An interesting perspective.

Quoted: Ted Kaczynski, the convicted bomber who blew up dozens of technophilic professionals, was right about one thing: technology has its own agenda. The technium is not, as most people think, a series of individual artifacts and gadgets for sale. Rather, Kaczynski, speaking as the Unabomber, argued that technology is a dynamic holistic system. It is not mere hardware; rather it is more akin to an organism.

Great language.

Quoted: How financial panic influenced the philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

A McCain biography article published in the Rolling Stone.

(refave jacob)

Quoted: A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty.

Putin comes across as competent and credible. His viewpoint naturally advances Russia's interests, but he backs it up well.

Quoted: CNN's Matthew Chance interviewed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

It's obvious that the media got played, but I'm disappointed that political "leaders" didn't step in to set them straight.

Quoted: Most papers dutifully reported that a Georgian attack in the breakaway province of South Ossetia, where most people want to join Russia, started the conflict. But casual readers might have struggled to understand that.

This is exactly the right thing to do.

Quoted: Greg Mortenson has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration to help fight terrorism in Pakistan. Instead of blowing things up, he builds schools.

Higher life expectancy leads to new moral and practical problems.

Quoted: she showed graphs describing the three most common ways that old people die and the trajectory and duration of each scenario

Quoted: “We’re doing this so badly because we’ve never been here before,” Dr. Lynn said. “But the care system we’ve got didn’t come down from the mountain. We made it up, and we can make it up better.”

Schools are evil, here's why.

Quoted: Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are

It occurs to me that I like the idea of the Dalai Lama, but don't know the historical context. This article describes some harsh criticism of Tibetan Buddhism and recent Dalai Lamas.

Quoted: The authors’ most provocative contention is that the global spread of Tibetan Buddhism may be laying the seeds for a new, highly aggressive, and virulently anti-Islamic form of fundamentalism.