With all this talk of the NSA and its activities, espionage has stormed back onto the front pages. Perfect time to publish a spy novel set in China, the USA and Germany, one should think, and cometh the hour, cometh the man in the form of Olen Steinhauer. That surname suggests another Nordic star but [...]
Archive for October, 2012
The journey from DOS to Windows 8
For the first time since 2001, personal computer sales are projected to fall this year. This means that all eyes are now on Windows 8 with its emphasis on touchscreen input and a grid of dynamically updating tiles that represent apps. Can it produce the kind of bounce that the ailing PC business needs coming [...]
The rise of the mini
The news is full of #Sandy and our thoughts are with those bearing the brunt of her wrath. It’s of little consolation to say that thanks to our new technologies more people than ever can be informed about the course of natural disasters, but they are connecting communities as never before and tools like Twitter [...]
Plan 28 is now accepting donations to build a computer
An extraordinary 10-year project named Plan 28 to build the world’s first “computer” is now accepting donations via the JustGiving crowdfunding site. It will cost £250,000 to build the steam-powered Analytical Engine designed by Charles Babbage in the mid-19th century. The project, by the way, takes its name from “Plan 28″ after the most comprehensive [...]
October tree outside window
“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?” J. B. Priestley Send to Kindle
They left their emotional baggage behind
From Calexico, this is Splitter. It can be found on their excellent new album, Algiers. Send to Kindle
China: The Economist flatters; the New York Times reveals
The latest issue of The Economist features Xi Jinping, soon to be named China’s next president, on the cover and the editorial accompanying the title mentions the word “corruption” three times. Here’s the penultimate paragraph: “The Chinese Communist Party has a powerful story to tell. Despite its many faults, it has created wealth and hope [...]
Obama vs. Romney: Round 3
Here we go. The final round and it’s even-Steven on this judge’s card. Rainy Day got it somewhat right on the first round, in that Mitt Romney came out swinging for the KO, but we erred on the second round by counting out President Obama before the bell had sounded. This means that the third [...]
Sylvan sofa
Thous still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats [...]
Hymn to a Great City
The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt wrote Hymn to a Great City in 1984 as a gift to his friends Mirjam and William Miesse. The name of the city in the title is not explicitly stated, but is is thought to be New York. This exquisite work is performed here by Marjan Peternel and Primož Urban? [...]
The end of ink at Newsweek Inc.
“One day, we’ll see movies with people reading magazines and newspapers on paper and chuckle. Part of me has come to see physical magazines and newspapers as, at this point, absurd. They are like Wile E Coyote suspended three feet over a cliff for a few seconds. They’re still there; but there’s nothing underneath; and [...]
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