he relationship between the detective and the studio chief holds a lesson about doing business in Hollywood, where loyalty holds an exalted value, and where an executive who expects to survive at the top must be able to understand the industry's seamy underworld for what it is, without tumbling into it.

A Studio Chief's Jailhouse Visits to a Detective Raise Questions - New York Times

In the Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller "Minority Report," a subway passenger scans an issue of USA Today that is a plastic video screen, thin, foldable and wireless, with constantly changing text.

The scene is no longer science fiction. This month, De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, started testing versions of electronic paper, a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink — millions of microscopic capsules the width of a human hair made with organic material that display light or dark images in response to electrical charges.

One Day Soon, Straphangers May Turn Pages With a Button

This memestream is one month old now, and more than 660 posts long. Here's a selection of the items that other people picked up or commented on. (I'd like a filter for this built into the site ...)

The General's Revolt
Playing science's genetic lottery | CNET News.com
Life in the Green Lane
The Desert One Debacle
The Case for Evolution, in Real Life
Condi and Rummy, by Tom Friedman
Bush Explains Why Fukuyama Is Wrong
Massachusetts Sets Health Plan for Nearly All
Chax 1.4 – Mac OS X – VersionTracker
A Pandemic of Fear
YouTube - danah on O'Reilly Factor
Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment
News Corp. (hearts) MySpace | FORTUNE
The Playboy Legacy | OpinionJournal - Taste
As Scams Go, This Is a Gem
A Better Idea, By Francis Fukuyama and Adam Garfinkle
Porn star's wine passion gets plaudits
The War Among the Conservatives
Terrorist 007, Exposed
Stephen Roach (from Beijing) | Morgan Stanley
Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?
The Girls Next Door
Google Finance
A Hunt for Genes That Betrayed a Desert People
Justices Reach Out to Consider Patent Case

Do you think a 4% re-recommendation rate is acceptable? That seems pretty low to me.

Are people getting anything out of the posts that they see but choose not to personally recommend?

Madeleine Albright has a new book.

From Publishers Weekly:
Starred Review. Secretary of State under President Clinton and a devout Catholic (with recently discovered Jewish roots), Albright (Madam Secretary) is especially qualified to tackle the thorny subject of the role of faith in international relations. In a remarkably accessible, even breezy style, she looks at these issues in light of recent history both abroad and at home, from the religious fundamentalism that led to the ouster of the shah of Iran to the invasion of Iraq and American hope that a political culture can emerge there that integrates democracy and Islam. But Albright also looks critically at President Bush, an evangelical Christian who invokes God in the name of fighting "evil." In this ambitious, thoughtful, and wide-ranging treatment, Albright deftly balances the pragmatic need to confront religious-based unrest and the idealistic need to temper one's own personal beliefs in the public realm. While fully acknowledging the threat al- Qaeda poses, Albright rejects the notion that a "clash of civilizations" is in progress and wisely calls for care and nuance in how America approaches international confrontations that are tinged with religion.

The Mighty and the Almighty : Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs

"Afghanistan's Uncertain Transition" argues that Afghanistan is still far from stability. While the country has reestablished basic institutions of government, it has barely started to make them work. The government and its international supporters are challenged by a terrorist insurgency that has become more lethal and effective and that has bases in Pakistan, a drug trade that dominates the economy and corrupts the state, and pervasive poverty and insecurity. The Afghanistan Compact, approved in January 31, 2006, provides a road map for security, governance, and development over the next five years. The United States should take the lead in ensuring full funding and implementation of the Afghanistan Compact, and develop a coherent strategy toward the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship. This strategy would entail pushing the Pakistani government to arrest Taliban leaders whose locations are provided by intelligence agencies and taking aggressive measures to close down the networks supporting suicide bombers.

Afghanistan's Uncertain Transition from Turmoil to Normalcy

STEVE JONES doesn't have a workshop, exactly, for his miniature space elevator; he is designing it in his dorm room.

"With a regular contract, a small group of students like us wouldn't have a chance. This way, anyone with a good idea can contribute."

Like to Tinker? NASA's Looking for You

As Iran's nuclear program crosses successive thresholds and edges closer to a military capability, the Western capitals are struggling to understand the man at the helm of power in Tehran. Is Iran's president as irrational as his rhetoric would suggest? Is Ahmadinejad driven by a messianic religious fervor that makes him immune to practical considerations? What are the political and ideological determinants of Ahmadinejad's policies? Before contemplating measures to arrest Iran's impetuous impulses, it is important to have a better appreciation of the ideology that animates the new president and the new cohort of hardliners that are leading the Islamic Republic.

The National Interest | Article | A Profile in Defiance

What can be done if the US Federal Aviation Administration allows this madness to happen, as it will? I say: we are not out of remedies.

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - Fight the mobile phone invasion at 30,000ft

"If a subject is not tested, why teach it?"

"I don't like history or science anyway."

"most students are not complaining about being miserable."

"We're using [electives] as a motivation," Dr. O'Connor said. "We're hoping they'll concentrate on their math and reading so they can again participate in some course they love."

Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math

In the summer of 2005, an international expert group was brought together for a workshop to define and produce a new vision and roadmap of the evolution, challenges and potential of computer science and computing in scientific research in the next fifteen years.
The resulting document, Towards 2020 Science, sets out the challenges and opportunities arising from the increasing synthesis of computing and the sciences. It seeks to identify the requirements necessary to accelerate scientific advances –particularly those driven by computational sciences and the 'new kinds' of science the synthesis of computing and the sciences is creating. Already this synthesis has led to new fields and advances spanning genomics and proteomics, earth sciences and climatology, nanomaterials, chemistry and physics.
We hope Towards 2020 Science will act as a 'pathfinder' to new research directions in science and computing. We also hope that it will contribute to, and inform, national and international scientific debate and science policy. It is also just a start, a catalyst for more discussion, so lastly, we hope that you will find it useful, inspiring and provocative.
The Towards 2020 Science workshop and the consequent report were run and produced under the aegis of Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Towards 2020 Science