Television Will Soon Watch You (for Instructions): "You will soon be able to wave your hands in the air to change the channel, now that French 3-D gesture-capture firm Softkinetic-Optrima inked a deal with chipmaker Intel. Eventually, camera-equipped set-top boxes will let us participate by way of an avatar in exercise shows and 3-D movies.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
The Stories of Heinrich von Kleist - The Barnes & Noble Review: "Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) only wrote eight stories, but they are among the glories of German, and world, literature. "
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Feb. 17, 1972: VW Beetle Outruns Model T: "It took half a century before any car sold more than Ford's pioneering Tin Lizzy. Nothing like it has happened since."
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Chat with Facebook friends within iChat | E-mail and Internet | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld: "Alternatively, you can just follow the instructions right here:
In iChat, open Preferences, and go to the Accounts tab. Click the plus sign at the bottom of the window to add a new account.
Select Jabber Account from the Account Type drop-down menu.
Enter your_username@chat.facebook.com in the Account Name field, and enter your Facebook password in the Password field. Replace your_username with your Facebook username, obviously.
Click the triangle next to Server Options to reveal those settings. Enter chat.facebook.com in the Server field, and 5222 in the Port field. Make sure the Use SSL box is not checked.
Click Done.
"
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Make Your Laptop a Home Entertainment Hub: "There's a wealth of high-def video available on the web these days on Hulu, Comedy Central, Netflix, Vimeo and YouTube. To watch this stuff on your full-size HDTV instead of your laptop's 13- or 14-inch screen, you're going to need a way to hook your computer up to your TV.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Cool Products at Macworld Expo 2010: "Microvision ShowWX Laser Pico Projector -- Imagine a small device, about the size of an iPhone, capable of projecting high resolution video as large as a 100-inch television set. The Microvision ShowWX projector uses scanning lasers to project colorful images on any surface. By using laser projection instead of alternative technologies like LCDs, the images are always in focus with a wider color range than other pico (extremely small) projectors. The projector includes a number of connectivity options, including an iPhone/iPod cable, and runs between 90-120 minutes on battery. It's not hard to imagine the day when these are included in our mobile devices, although the lack of flat, white surfaces in the world might be a little limiting. It's due in March 2010.
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TidBITS - http://www.tidbits.com/
Expo: FastMac turns iPhone into unversal remote | Entertainment & HDTV | iPhone Central | Macworld: "The simplest of those is an LED flash that synchronizes with the iPhone’s camera; similar products we’ve seen include an LED light that you must turn on and off manually. You also get a 1300mAh battery that lets you watch video for up to 15 hours, listen to audio for up to 50 hours, or talk on the phone for up to 20 hours.
But the big appeal of the iV Plus is that it includes an infrared transmitter and receiver that, together with a custom iPhone app, lets your iV Plus-clad iPhone act as a universal remote control for your home entertainment system.
Much like Logitech’s Harmony line of unversal remotes, the iV Plus's custom app lets you browse an extensive database of AV products: receivers, CD players, Blu-Ray players, DVD players, TiVos, cable boxes, the Apple TV, and so on. Once you’ve chosen your devices, each gets its own screen with the appropriate buttons for controlling the device. Also like a Harmony remote, you can create tasks, which are specific combinations of devices to be used together. For example, a ‘Watch DVDs’ task might include your TV, DVD player, and home-theater receiver; pressing the Watch DVDs button would automatically turn on your TV, DVD player, and home theater system, and then switch the TV and receiver to the DVD input.
However, unlike most universal remotes, there’s no complicated codes to enter, nor do you need to connect the remote to your computer and use a complicated setup utility to configure devices and tasks. The iV Plus’s iPhone app provides simple, scrolling lists of devices; to add a device, you simply tap the device's name on the screen. The company plans to regularly update the app's database with additional devices; the app can download updated device lists via the Internet. (If one of your AV components isn’t listed, the app can manually learn the component’s remote commands using the iV Plus’s infrared receiver.)
FastMac has taken advantage of the iPhone's interface to provide two other unique software features. First, you can configure the onscreen button layouts, for both individual devices and for tasks. The app provides a library of sliders, dials, buttons, and switches you can drag around the screen, letting you create a remote-control interface as complex—or as simple—as you like.
