MG Siegler caused a firestorm yesterday when he wrote that the Magic Trackpad signals the end of the mouse: Apple would only say that “we want to offer our users the choice.” They note that plenty of people at Apple have been using the Magic Trackpad alongside the Magic Mouse. “Some operations are better for a mouse, some for a trackpad,” is what I was told. That said, Apple did acknowledge that some...

When I say “comment here” in the headline, I don’t mean Community Boulevard at District TMV. I have something much more “dangerous” in mind. Today is the first day of the Federal Register’s new website, a little bit of wonk heaven online. The Federal Register publishes federal government notices, proposed administrative rules/regulations, final rules and presidential documents including Executive...

Paul Graham ponders the acceleration of addictiveness: What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they’re all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors. Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are. And the scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating. We wouldn’t want to stop it. It’s the same process that cures diseases:...

Yaakov Kirschen, The Jerusalem Post, Dry Bones This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Peter Galbraith, the former United Nations’ deputy special representative for Afghanistan, raises a pertinent point regarding the White House response to WikiLeaks documents: “The Wikileaks documents, splashed in the Guardian and several other papers, provide useful confirmation of what is readily discerned from public sources: the Afghanistan War is going badly, the Taliban are exceptionally brutal,...

The world media is in a spin. The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel have published a huge cache of secret military files from the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, detailing the war in Afghanistan. Readers can folllow the latest reactions to the Afghanistan war logs here at this Guardian blog. The huge cache of classified papers – posted by Wikileaks as the Afghan War Diary – is one of...

My last post criticizing Constitutional Originalists seemed to have hit a delicate nerve with many TMV readers and other contributors. One commentator noted that my post had no point but was entertaining. Thanks for the left-handed compliment. There was an underlying point that most people missed and might not have appreciated, particularly if they have not read or fully understood some of my other TMV rants...

Jeffrey Rosen, author of 2000′s The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America, has 7,000 words in the NYTimes Magazine on living in a world where “the worst thing you’ve done is often the first thing everyone knows about you.” The story, The Web Means the End of Forgetting, has been up since Wednesday. It deserves wide discussion. A snippet: Companies like ReputationDefender offer...

Remember the $10 laptop? Vaporware. The same people now promise a $35 touch-screen tablet: Aimed at students, the tablet supports web browsing, video conferencing and word processing, say developers. Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said a manufacturer was being sought for the gadget, which was developed by India’s top IT colleges. An earlier cheap laptop plan by the same ministry came to...

Many on the extreme right and elsewhere on the political spectrum strongly advocate we return to some imaginary original Constitution, and that we should live by what the original framers thought or intended – as these advocates are only able to decipher. Of course, any political, economic, social or religious ideology expanded via rigid consistency will naturally lead to insanely ludicrous statements and...

NYT’s Op-Ed Columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, quotes the US federal Bureau of Labor Statistics that “for the first time in American history, men no longer inevitably dominate the labor force. Women were actually the majority of payroll employees for the five months that ended in March.” Does this mean that in the battle of sexes women have finally emerged as the winners? Well…Well…...

I looked at a summary of my TMV posts over the past 2 years and I think I’ve been rehashing some ideas and talking points too often. I also noticed that when I (or other TMV writers) discussed matters of sex, we got the most cross-posts on other blogs and the most reactions from readers. Thus, let’s go back to everyone’s favorite subject: Sex. I certainly hope deep down (and pray as only a Catholic agnostic...

Dana Priest has won two Pulitzer Prizes for her investigative reporting, and I’m betting she’s going to get a third one for this new series exposing a vast post-9/11 network of intelligence agencies and operations that has grown beyond the ability of anyone — even those at the highest levels of access — to understand, manage, or control. And it continues to grow, like a metastasized cancer:

File this in your X File: ABC News — not a supermarket tabloid — is reporting that a UFO seen in China’s skies forced Xiaoshan Airport to cease operations for one hour earlier this month. Their report even has what are alleged to be pictures: (Could it be “birthers” doing a shift change here on earth, heading back home?)

When I first started my Twitter account, I referred to “Tweets” as “Twits.” A few people emailed me noting that a Twit had a different definition, and by golly it did. Your Dictionary explains: ….a foolish, contemptible person Sarah Palin has created a mini-political firestorm with her Tweets about a Muslim mosque being planned in NYC. And, yes, these qualify as…Twits.

As I write this, BP and government scientists were still monitoring extended pressure tests and seismic probes on the site of the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Bob Cavner, the oceanic engineer who is becoming a media star explaining the capping process, said the pressure of 6,700 pounds per square inch (psi) is below what Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s on-site commander, hoped to rise to 8,000 psi or better....

You might be surprised to learn that the return rate for Apple’s iPhone4 is less than a third of the return rate of the prior iPhone3GS, given all the press about that devil’s spawn, The Antenna. That’s one of the tidbits from today’s press conference that you might or might not see in a mainstream news story. Even if it’s there, I doubt it would be the lede. I thought I’d mine...

So BP has apparently stopped the oil leak — for now. And not a dead sea turtle too soon. (Seriously, click on this link to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which is posting “daily wildlife collection reports” as part of its oil spill response. It’s sad and depressing and terrifying.) Thanks BP! You’re the best! ********** No, not really. You’re not the best. And the...

Tainter makes this observation; substantial increased costs occurred late, shortly before collapse and were incurred by a population already weakened by a pattern of declining marginal returns. It was not a challenge that caused the collapse but a system that had been unproductively complex was unable to respond. Tainter says that the only solution for over complexity is simplification but complex systems are...

I have been waiting patiently as most of the civilized world that ought to give a damn should on whether this latest attempt to cap the BP oil blowout is successful. What is critical is not that the cap has plugged the gusher 5,000 feet under the Gulf of Mexico. But the pressure tests as to the well’s integrity 8,000 feet below close to the reservoir holding billions of barrels of crude. Lose pressure, and...