Defective By Design updates it’s 1-star reviews and tags action. They’ve generated hundreds: If you haven’t written a review yet, here are direct links to the review forms. Take a few minutes to explain to potential Kindle buyers why they shouldn’t get one: 6″ Kindle, Kindle DX. If your review wasn’t published by Amazon, definitely let us know. We’ll be busy picking...

President Obama has just finished his news conference, intended to explain his health care reform plan and to gather support for an early passage. While I am sure the O’Reillys and the Limbaughs will judge the conference to be a miserable failure, I believe that the president did a good job in generally outlining the need for, the objectives of, the intended results and the cost of the plan. However, he fell...

Perhaps the tide about how we treat our returning soldiers is changing. Finally. After decades of high military denial. A new report has just been released contravening the VA’s stance on PTSD in soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, saying it is much more prevalent than the military has admitted. You might recall much said about not awarding the Purple Heart to men and woman who are wounded...

As we approach what hopefully will be a reasonable and humane outcome to the ongoing health care reform debate, some have become very emotional (including this author), some fall back on cold hard facts, cold statistics. For those relying on cold, hard facts to either support their views or oppose others’ views on this issue, a brilliant article in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine is just loaded...

New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation is reportedly getting a stream of complaints from state workers about the latest trend in chic bathroomware: waterless urinals: The Department of Environmental Conservation’s effort to maintain eco-friendly bathrooms at its downtown headquarters has made quite a splash but not in the way the state intended. DEC has been getting complaints...

My headline is lifted from the Candy.com launch press release. Robin Wauters at TechCrunch has this far more interesting fact: Candy.com is now a shiny new, online store for all sorts of sweets after the domain name was sold for a whopping $3 million back in June. The fairly old-school website offers a range of lollipops, jelly beans, gum, candy bars and dispensers which it ships all across the United States. They’ll...

Who is the insect world’s greatest traveler? …And the prize goes to Pantala flavescens, a species of dragonfly. A British naturalist has claimed that this 5cm-long dragonfly may hold the record for the longest migration, from southern India to Africa and then back — a distance of 12,000 miles. Andrew Buncombe of The Independent reports: ” ‘It’s an amazing story,’ said...

As the Rochester, Minnesota Post Bulletin reports, a major manufacturer of ethanol, is hoping for a government waiver which will allow more ethanol to be blended into the gasoline you purchase at the pump. Richard Eichstadt is hoping the federal government will give the green light to blending gasoline with 15 percent ethanol. Eichstadt is the general manager of POET Biorefining in Preston, one of several ethanol...

Since it seems to be the week for space news, dramatic photos are emerging of what appears to be the results of a major impact on Jupiter. Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark “scar” had suddenly appeared...

Everyone loves a good science fiction film where heroes set forth boldly to battle asteroids, comets, aliens or The Borg. On the anniversary of our first steps upon the moon, it’s easy to fall into that old longing for adventure, heroism and exploration. But should we be pushing for a manned mission to Mars rather than further robotic explorations? Or even a permanent manned base on the moon? That’s...

Forty years ago today, July 20th, 1969 and for a instant in time we were united in celebration. I was still a baby when this happened but I have spoken to family members who talk about how everyone was watching and holding their breath. Children watched their fathers cry as they watched a human being step foot on the surface of the moon. Indeed I don’t know that any of us who were not alive that day can...

There is some speculation why the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, now visiting India for five days, is not visiting neighbouring US-ally Pakistan as her predecessors have always done. On the other hand, Hillary declared that Pakistan houses a ‘syndicate of terrorism’. The Indian Express reports that Hillary stated that “her country is watching the actions being taken by Islamabad against the...

US defense secretary Robert M. Gates has stated an obvious fact: The troops in Afghanistan “are tired…and the American people are pretty tired.” So, what next (or new)? In an ominous use of the word “unwinnable”, once used by the legendary media person the late Walter Cronkite to turn public opinion against the Vietnam war, defense secretary Gates (photo above) says that “after...

In a slightly more fun, casual story for your Sunday reading, an interesting wager has broken out in the blogosphere. In what he calls a Challenge to Climate Change Skeptics, Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com is offering a rather hefty wager to all takers based on … the weather. It came in response to another blogger who claimed that this summer seemed abnormally cool – referencing the “year...

I have been trying to teach myself graphic design out of a book. It is slow going. Learning things that have many parts combined with abstract ideas take me much reading, re-reading and re-re-reading. I can learn more easily it seems if there are applicable pictures of whatever the learning is… and living poeple actually moving their eyes and hands to make the expert motions so I can see how the body...

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s visit to the Taj Hotel in Mumbai on Saturday was more than a symbolic gesture. She interacted with the staff of the Taj, and the adjoining Trident-Oberoi hotel, who survived last year’s 26/11 terrorist attack. Taj’s general manager, who lost his wife and two children in the attack, introduced the staff, and then arranged breakfast for the visiting dignitary....

The day after and the hubbub is dying down. Still, a quick follow-up to yesterday’s news that Amazon E-Deleted Bought And Paid For Orwell Titles From Kindles is in order. Here then, some thoughts from the legal eagles… Yale Law School’s Jack Balkin: This story is a perfect example of Jonathan Zittrain’s analysis of “tethered appliances,” that is, appliances like the Kindle...

Larry J. Sabato: Tweets of the Week The Crystal Ball’s new feature, Tweets of the Week, showcases some highlights from the past week in politics. Read more analysis from University of Virginia Center for Politics Director, and Crystal Ball founder, Larry Sabato on Twitter here. 9:54 PM Jul 10th: As the author of “A More Perfect Constitution,” I’m delighted that both CA and NY have serious...

America’s legendary broadcaster Walter Cronkite, who passed away at age 92, would be long remembered among the journalist fraternity in the world for the basic things he upheld/promoted as a professional all his life: Excellence, Integrity, Accuracy, Fairness, Objectivity. Really, the world would be a better place if journalists left aside the frills and returned to these basic values in journalism....

People wonder about mothers, human and animal, who walk away from their babies… who refuse and do not nurture their young, who literally walk away, stray out late, leave the child in the bush, in the car, at home alone unable to reach the doorknob and without food… the children cry themselves to sleep, furry or human child, matters not… each needs a mother, her warmth, her regard, her watching...

LATER UPDATE — Amazon says it won’t happen again: These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove...

Newspapers act like they don’t have a clue. So Google directed this message at them: The truth is that news publishers, like all other content owners, are in complete control when it comes not only to what content they make available on the web, but also who can access it and at what price. This is the very backbone of the web — there are many confidential company web sites, university databases,...

Many of us were not lucky enough to experience it the first time around but I urge everybody to keep their eyes for the many events covering the 40th anniversary of man landing on the moon. The net has tons of coverage including a minute by minute reenactment at We Chose The Moon CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc all plan to have extensive coverage over the weekend. 40 years ago tonight, the world held its breath as a countdown...

One of my earliest memories is seeing this on television: Which happened four days after the launch on July 16, 1969. Forty years ago today we launched Apollo 11 to land men on the Moon. In commemoration of the event, there is a website called We Choose the Moon that is playing back audio of the radio transmissions during the mission in real time. (Warning, the site is very Flash intensive, to load it requires...

Blaming Iranian political reformers and the West for yesterday’s horrific air crash in northwest Iran, this article by columnist Kian Mokhtari of Iran’s state-controlled Kayhan lashes out at former President Khatami for seeking to replace Iran’s passenger fleet with Western aircraft – and the West for not selling them to him. On the other hand, he also blames the bad reputation of Russian...