The second is that FastMac has licensed TV listings for the app, letting you browse listings and search for particular channels and shows. If you can’t remember which of your 200 stations is ESPN Classic, you just type ESPN and then tap the ESPN Classic item in the search results; the iV Plus sends the appropriate command to your TV or cable box to change the channel. Or you can type the name of a TV show, and then tap the show name in the results screen to change to that channel.
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Veoh finally calls it quits: Layoffs yesterday, bankruptcy filing soon: "Veoh, one of several well-funded start-ups that have tried and failed to cash in on the Web video boom, is finally calling it quits."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Shylock, My Students, and Me: An essay by Paula Marantz Cohen on 30 years of teaching The Merchant of Venice | The American Scholar: "While Shakespeare now draws me more than ever before, one work in particular draws me most. This is The Merchant of Venice. For me, this extraordinary play grows increasingly subtle and supple with time. It continues to excite me with its language, its depth of character, and its philosophical, political, spiritual, and pedagogical implications. Looking back over my years of teaching the play, I see that the way it has been received by my students is an index to how our society has changed. I also see how much the play continues to push against established readings and to challenge even the most seemingly enlightened perspectives. The Merchant of Venice is both a mirror of our times and a means of transcending the bias of our times. It teaches how to teach.
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Hulu Working on iPhone App?: "
Hulu is the poster child for what's missing in mobile Safari for iPhone OS. Hulu is a streaming video service owned by major networks that lets you watch new and old TV shows and movies, with a mandatory requirement to view ads. It requires Adobe Flash.
Since the iPad was announced - see 'The iPad Arrives,' 27 January 2010 - one of the biggest debates about the device's future marketshare and efficacy is its lack of Flash support. John Gruber explained before the iPad launch the background of why Apple won't support Flash.
Flash can be used for many purposes, and Flash drives all kinds of interactive games, multimedia content, and esoteric purposes - as well as horrible restaurant sites - all over the world.
But the single biggest use of Flash embedded in Web pages is to play video, most of which is already encoded in H.264, part of the MPEG4 set of standards, which Apple uses for nearly all its audio and video purposes.
With YouTube, for instance, Flash acts just as a wrapper for H.264 video. YouTube has a pilot project that allows H.264 video to play using the in-progress HTML5 rendering standard. YouTube users view over 12 billion videos each month, or about 40 percent of all online video watching in the United States. (HTML5 doesn't yet and will likely never specify a particular video format; H.264 patent, fee, and licensing issues prevent its use in projects like Firefox and Chrome that release all their source code.)
But Hulu is an edge case: the site needs a wrapper, even though it's 'just' playing video. Where YouTube can use JavaScript to overlay ads on top of a standard video player on whatever browser video is playing, Hulu relies on commercial revenue to operate. Its custom Flash player doesn't let you skip commercials; a standard video player would let you skim back and forth unless a TV show or other video were broken into multiple pieces that loaded only in sequence. That would be annoying and reduce usage.
It should come as no surprise that Hulu would develop an iPad-specific app - TechCrunch reports a 'rumor...from an industry insider,' which is hardly definitive, but the idea is logical. Hulu should make itself available on every major platform.
Hulu feeds out just 3 percent of U.S. online video, over a billion videos in December 2009, but it's the largest single site for legal licensed streaming TV viewing. The other network sites, like Fox, Viacom, and Turner Network each have just about one-third Hulu's traffic.
I can't imagine Hulu taking sides in a technology war, when Flash is a delivery mechanism, not a religious commitment. The recent change in AT&T's rules for applications that work over its 3G network provide more impetus for Hulu. AT&T says it's now fine for apps to stream video over 3G, so long as they conform to new rules. Slingbox is the first firm approved to use the new guidelines; Hulu might be among the next batch.
Given that the average Hulu user watches about 23 videos per month, according to comScore, an iPhone OS app could dramatically expand Hulu's reach. I wonder if Hulu would restrict an app to the iPad - perhaps due to processing power limits - when there are tens of millions of U.S. iPhone and iPod touch users also eager to join in.
