The Big Picture has a pointer to this Google Spreadsheet of a buying versus renting cost comparison: . It’s neat, but you have to save a copy to your own Google … Continue reading »
Amazon has taken the brilliantly evil “using porn to defeat captcha” idea and put it to good use in their experimental Amazon Mechanical Turk. (The name comes from 18th … Continue reading »
At the beginning of the month, I submitted a few photos to Shutter Stock, a micro-stock photography site, to see if any income can be generated from the pool of … Continue reading »
This is perhaps a few weeks late in terms of the blogosphere commentary flurry — if Internet-years were similar to dog-years, the lifespan of hot topics on blogs resembles that … Continue reading »
We picked up Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild after seeing it in one of the Alaska bookstores, in the large “local interest” section. I had actually heard of the … Continue reading »
History did not turn on its hinge yesterday. 7/7 will simply become another stanza in the litany of atrocities that go back to 3/11, to Bali, to 9/11 — … Continue reading »
This morning, we woke to NPR’s obituary and discussion of George Kennan, father of Cold War containment. This piece began by noting that Kennan regretted the costs of containment … Continue reading »
In terms of the big public arts projects in New York, I kind of liked the cows more than the Gates, now that I think about it. As noted, … Continue reading »
I read Victor David Hanson’s Carnage and Culture last year, coincidentally soon after reading Creasy’s Victorian-era survey book Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World The earlier book consisted of relatively brief … Continue reading »
This past week’s New Republic’s cover article was Peter Beinart’s “A Fighting Faith”, a post-election call for American liberals to confront Islamic totalitarianism, or else fade into irrelevance. Though … Continue reading »