Las Vegas Faces Its Deepest Slide Since the 1940s

Leaving Las Vegas (if they can)

Not Leaving Las Vegas

What was the Gap thinking? – this is as bad as the new UPS logo that was introduced a few years ago.

Europe according to the French

Someone has Wagner on the brain…
Facebook as Rheingold

E-Book Piracy Is on the Rise

In Austria even the Deer waltz.

Because civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark. These people gave in. They stopped caring. And because they did, this land fell under the darkness of a barbarism which lasted for hundreds of years.

from the book The Dream of Scipio, by Iain Pears.

cherylmmorgan: An Evening With William Gibson
Postulating as to why modern SF might be less interested in futurology, Gibson suggested that in order to predict the future it is necessary to have a stable present on which to build. The likes of Wells and Heinlein, he said, were sure of the nature of their world, and could thus confidently predict how it might change. The modern day SF writer is faced by a world that changes month-on-month, where technological advances come as a torrent rather than a trickle, and consequently prediction is a much more dodgy process. SF writers, he opined, were much safer dealing with space opera settings such as The Culture which are far enough advanced that there is no need to question how we got from here to there.

And here is a link to a great radio interview with William Gibson