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THE MISSING SYNC: Take it with you! The Missing Sync makesTidBITS - http://www.tidbits.com/
Keep your 20-sided dice, I have D&D on the Surface: "Trading pencils and paper for virtual dice on Microsoft's multitouch tabletop computer speeds up famous role-playing game."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Anonymous Unfurls 'Operation Titstorm': "The online prankster group Anonymous unleashes a major distributed denial-of-service attack against Australian government websites to protest internet censorship in the land down under. Several of the sites were slowly recovering from the barrage by the same group that earlier had taken down Scientology websites.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Early Galaxies Had More Gas to Form Stars Fast: "Astronomers have finally figured out why galaxies formed during the early universe had much more rapid star birth than today's galaxies. It turns out they had more hydrogen gas to fuel their stellar nurseries.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Being bored could be bad for your health: "Literally 'bored to death': study shows link between boredom, early death
Salon - http://www.salon.com/?source=rss&aim=/
With Darpa's 'Transparent Earth,' Underground Doesn't Mean Out of Sight: "Pentagon extreme research agency Darpa launches the 'Transparent Earth' project this year. It wants to create real-time, 3-D maps that display 'the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth' underground.
"
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
The New Dating Game: "It helps, of course, that there’s currently a buyer’s market in women who are up for just about anything with the right kind of cad, what with delayed marriage (the average age for a woman’s first wedding is now 26, compared with 20 in 1960, according to the University of Virginia-based National Marriage Project’s latest report); reliable contraception; and advances in antibiotics (no more worries about what used to be called venereal disease). No-fault divorce, moreover, has pushed the marriage-dissolution rate up to between 40 and 50 percent and swelled the single-female population with ‘cougars’ in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. On top of it all is the feminist-driven academic and journalistic culture celebrating that yesterday’s ‘loose’ women are today’s ‘liberated’ women, able to proudly ‘explore their sexuality’ without ‘getting punished for their lust,’ as the feminist writer Naomi Wolf put it in the Guardian in December.
All this takes place to a basso profundo of feminist cheerleading. Wolf’s op-ed in the Guardian praised the uninhibited sexual “self-expression” of the four female leads in Sex and the City, especially the 40-something Samantha (hitting 50 in the 2008 movie), who, during the six seasons that the series ran, racked up nearly as many sex partners (41) as her three coleads combined—and Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte were no slouches themselves in the quickie department. “Did not thousands of young women . . . breathe a sigh of relief or even liberation watching Samantha down another tequila, unrepentantly ogle the sex god at the end of the bar, and get richer and more beautiful with age, with no STDs or furies pursuing her?,” Wolf gushed.
As might be expected, many males would like to help themselves at this overladen buffet. But there’s a problem: While it’s a truism that the main beneficiaries of the sexual revolution are men, it is only some men: the Tucker Maxes, with the good looks, self-confidence, and swagger that enable them to sidle up successfully to a gaggle of well turned-out females in a crowded and anonymous club where the short-statured, the homely, the paunchy, the balding, and the sweater-clad are, if not turned away outside by the bouncer, ignominiously ignored by the busy, beautiful people within.
Living in the New Paleolithic can be hard on women, many of whom party on merrily until they reach age 30 and then panic. “They’re at the peak of their beauty in their early 20s—they’re luscious—but the guys their age don’t look as good, so they say to themselves: ‘Why do I want to get married?,’ ” notes Kay Hymowitz, a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, who is writing a book about the singles crisis. “Then they get to age 28, 29, and their fertility goes down and they’re not quite so luscious. But the guys their age are starting to make money, they look better, they’ve got self-assurance, and they’ve also got the pick of the 23-year-olds.”
Roissy’s blog is an unflinching look at female nature at its very worst: the acquisitiveness, the narcissism, the self-absorption, the selfishness, the superficiality, the brainlessness, the wayward lust as powerful as any man’s.
Roissy’s deliberately outrageous posts are a source of controversy. In a write-up on George Sodini, the man who shot up a gym near Pittsburgh last August, killing 3 women before turning the gun on himself, Roissy contended that Sodini, whose diary revealed that he had not had sex for 20 years before the incident, was simply a frustrated beta barred access to women by the sexual/feminist revolution and that “anything was justified” to avoid the “walking death” of celibacy. In other words, Sodini was a hapless victim of the sexual revolution.
The whole point of the sexual and feminist revolutions was to obliterate the sexual double standard that supposedly stood in the way of ultimate female freedom. The twin revolutions obliterated much more, but the double standard has reemerged in a harsher, crueler form: wreaking havoc on beta men and on beta women, too, who, as the declining marriage rate indicates, have trouble finding and securing long-term mates in a supply-saturated short-term sexual marketplace. Gorgeous alpha women fare fine—for a few years until the younger competition comes of age. But no woman, alpha or beta, seems able to escape the atavistic preference of men both alpha and beta for ladylike and virginal wives (the Darwinist explanation is that those traits are predictors of marital fidelity, assuring men that the offspring that their spouses bear are theirs, too). And every aspect of New Paleolithic mating culture discourages the sexual restraint once imposed on both sexes that constituted a firm foundation for both family life and civilization.
