Two biographies of Ayn Rand. - By Johann Hari - Slate MagazineI can see why.... In her 70s Rand found herself dying of lung cancer, after insisting that her followers smoke because it symbolized "man's victory over fire" and the studies showing it caused lung cancer were Communist propaganda. By then she had driven almost everyone away. In 1982, she died alone in her apartment with only a hired nurse at her side...
Slashdot Games Story | Scams and Social Gaming
... The article asserts that Facebook and MySpace themselves are complicit in this, failing to crack down on the abuses they see because they make so much money from advertising for the most popular games...
Amazon.com: Unseen Academicals (Discworld) (9780061161704): Terry Pratchett: BooksIf by some miracle there is a future book, perhaps written from Terry's notes or with his help, I'd nominate Neil Gaiman. We haven't yet said goodbye to the Witches, and Pastor Oats came of their world.
There are two things to know before you buy this book. If you've read Pratchett you must of course by this book. Beyond the pleasure it brings, you owe it to the author.
The first thing to know is that the author is fading. Terry Pratchett has early onset Alzheimer's disease and is not expected to write another book.
The second is that this is not the Discworld book to begin with. There's no need to start at the beginning of the series, because you can enter at about any point and choose your own path. Still, don't begin here. Choose one from the early to mid-range and roam about a bit. Then, when the time comes, and perhaps with a glass of your potent beverage of choice, read this one.
Whatever your history, do buy this book now. Keep it on the bookcase, knowing it will be there when the time comes.
If you know the Discworld, you probably pre-ordered this book and have read it by now. For my part it was all the sweeter for being an ending. Standing alone it is not Pratchett's best work -- though is his best work is among the best of anything written. This work is fine enough.
The characters are more simply drawn than in his earlier books, the narrative more linear, the allegory less subtle. He has a lot of ground to cover, a lot of people to say goodbye to, and he's racing the clock. In the end I think he felt like Vetinari, who abhors slavery and carries the world on his shoulders. He has set his people free, and left their world as ordered as it might be. Glenda and Nutt shall have to take it from here ...
... On the up side, the progress on I Shall Wear Midnight is rapid, thanks to Dragon Dictate and rather more to the guys at TalkingPoint - the front end that makes it much easier to use - who made contact with me through this very page. I'm so impressed by it, that if my typing ability came back overnight, I would continue to use it...
Twitter is a publisher and subscriber. As a publisher it broadcasts short SMS -compliant strings to any interested subscriber. It is a uniquely good fit to pre-2008 mobile phones technology.
I think of Twitter as a curious pub/sub (feed) technology that emerged because of the limitations of early 21st century mobile phones, the bizarre pricing of American SMS and MMS messaging, email spam, and the asymmetry of early PubSub technology (strong sub as in Google Reader, weak pub as in amazingly feeble blog authoring tools with one now ailing exception).
Most of those curious technological limitations are going away. Between technology change and Facebook, Twitter is very vulnerable to displacement (if Google ever got their status pub/chat/reader/Latitude/Chat strategies aligned the squeeze would double).
I can imagine Twitter changing to be more like an open version of Facebook (esp. if Google bought them), but I can't see it staying relevant in its current form.
Between Google Reader (esp. with the "Note in Reader" feature) and Facebook I've no personal use case for Twitter. There are few times I consider it, but either Reader or Facebook could seize that ground (esp. wrt Location Services, though that's bound up for me with Apple's voracious greed)...
Kristof - More Schools, Not Troops - NYTimes.com
... For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there ...The 1 soldier/20 school ratio is a reflection of both the cost of the soldier and the low cost of Afghan construction. It does not include the cost of operating the schools but the point is well made. Our army of one is very expensive.
10 amazing truths you already suspected / Go ahead, pretend you didn't know. Pretend it wasn't obvious. (Volume II!)
... Witness Malcolm Gladwell's half-stunning, half-obvious piece in a recent New Yorker, summed up thusly: nearly every football player in America, from high school on up through the NFL -- especially there -- will suffer some level of brain damage and head trauma, from moderate to severe to early-onset dementia, even after just a year or two of play, even if he never turns pro at all...Parents will start to discourage kids from playing high school football, and those with money will withdraw financial support for the high school game. Colleges will be successfully sued -- after all, they can hardly claim to be uninformed and they have a special responsibility to their students.
