Prosecutors and police routinely lie - to judges, suspects, people they want information from - with no sanctions whatsoever. Someone, somewhere has to enforce the notion that the end does not justify the means in our legal process. Go ACLU! (btw, I consider myself conservative) While they're at it, perhaps they could bring a constitutional lawsuit against NJ, Illinois, Virginia et al. for trying to make an end run around Sixth Amendment protections in domestic violence cases.

Our government is an inch from outright socialism, our justice system an inch from outright fascism. I own guns for a reason.

An NYT online subscription is worth twenty dollars per *year* to me, not per month. It is the same story as e-book publishers - It simply doesn't cost as much to publish online as in print, so there is no justification for trying to jack up their margins. Until the NYT recognizes that the public is savvy enough to realize this and lower their fees to something reflecting cost-plus-reasonable margin (say, 20% without subsidizing costs from the print operation) I will continue to ignore the paywall.

Apple has class packages specifically for folks like your wife. They aren't expensive and forestall a lot of frustration. I have a neighbor who is bipolar (so concentration problems) who converted from Windows XP to OS X; her husband enrolled her in the class and now she is completely comfortable with OS X. It is difficult to impossible to teach a spouse for host of psychological reasons. If she is open to it, buy her a class package and encourage her to bring her questions to class.

Ah, I speculate that you've never been divorced. horror-comedy-action describes it handily.

Yeah, tough to believe the guy responsible for 'Buffy' was also responsible for 'Firefly'.

Check out Amanda Hocking - she is to whom I was referring earlier.

:-) My point was that a known, popular author disintermediating a publisher is a non-event. Someone like the blogger in Minneapolis who segued that into being a popular chick-lit e-book author (six-figure sales) - she gets props.

While one applauds Mr. Eisler's decision to disintermediate his publisher (thus contributing to joblessness for his own gain), one cannot help but notice that his sales problem will be one of distribution; i.e., like him or not, he has his audience and, once they realize they can e-borrow his books from the library, he will retain his volume. For those authors new to the marketplace, this option is a problem - how does one get their book publicized, reviewed and on to the big sites like Barnes & Noble and Amazon?

Anyone seen Julianne Moore's t-shirt?

One of Jeopardy's rules is that one cannot buzz in until the moderator finishes reading the question. That gave an infinite advantage to Watson. I have no doubt that Rutter and Jennings would have made a much better game of it if that rule had been waived; then it would have been a real test of man against machine for comprehending and answering the questions. Ah well, I'm sure IBM funded the whole thing. As far as I am concerned it was an expensive ad, not a contest.

There have always been distractions at lectures (the girl in the next row, for example). The best one can do is make it easier for those who want to learn, to do so. Jamming wifi in the lecture hall will remove one major distraction; requiring attractive men and women to wear monks' robes to class will remove another.

Seriously, people who want to do the work will find a way to do so. It's called self-discipline.