Home for a day, between trips to Seattle and Vista, and on the phone for most of it :(  although it was good to be home.  Trying to get caught up around here and I find...

The August 2, 2010 issue of the New Yorker was excellent; not only was the cover great, but the contents too; some selected articles: 

• Stuck - the incredible badness of Moscow traffic.  

• Letting Go - "what should medicine do when it can't save your life" - poignant and thought-provoking, an important subject...  

• The Scales Fall - "is there any hope for our overfished oceans?" - a tragedy of the commons if ever there was one.  

Christopher Hitchens via Ann Althouse: "Tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism."  That's it.  That's why multiculturalism breaks down.  I can tolerate anyone who can tolerate me! 

Dave Winer reviews Eat Pray Love.  "The most powerful thing you can do to get through all this messy trickery is to first forgive your ghosts."  I'm not strongly tempted to see this, although I like Julia Roberts and I agree with the message. 

Scott Adams goes nonlinear: Larger Than the Coolness of Corduroy.  You have to click through. 

Ever wonder:  How promiscuous are you?  So I took the quiz, and "based on your response data, you'd be most at home in: Finland, the most promiscuous (#1) of the 48 countries evaluated by the study."  Finland?  Huh. 

I must tell you, my opinion of the iPad is gradually morphing...  it is successful, of course, and to everyone's surprise there isn't a killer app; just a bunch of different things people are figuring out that it is good for...  it might not be good for me - so far, it isn't - but so be it. 

PS my friend Gary, who has an extraordinary 20 years' worth of tablet experience, opines "his skepticism about his skepticism is warranted."  Yeah mine too.

Did you know?  Four years ago today, Pluto was de-planet-ized.  The Earth didn't stop rotating around the Sun, but it was a big deal.