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Arts & Letters Daily (09 Feb 2010): "
Lady Jane Grey, the 'nine-day queen,' was virginal, sweet, and beheaded at the age of 16, a notorious victim of the Tudors, or so it is thought... more
Orson Welles's funeral was a tawdry and chaotic affair, reminding his daughter of dumping Mozart's body into a pauper's grave... more
Tens of thousands of years of human mating norms are evaporating as Cro-Magnon males drag women into their caves, and the women love every minute of it... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
Netflix has Blockbuster on the ropes: "As Blockbuster suffers through another round of layoffs and its stock trades for less than a postage stamp, one has to wonder when Netflix will deliver a knockout."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Christopher Nolan To Head "Superman" Reboot?: "Word is out that the 'Dark Knight' director has been tapped to oversee the Man of Steel's next foray into film as well as the fact that a third Batman picture is already in the works at Warner Brothers."
CBR News - http://www.comicbookresources.com/
Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything: "(PhysOrg.com) -- Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.
The liquid glass spray (technically termed ‘SiO2 ultra-thin layering’) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.
"
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Flickr Photos In Google Street View: "This is significant for two reasons:
1) Flickr has millions of geotagged photos"
O'Reilly Radar - http://radar.oreilly.com/
Microsoft finally gets around to patching 17-year-old Windows bug: "A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Magnetic nanoparticles target human cancer cells | Health Tech - CNET News: "In 2008, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Ovarian Cancer Institute developed a potential treatment to fight cancer using magnetic nanoparticles designed to attach themselves to cancer cells. They found in their groundbreaking tests on mice that the particles not only attached to cancer cells, but they also moved those cells.
Nanoparticles, in brown, attach themselves to cancer cells, in violet, from the human abdominal cavity.
(Credit: Ken Scarberry/Georgia Tech)
In what may well prove to be some of the most exciting health news in the year to come, the group announced in the journal Nanomedicine in December and further publicized on Tuesday that it has replicated the study on human cancer cells, with the nanoparticles appearing to be every bit as effective.
"
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Google Email Uploader gets your old e-mail into Gmail: "Google Email Uploader, a free, open-source utility, lets you easily upload your desktop e-mail messages to a Google Apps-hosted Gmail account.
"
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Marvel comics, graphic novels coming to Apple iPad?: "By bringing comics and graphic novels to the iPad, Apple will not only attract..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Apple iTunes 9.0.3 - Play & buy music, videos, TV shows & burn CDs. (Free): "
You can listen to streaming music over a local network, buy individual songs for $1, download over 2,000 music videos, copy songs to your iPod, buy music, movies, TV shows, and audiobooks, or download free podcasts from the iTunes Store 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Organize and play everything on your Mac or PC. Then sync it to your iPod and bring it along. Anywhere.
Provides a number of important bug fixes, including:
MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php
Arts & Letters Daily (30 Jan 2010): "Philip K. Dick bounced in and out of love affairs and marriages, stints in rehab and drug overdoses, never losing his cool. Well, almost never... more
"
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
MacDailyNews: "PC Magazine hands-on with Apple iPad: ‘What this thing can do is mind-boggling’ (with video)"
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Five System Preference tweaks everyone should know: "Do you know how to display the date in your menu bar or how to reorder your Spotlight results? Kirk McElhearn shows you these fundamental System Preferences tweaks and more.
