Mainly Positive Software News
Positive: Big summertime sale on "artisanal software" for the Mac, with logos above. This includes two programs I use all day every day, Scrivener and Tinderbox. Tinderbox is a powerful but complex...
View ArticleChina, the Atlantic, and the Foibles of Big Data, All in 1 Post
Act One: Late last year I revisit my friend Liam Casey, the Irish entrepreneur deeply involved in the global outsourcing-industrial complex, at the headquarters of his PCH InternationalĀ company in...
View ArticleAnnals of the Security State: Hypotheses
I'm going to wait a little while before putting up more first-hand accounts from people who have been subjected to stop-and-frisk in the skies. In a sense -- perhaps like normal stop-and-frisk -- the...
View ArticleFirst They Came for the Chinese Tourists, Then They Came for the Yeshiva...
Last week I mentioned the accusations in the state-run Chinese press that Chinese travelers to America were getting brusque treatment from United Airlines, allegedly because they were Chinese. Two days...
View ArticleRice, Power, Obama -- and NSA
To overgeneralize, in foreign policy I consider Susan Rice and Samantha Power to be "liberal interventionists." What is American power for, if it is not to do good in the world? (Rice at center, Power...
View ArticleWhy We Love the Chinese State Media, EdiciĆ³n Mexicana
Out of the office and away from electronic communications since early this morning. Many, many things to catch up on, so let me buy time by starting with this. My very favorite newspaper, honoring a...
View ArticleFalse Equivalence Watch: A Keeper from the L.A. Times
Will get to security-state news of all sorts later today. For now, quite a remarkable illustration of the spread of the "false equivalence" outlook.Ā For background on that concept, start here.Ā The gist...
View Article'I Cannot Figure Out Why This Was Classified to Begin With'
Today this note came in from a reader in Florida, about the revelations of NSA phone-surveillance programs:In general, I'm partial to ACLU and EFF arguments about privacy and civil liberties in the...
View ArticleSummer Weekend in the City
Yeah, yeah, we're turning into a Panopticon police-surveillance state; and we have Blimpish foreign pooh-bahsĀ to point out our flaws; and we are as always going to hell; et cetera,But in what other...
View ArticleFound Art of the Day: How Not To Be Alone
Lots of other, weightier things going on, but this was too day-appropriate to pass up. Thanks to reader (and subscriber!) SC in London. I always like to see Federer win, because he looks just like one...
View ArticleEdward Snowden in Hong Kong
Three points:1) I believe what I wroteĀ two days ago: that the United States and the world have gained much more, in democratic accountability, than they have lost in any way with the revelation of...
View ArticleA Man Who Resisted the Security State
I'm not referring to Edward Snowden (nor to the man* above) but instead to someone who resisted in a different, very quiet way, more than a decade ago. The account below comes from a person I have...
View ArticleLife Recreates Art: Sunnylands Division
According to everyone I know in China, all writing in at once, here is the now-most-wildly-popular image being shared on Sina Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter):It's a Small World After All.Ā Ā Ā Ā
View ArticleUpdate on Pooh, Tigger, and the 2 Presidents: Art Recreates Life, not Vice Versa
Last night I posted the wonderful Weibo-viral-hit matchup of Xi Jinping walking with Barack Obama, and Winnie the Pooh walking with Tigger. In case you've forgotten:Many readers have written in to...
View ArticleThe Perilous Shoals of Memory: Back to that Dicey NYT Mag Story
Let's step away from NSA and Edward Snowden, and even from Pooh and Tigger, for a moment. Earlier IĀ saidĀ I would not re-prosecute the caseĀ against the recent, fantasized NYT Magazine "Lives" story on...
View ArticleThe Author of the New York Times 'Plane Crash' Story on What He Got Wrong
Last month, as part of its last-page "Lives" feature, The New York Times Magazine published an article by Noah Gallagher Shannon called "The Plane Was About to Crash. Now What?" It described the...
View ArticleWorld o' Flight Updates: NYT Mag, Gliders, Yeshivah of Flatbush, Solar Impulse
Have been off the grid for several days, seeing sights like the one above: flooded farmland this past weekend in the Missouri River basin just west of St. Louis. Herewith a series of sky-related...
View ArticleToday's Press-Related Links
I am still mainly off the grid but wanted to note these items:1) How things should not work, part 1. I knew Michael Hastings slightly and liked him a lot. As with most people who either knew or knew-of...
View ArticleEd Iacobucci
Five years ago, I had an article in the magazine about the latest startup scheme by Ed Iacobucci -- who by that time, in his 50s, had a long string of startup and other tech-world successes behind him....
View ArticleBack Online
This has been an unusual period: five days of 24/7 travel and reporting in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for reasons to be described shortly, and leaving little margin beyond the hours of interviewing and...
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