] The unspoken concern at the center of this episode: maybe
] loyalty is not enough. Maybe the president needs to vest
] his authority in someone who can actually help sail the
] ship of state on these two initiatives, someone with
] autonomous and irrefutable credibility in areas where the
] president - electoral mandates notwithstanding - could
] use a boost.
]
]
] The president, affirming Mr. Snow, has decided otherwise.
] Power, as Mr. Bush sees it, justifies itself. No boost
] required. It is undercut, in fact, by even a reasonable
] expression of need.

The Cabinet of Incuriosities

] BIG earthquakes occur infrequently, but when they do they
] usually come unexpectedly and with horrendous power. It
] is, of course, dangerous to live in an earthquake-prone
] area, but what area in the world can we say is
] earthquake-safe? Surely the people in the Mississippi
] Valley feel they are safe, as do the people in New York
] City. Yet, New York has a fault line going across 125th
] Street that I would guess 99 percent of the city's
] population does not know about.
]
]
] And even if they did, they would likely be no more
] concerned about it than they are about La Palma.
] Americans have always lived in dangerous places - on the
] flat cyclone fields of the Midwest, on the hurricane
] battered coasts of Florida, on the flood plains of the
] South. We live in these places because we are uncertain
] about the time and place of the next disaster, and we are
] an adventurous culture. We believe that lightning never
] strikes twice in the same place, despite the many times
] it has.

[ I guess the point is, prepare for the worst... -k]

When Nature's Wrath Is History's Reminder

] Donkey Kong is "lame." Tetris is "boring." Space Invaders
] "needs a superbomb or something." And why play Pong when
] it's more fun to "jump up and down on one foot"? Hey,
] save your irate letters--we didn't say this stuff. The
] nostalgia-nuking commentary is from EGM's November 2003
] issue, in which we had kids of the PlayStation generation
] playtest classic games from the '70s and '80s. Mortified
] gaming grown-ups wrote in to call it blasphemy--and call
] these outspoken scamps a name that rhymes with "brittle
] truckers."
]
]
] It was our most popular article ever. So we're doing it
] again, with a new batch of brittle truckers and a new
] bucket of classic games. Kindly address all knee-jerk
] missives to EGM@ziffdavis.com.

[ One ought not to be surprised by modern kids talking trash about old games. It interesting to see the dynamics though... the way the kids think about Mike Tyson, and the cache to be found in the original Zelda, in which the "old school" factor makes it cool. As cultural data, I find this very interesting stuff. -k]

Child's Play Part II from 1UP.COM

] In a demonstration that holds promise for future advances
] in nanotechnology, California Institute of Technology
] computer scientists have succeeded in building a DNA
] crystal that computes as it grows. As the computation
] proceeds, it creates a triangular fractal pattern in the
] DNA crystal.

[ Cool. -k]

Caltech computer scientists embed computation in a DNA crystal to create microscopic patterns

] I always hated the fact that there was no good "push"
] mechanism for getting UPS shipment updates. I don't want
] to go to their website every hour to see where my package
] is. I want to be notified when it moves. Of course I
] immediately thought of RSS, but I couldn't find anyone
] who had turned the UPS data into a feed. I then decided
] to make it myself in ASP.NET!

[ Nice. -k]

UPS Package Tracking With RSS

“Serious reading had always been a minority matter."

Are you one of the five percent? Are you doing Serious Reading?

[ Gallup's metric is ridiculous. I read every single day. I have maybe 30 books on my bedside table, either recently finished, in progress or on deck. I'm certain that I read 70 books a year, but that's because I have no wife or girlfriend, much less children, so I have nothing but personal time, and I still often sacrifice sleep to spend more time with a book. 70 books a year is slightly faster than one every 6 days. Normal humans simply can't do that. Certainly not with any hope of retention. Do I think they should be able to? Hell yeah... we work too much and all too often our leisure feels like work because it has to be scheduled and carefully planned. The absolute luxury of really reading... the sheer inefficiency of it... is, to me at least, the very definition of leisure. Not that I don't have to sneak it in around the corners sometimes too. The benefits -- wisdom, entertainment, perspective, escape, insight -- are gifts, which perhaps too few appreciate. I don't mean to suggest that literature is inherently supierior to other forms of leisure activity, but it's my favorite and I think it offers things that can't be found elsewhere.

