you have to give Bill Gates and the Microsoft crew credit for chutzpah. The DC Court of Appeals declares Microsoft an illegal monopoly, affirms that they have coerced, threatened, and lied to maintain their operating system monopoly - and the Redmond boys declare it a victory.
Naomi Klein on GM foods. "The idea, quite simply, is to pollute faster than countries can legislate - then change the laws to fit the contamination."
Tim Wise: School Shootings and White Denial.
...the FBI insist there is no "profile" of a school shooter. Come again? White boy after white boy after white boy, with very few exceptions to that rule (and none in the mass shooting category), decides to use their classmates for target practice, and yet there is no profile? Imagine if all these killers had been black: would we still hesitate to put a racial face on the perpetrators? Doubtful....
white high school students are seven times more likely than blacks to have used cocaine; eight times more likely to have smoked crack; ten times more likely to have used LSD and seven times more likely to have used heroin. In fact, there are more white high school students who have used crystal methamphetamine (the most addictive drug on the streets) than there are black students who smoke cigarettes.
A lecture to first year students at Princeton. (via ftrain.com)
I think the trend towards computing applications that do everything for you is misguided. Some people expect to have tools that will "automatically" garner information, build connections and do other tasks---I prefer to believe the opposite, that new tools will emerge that will depend upon our resourcefulness and creativity and that will enable us to build upon our accumulated knowledge (and to pass it on) in completely new ways.
Bruce sent in an old forward about the windows/cars analogy. Since this entry is so huge already, I've removed it and put a link to it instead.