Have you ever noticed that "Why?" is qualitatively different from all the other interrogatives?  ("What?", "When?", "Where?", "Who?", and "How?")  Of all of them, only Why calls for interpretation of human opinion.  All the others call only for fact.  Fascinating.

I've been reading the classic Anne from Green Gables by L.M.Montgomery with my daughter Megan.  (We're really enjoying it; Anne reminds both of us strongly of Megan :)  Anyway this story takes place on Prince Edward Island, a Canadian Province located North-East of Maine.  You would think this is pretty far North, right?  Well guess what, the latitude of P.E.I. is the same as Portland, Oregon, and the south of France!  I guess I always thought of Europe as approximately the same latitude as the United States, but this is way off.  Actually most cities in Europe are far North of the United States.  Amazing.  No wonder it is so cold in Northern Europe!

John Battelle discusses Google Library: Talk about a long tail.  They plan to scan, OCR, and index all the books in some of the world's most important libraries.  Incredible.

This looks cool - the World Wide Panorama Project.  "The week of the Equinox, September 18-22, 2004, photographers around the world created VR panoramas on the theme 'Bridges'.  The site they produced features 186 panoramas, plus interactive maps for navigation."  If you're an aficionado of Quicktime VR pictures, or just like bridges, check this out!  It is especially neat to see those really old bridges in Asia...  [ via Cult of Mac ]

The .NET CPU?  Apparently the CLR doesn't run fast enough as a virtual machine, so a startup is poised to launch an actual machine which runs a subset of the same "instruction set".  Interesting...

Fortune magazine has a nice series: The Family Car, circa 2010.  It will includes next generation GPS, self-parking, electronic stability control, night vision, external airbags, driving "by wire", a lane departure warning system, adaptive headlights, blind-spot warning systems, and of course my favorite - adaptive cruise control (my caravans idea is becoming reality!)