Perhaps part of explanation of decline is that people think of reading as either academic, and therefore too much like work, or as pure entertainment, in which case they can choose another venue, of which there are many new forms. I think that's a simplistic view, but I don't think it's uncommon.

I read for all the things I listed above, but also because I find it to be an rejection of the notion that time is wasted if it's not serving some productive end. It's the salve for the raw spots left by life's tethers : blackberry and cellphone and action item lists and email and calendars. It's escapist, in the best possible way.

Anyway, I think young adults are still reading, in a sense, because of the time they spend online, but it'd be presumptuous to venture a guess as to the quality. There's also, I'm sure, an impact from video games, and, perhaps, increased social activity, fostered by improved tech for coordinating and so on. Those tethers aren't all bad, of course. If kids are spending more time with each other, one can hardly argue against that.

As a final note, there's a mention of the problem being, in part, the way in which literature is presented to students. I won't support that, precisely, because I'm not really in a position to say, but I will say that one exceptional teacher is often the difference between a kid that becomes engaged and one who doesn't. I'm sure there's a discussion to be had about testing methods, and the problems there, but now we're drifting even further off topic. -k]

The Lost Art of Reading

[ This an interesting new online music community site. The tracks are released under a Creative Commons Music Sharing Licence, meaning you can download, share, and trade them noncommercially. That's not the important part though... what's a little different here is that they've built a very friendly interface to the community rating features, with inline players and a rating scale attached to each track, making it really easy to listen and rank the songs.

Artists can, for free, upload 15 megs worth of MP3, hence the name, or they can pay to upgrade to a 50 mb pro account. I'm not sure if their business model is sustainable... seems unlikely, but do check it out, if for no other reason than to play. -k]

15 Megs of Fame | Artists and Fans unite!

[

Merry Christmas all!

-k]

] Rosenthal, according to the Journal, has some ideas about
] the primary calendar:
] He suggests Democrats place the five closest states from
] the previous general election (Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio,
] New Mexico, and Wisconsin) first in the 2008 primary
] calendar to help tune up for fall battles.
] I agree with Josh that this is a pretty smart idea for
] the Democrats. And I think you could take it even
] further. Two points. First, a party that was thinking
] long-term and strategically about how to become a
] majority party would make a habit of this practice -- of
] continually shifting the primary calendar every cycle to
] put whatever states were closest in the last election at
] the top of the list for the next one. Such a schedule
] would put a premium on Democrats who fit the "persuader"
] type, who can win back the voters who in many respects
] should be voting for their party, but for various reasons
] did not.

[ Hear hear. As it happens, both Iowa and NH would still be at the front of that list, because they were close, but both of those states need to shut the hell up and accept that the primary schedule should be mutable... they simply oughtn't to wield the power they do year after year. -k]

TAPPED: December 2004 Archives

] The Fox network said Tuesday it will air a special next
] month, "Who's Your Daddy?", where a daughter given up for
] adoption as an infant attempts to guess the identity of
] her birth father for a $100,000 prize.

[ The complaits began immediately, of course. I'll throw in my lot with the "it's despicable" crowd.

"I find it curious that people are calling it that without having seen an episode," said Scott Hallock, one of three executive producers of the series for the Fox Television Studios. "You might get the impression from the title that it is somehow salacious or exploitive. But nothing could be further from the truth."

So, you have a woman searching for her biological father, and 8 guys trying to convince her that it's him, because if they do convince her to chose wrong, they get 100 grand. That won't be emotially torturous at all. -k]

CNN.com - New Fox show: Adoptee IDs dad for $100K - Dec 15, 2004