"
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Arts & Letters Daily (29 Jan 2010): "
J. D. Salinger, reclusive author whose Catcher in the Rye caught the mood of a generation, is dead
... Charles McGrath
... AP
... Stephen Miller
... Elaine Woo
... London Times
... Bart Barnes
... FT
... Telegraph
... Mark Krupnick
... Richard Lacayo
... Tom Leonard
... Martin Levin
... Rick Moody
... Richard Lea
... Malcolm Jones
... Morgan Meis
... Chris Wilson
... Robert Fulford
... Ian Shapira
... Michael Ruse
... Christopher Reynolds
... David Usborne
... Joe Gross
... Stephen King
... John Walsh
... Henry Allen
... Mark Feeney
... Ron Rosenbaum (1997)
... John Timpane
... Alex Beam
... Verlyn Klinkenborg
Love: once ferocious and passionate, it has today been defused and made tepid - streamlined, safety-checked, and emptied of spiritual consequence... more
Stephen Toulmin and John E. Smith were both philosophers in the grand sense that still draws young people around the world to the subject. Till logic-choppers drive them away... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
How HTML5 could finally kill Flash video: "Vimeo's new HTML5 system is just like YouTube's, in both execution and technical details..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Mossberg: Apple’s iPad is handsome, feels comfortable and solid, offers impressive software: "After attending the rollout of the new device today and trying out some of its features for myself..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Gizmodo hands-on with Apple iPad: ‘It’s fast! Feels at least a generation faster than iPhone 3GS’: "It's substantial but surprisingly light. Easy to grip. Beautiful. Rigid. Starkly designed..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Apple’s new ‘A4’ chip inside iPad offers unmatched speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness: "Along with the iPad, the Apple chip has arrived..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Apple CEO Steve Jobs discusses Apple iPad with Walt Mossberg (with video): "Walt Mossberg and I talked about whether Apple could innovate enough to make a tablet computer finally become popular..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
iPad SDK 3.2 Details: External Display, File Sharing System, No Multitasking: "
Apple has unleashed iPhone OS 3.2 SDK to developers today to prepare for the launch of the Apple iPad. The new iPhone OS 3.2 only runs on the iPad device and will not run on the iPhone or iPod Touch. The accompanying documents are said to h..."
MacRumors - http://www.macrumors.com
Arts & Letters Daily (28 Jan 2010): "Disney's Three Little Pigs is Aristotelian from start to finish: plot, necessity, fear, revenge, resolution, catharsis. Now a new version challenges these values... more"
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
"Catcher in the Rye" author J.D. Salinger dies: "Legendary American writer, recluse passes away at 91
Salon - http://www.salon.com/?source=rss&aim=/
New Animations Take You Flying Over Mars: "Beautiful new renderings of NASA data let you fly over Martian geology.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Quantum Computer Simulates Hydrogen Molecule Just Right: "Almost three decades ago, Richard Feynman — known popularly as much for his bongo drumming and pranks as for his brilliant insights into physics — told an electrified audience at MIT how to build a computer so powerful that its simulations ‘will do exactly the same as nature.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Ten Things Missing From the iPad: "The iPad was supposed to change the face of computing, to be a completely new form of digital experience. But what Steve Jobs showed us yesterday was in fact little more than a giant iPhone. A giant iPhone that doesn’t even make calls. The iPad, though, is better defined by what isn’t there.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming to U.S.: "Thanks to smart tech, ambitious planners and boatloads of cash, the much-stalled concept actually has a future. But for trains to beat planes and automobiles, the hardware needs to really fly.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
The Apple iPad: First Impressions: "Some wild speculations of a guy who's never even tried the iPad. Believe me, I'll review it when I get one. But I like what I'm seeing."
Pogue's Posts - http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/?=rss2
The iPad Arrives: "Apple today announced the iPad, the tablet-sized computing and communications device that has generated more bits of industry speculation than any previous product in memory. Featuring a 9.7-inch display and an optional keyboard dock, the iPhone OS-based iPad will be available for prices ranging from $499 to $829, depending on storage capacity and 3G data capability. Wi-Fi-only models will go on sale in March 2010, with Wi-Fi+3G data models in April."
TidBITS - http://www.tidbits.com/
Scientists Turn Mouse Skin Cells Into Nerve Cells - BusinessWeek: "The new approach could revolutionize human stem cell therapy and science's understanding of how cells choose and maintain their specialized roles in the body, the researchers said.
The findings also seem to radically upturn established thinking about how cells become cells, and potentially avoid the controversial approach of using embryonic stem cells for cellular therapy. And the research could conceivably open new doors in the future to treating diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the researchers said."
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA) » Apple Tablet Week: The Event Liveblog: "It’s looking as if ‘A big iPod Touch’ is looking like its distressingly spot on as a description."
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Apple iPad tablet makes debut (live blog) | Circuit Breaker - CNET News: ""
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Five secrets of Open and Save dialog boxes: "You use the Open and Save dialog boxes every day, but do you really know how to use them efficiently? Sharon Zardetto shares some of her favorite tips.
