Ukranians faced off riot police yesterday in Independence Square, a tense scene that ended peacefully for now, with police forces withdrawing.  The protests are sparked by anger over president Viktor Yanukovich’s apparent stonewalling on signing a trade deal with the EU that would further emancipate the fledgling democracy from its former Soviet occupiers.  The pact would bring badly needed investment into ...

Once again, computer scientist, author, and musician Jaron Lanier passionately addresses ways in which digital age toys and apps offer illusions of empowerment and greater freedom while in fact limiting both.  This article was shared by reader Mike Katell, who also offered a thoughtful comment in response to my post as to why I’m not losing sleep over the revelations ...

I’ve written about this subject before, but a recurring, underlying theme that pits the powers of Silicon Valley against all types of producers of creative works is the premise that the digital age is all about abundance in contrast to a pre-internet epoch of scarcity.  To read some of the purpler prose on the subject, one would think the early ...

It’s almost de rigueur at this point.  Somebody pisses off a group of people who reach for their keyboards and let slip the doggerel of wrath in the form of assault by Twitter.  This holiday weekend, the target of death threats was Alabama football kicker Cade Foster and family, following his poor performance in the Iron Bowl against Auburn.  Foster ...

As Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, thoughts turn to the subject of American exceptionalism, seeded by those zealous pilgrims who set out from England to establish their New Jerusalem on the American continent. I don’t mean the supposedly freedom-seeking, mythological caricatures with the dumb hats the kids are told about in school, but the flesh-and-blood puritans whose presumptively divine ...

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