Spinning back up to speed, here's a filter pass on the week that was 9/13/10, which I spent work work working in Vista.  Came home for a day Friday, reintroduced myself to everyone :) and then Saturday it was off to Boston.  Already seems like a zillion years ago, actually, so I'll filter accordingly.  Here we go:

Slate helpfully points out People who make $250,000 a year can afford a tax hike.  This must have been written by people who make a lot less than that.  The whole idea of a progressive income tax - wherein people who make more not only pay more, but pay a higher percentage - is unfair.  And bad for the economy.  Take it to the limit and you have pure socialism, and we all know how well that works... 

Just how massive is Google?  This infographic tells all...  [ thanks, Rebecca ] 

My field of digital pathology (in which my company Aperio is the leader) is sometimes called telepathology, which is a component of telemedicine, the practice of making diagnoses and administering therapeutics while remote from a patient.  FuturePundit reports on a new advance: teleanesthesia, with remote anesthesiologists.  Wow, how cool is that? 

In other medical news: Scientists make artificial skin.  The key advances here are tactile feedback.  We have the technology... we can rebuild him :) 

Scott "Dilbert" Adams considers Future Searching: "I think the economy has an unimaginably higher gear in it, and we'll see that engage when Internet search goes to the next level, maybe in ten years... The future could be utopia, because everyone will easily find what they need, from love to careers. Or it might be the end of civilization because capitalism depends on barriers to entry, and those will disappear when everyone can find whatever resources they need." 

This is so classic: my post on June 10, 2009, in which I got my Palm Pre.  It has now been well over a year - a lifetime for a smartphone - and I still love it.  In fact on my recent trip my trusty Fuji camera died (!) and I had to resort to using my Pre, and it wasn't half bad.  The ongoing worst feature is poor battery life, which is only partly mitigated by carrying a spare battery. 

I don't have a lot of Apps, but there are a few I love, including Open Table, Facebook, and Pandora.  And my absolute favorite built-in App is the Sprint-specific navigation, which is cooler than anything from Garmin, Tom Tom, Magellan, etc. - even incorporates realtime traffic.  Included for $0 and worth the entire price of the phone.  My favorite "dumb" App is a bubble gage; useful for leveling foosball tables and getting a few laughs at dinner :)

Awesome: Steampunk nature, photoshopped.  The talent on display here is breathtaking.  How do these people find the time?  [ via Boing Boing ] 

Eric Raymond continues his series on the smartphone wars, Apple vs Google vs everyone else.  "Microsoft actually had the audacity to throw a shipping party that included a mock funeral for the iPhone. All that really needs to be said abut this is that the event was recorded by an Android phone."  I love it, and you will too; click! 

Here we have ... the USB typewriter, a "groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence".  I am not making this up.  I especially love that it can be used as a dock for an iPad. 

Jeff Atwood: revisiting solid state drives.  "A solid state hard drive is easily the best and most obvious performance upgrade you can make on any computer for a given amount of money."  The idea of a solid / drive hybrid, in which you have both the capacity and the performance, is pretty compelling.  Hmmm... 

Does Quid have the most pretentious website of any startup ever?  Yes.  "Secondary typeface!? How about a primary business model?"  I love it.