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Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Oracle buys Sun, becomes hardware company: "The last chapter for Sun Microsystems closes, and the next for Oracle begins as the software company adds hardware to its portfolio."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Apple's tablet: It's all about developers: "Apple and Google are increasingly competing for the hearts and minds of developers, and Apple's tablet threatens to undermine Android growth by changing the rules of engagement."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Utilities to store megawatts of juice with ice: "A group of utilities in southern California plan to shift 54 megawatts worth of electricity use from peak times using ice-powered air conditioners from Ice Energy."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Samsung begins mass producing 3D TV screens: "Samsung began mass producting of 3D TV screens this month, a first step to prices coming down to more affordable levels.
"
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Arts & Letters Daily (25 Jan 2010): "The number of different possible chess games is 10120, says Garry Kasparov. Look eight moves ahead and you confront as many games as stars in the galaxy... more"
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
Arts & Letters Daily (23 Jan 2010): "
After the main performance, crowds in 16th-century London playhouses were treated to a late-night B-feature of rude, lewd farce, known as the 'jig'... more
From Freud to Marxism to ESP to a whole series of women, when in the grip of a mania, Arthur Koestler was incapable of seeing anything else... more
It's hard to think of an American movie before the 1960s that concerned itself with food, says Paula Marantz Cohen. But look at what's happened since then... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
Manuscript recalling Newton apple story lands online: "Manuscript of 1752 biography of Isaac Newton, which recounts how a falling apple led him to the theory of gravity, is available on U.K.'s Royal Society Web site."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Alcohol's Neolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: "His bold thesis, which he lays out in his book 'Uncorking the Past. The Quest for Wine, Beer and Other Alcoholic Beverage,' states that agriculture -- and with it the entire Neolithic Revolution, which began about 11,000 years ago -- are ultimately results of the irrepressible impulse toward drinking and intoxication."
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Hello World: Bill Gates joins Twitter, Facebook: "In a big week for social networking, President Obama and then former Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates send their first tweets.
"
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Firefox 3.6 brings speed improvements, new Personas feature: "Firefox 3.6 is the latest update to the popular Web browser, adding support for one-click themes, improved HTML5 compatibility, and better performance."
Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Arts & Letters Daily (21 Jan 2010): "
Did our Neolithic ancestors start to grow crops so they could bake bread? Perhaps not: maybe the real point of agriculture was beer... more ... more
American literary culture is insular? Oh, yeah? Are Nigerians all that taken by fiction coming out of Denmark? Do Latvians groove on Philippine poetry?... more
Any European intellectual can easily tell you: Europe, not America, offers the world the best model of social and economic life. But, as Clive Crook explains, the case is not so certain... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
Report: Apple tablet is a shared media device: "Anticipated device is expected be a hub for all kinds of media: magazines, newspapers, books, text books, music, games, and video, according to a Wall Street Journal report."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Nathan Fillion Talks Firefly, Dr. Horrible, and Why Kids Need to Read: "Nathan Fillion has, in the space of seven years, risen to the status of a geek icon. Beginning with his best-known role as Captain Mal Reynolds on Firefly, his work on several of Joss Whedon’s projects has transformed the former soap opera actor into a huge draw for the geek crowd. But there’s a lot more to Fillion than tight pants and a pistol — and a heck of a lot more than a shirt with a picture of a hammer on it."
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Arts & Letters Daily (20 Jan 2010): "
John Mackey thinks capitalism, along with human creativity, can make the best world we might hope for, with 'no limit to where humanity will be in the 21st century'... more
A world governed on anti-Enlightenment principles would be infinitely worse than one governed by Voltaire and Diderot. Zeev Sternhell is certain of that... more
Now that President Obama has made his first tweet, he ought to study Cicero. Twitter may be absurd; but it can also hasten the inner ear to the voices and glories of the past... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
Arts & Letters Daily (19 Jan 2010): "
Compassion and benevolence, as Charles Darwin knew, are rooted in our evolved psychology, ready to be cultivated for the greater good... more
'I remember staring into his kindly eyes, tartly thinking to myself that my cousin was shyer than a virgin under the veil.' The young Osama bin Laden... more
'All the uses of nature admit of being summed in one, which yields the activity of man an infinite scope.' Yep. Another pointless koan from Ralph Waldo Emerson... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
Writing Good English: A talk by William Zinsser to foreign students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism | The American Scholar: "The epidemic I’m most worried about isn’t swine flu. It’s the death of logical thinking."
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