselves. He might well have called it "America"... more

Mark Twain admitted to foibles: "I like the exact word, and clarity of statement, and here and there a touch of good grammar for picturesqueness"... more ... more

Fukuyama, Huntington, Mearsheimer: three visions of the relation of the modern West to the rest. Three sets of ideas that connect, interlock, reflect, and short-circuit each other... more

I'm in love with a narcissist

I'm in love with a narcissist:

Dear Cary,

Design Is Dead. Long Live Design!

Design Is Dead. Long Live Design!: Design reigned supreme in the 20th century, when it was an integral part of the way artists, publishers, governments and political parties communicated to the first mass audiences. But 21st-century internet standards have successfully separated design and content. The message is now free from the medium.

Video: Brian Eno Gets Quizzed on 'Milk Sea'

Video: Brian Eno Gets Quizzed on 'Milk Sea': British musician Brian Eno spills details about his new record, Small Craft on a Milk Sea, in this video interview.

Stories vs. Statistics - NYTimes.com

Stories vs. Statistics - NYTimes.com: (Incidentally, the conjunction fallacy is especially relevant to religious texts. Imbedding the God character in a holy book’s very detailed narrative and building an entire culture around this narrative seems by itself to confer a kind of existence on Him.)

I’ll close with perhaps the most fundamental tension between stories and statistics. The focus of stories is on individual people rather than averages, on motives rather than movements, on point of view rather than the view from nowhere, context rather than raw data. Moreover, stories are open-ended and metaphorical rather than determinate and literal.

Nov. 2, 1815: Boole Born, Boolean Logic Logically Follows

Nov. 2, 1815: Boole Born, Boolean Logic Logically Follows: English mathematician George Boole's breakthrough was the insight that logic, which had previously been considered a branch of philosophy, is actually closer to mathematics.

One armed and dangerous suspect captured, two still at large

One armed and dangerous suspect captured, two still at large:

Police captured one of three men wanted in connection with a home invasion robbery and high-speed chase and issued descriptions of the other two suspects.

When I first read that headline I thought it said, "One-armed and dangerous suspect..."

At the Blackboard

At the Blackboard: Kurt Vonnegut diagrams the man-in-hole, boy-meets-girl, Cinderella, and Kafka story lines, and explains why Shakespeare was a lousy storyteller but Hamlet was a masterpiece.

The American Critic - Magazine - The Atlantic

The American Critic - Magazine - The Atlantic: That these writers now rest in the pantheon, and that Americans who fancy themselves intellectuals reflexively oppose what they take to be the established order, is largely owing to Mencken, whom Walter Lippmann described in 1926 as “the most powerful personal influence on this whole generation of educated people.” In fact he was more than that—he is the most influential critic in American history, really the only influential critic in American history. He exerted that influence thanks not to his ideas but almost entirely to his beguiling style, at once rollicking and astringent. Mencken was the first serious writer to be saturated, as Edmund Wilson noted in a 1921 essay, with “modern commercial America,” a culture that captivated and appalled him. And so his prose, as Wilson said, married an almost 18th-century lucidity and force to “the slang of the common man … and compelled it to dance a ballet.”

Nov. 1, 1909: 'The Machine Stops'

Nov. 1, 1909: 'The Machine Stops': E.M. Forster publishes "The Machine Stops," a chilling tale of a futuristic information-oriented society that grinds to a bloody halt, literally. Some aspects of the story no longer seem so distant in the future.