Funny, but once again, fails to RTFA. From said article:

Another possible explanation would be that engineers possess technical skills and architectural know-how that makes them attractive recruits for terrorist organizations. But the recent study found that engineers are just as likely to hold leadership roles within these organizations as they are to be working hands-on with explosives. In any case, their technical expertise may not be that useful, since most of the methods employed in terrorist attacks are rudimentary. It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers, but it was their experience with box cutters and flight school, not fancy degrees, that counted in the end.

From the Slate article:

Another possible explanation would be that engineers possess technical skills and architectural know-how that makes them attractive recruits for terrorist organizations. But the recent study found that engineers are just as likely to hold leadership roles within these organizations as they are to be working hands-on with explosives. In any case, their technical expertise may not be that useful, since most of the methods employed in terrorist attacks are rudimentary. It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers, but it was their experience with box cutters and flight school, not fancy degrees, that counted in the end.

Apparently few engineers are actually using their engineering skills in an engineering capacity, which would argue for something else going on. As the article notes, engineers are apparently more religious than their brethren in other majors.

This is the entire point he is trying to make:

This is a subsidiary point in support of a larger point, but Stephenson doesn't explicitly state the larger point because he knows the reader should be able to pick it up. I teach English 101 and 102 at the University of Arizona and use "Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out" in both classes, and it works pretty well at sorting those who can read for slightly sophisticated content for main point and those who can't.

By Neal Stephenson, whoever-in-the-hell that is.

I assume this is a troll, but I'll bite: see Amazon's author page or this hilarious /. interview.

it's just entertainment, for crying out loud.

My generic response is that if we had higher standards collectively, maybe we'd get better entertainment.

My specific response is that Avatar obviously aspires to have a message, whether it be about the eco system, greed, or whatever. So it deserves real criticism.

My third response is that entertainment is almost never just entertainment: it both reinforces, responds to, and creates social and ethical values through the story it presents; see Pierre Bourdieu's book The Field of Cultural Production for more on that topic. To deny that is to allow the thoughts of others as presented in story to replace your own.

I think the above is a troll, but just in case...

Unless you're blind, you've probably noticed that the screens on netbooks are terrible and that the "resolution" of paper is very nice. Most of us wouldn't want to spend eight hours reading a book on a netbook screen but would be more than happy to do so with a paperback. Consequently, the Kindle and Nook are trying to emulate paper rather than computer screens, and they do so fairly well.

I'm a grad student in English lit and have to read a ton of articles and book chapters that are usually distributed as .pdfs. Because of the Nook's native .pdf reading abilities, I'm tempted to get one chiefly for that purpose.

The XKCD blag talks about this too.

Here are a few factoids for you:

I'm glad you followed the Slashdot tradition and provided extensive documentation to back up your outlandish, improbable claims.

I read the title - "Why Movies Are Not Exactly Like Music" - and thought, "If you can't tell the difference, you've got bigger problems than piracy!"

DRM and Price is really a deal breaker, and the idea of rebuying books I already own so I can read them on my ebook reader is a little obnoxious. I love the Idea just hate the execution thus far, but I'm still hopeful for the tech to catch on.

I read a lot -- I'm a grad student in English, and see the /. link to my homepage for my book blog -- so I've paid a lot of attention to eBooks. For me, the DRM is still the big problem, as described in greater detail here. Like you, I find the idea of carrying around every book I've ever read appealing, along with one-click OED lookups. But the DRM is appalling.

That being said, I might try the Nook chiefly for its .pdf ability -- I have to read so many .pdfs that buying one might make sense just for the convenience of not having to print or be tethered to my computer.

Setting aside completely any comparison among the three authors, is there something more intrinsically interesting and valuable, less ephemeral and interchangeable, about a typewriter vs. a computer as an instrument of literary creation?

Who knows? I suspect the answer to be no: we like the physical manifestations and possessions of the famous, as if we'll gain their powers or knowledge by proximity. And for writers, I don't think it matters what OS you use, although I like OS X; it probably doesn't even matter if you use a computer, a typewriter, or a pen: what matters most is your imagination and the power of expression. Everything else is secondary.

That being said, I can see the computers of famous authors one day being of value. For one thing, check out The Guardian's series on writers' rooms. If we're interested in the rooms, I bet we'll be interested in the tools.

If SF has become as cliched as you imply, I think a fair amount of the blame can be laid at the doorstep of publishers, as I discuss in more detail in this comment.

I doubt science fiction has "run out of steam," in terms of authors or imagination any more than science or technology has run out of steam due to a lack of imagination. Rather, I wonder if the science fiction publishing business has either run out of steam or become an active roadblock between writers and readers. It seems that most publishers are trying a play-it-safe approach that demands giving out the same thing over and over again.

This is based partially on what I see in bookstores and partially on my own experience, which I discuss extensively in Science fiction, literature, and the haters. It begins:

Why does so little science fiction rise to the standards of literary fiction?

This question arose from two overlapping events. The first came from reading Day of the Triffids (link goes to my post); although I don't remember how I came to the book, someone must've recommended it on a blog or newspaper in compelling enough terms for me to buy it. Its weaknesses, as discussed in the post, brought up science fiction and its relation to the larger book world.

The second event arose from a science fiction novel I wrote called Pearle Transit that I've been submitting to agents. It's based on Conrad's Heart of Darkness--think, on a superficial level, "Heart of Darkness in space." Two replies stand out: one came from an agent who said he found the idea intriguing but that science fiction novels must be at least 100,000 words long and have sequels already started. "Wow," I thought. How many great literary novels have enough narrative force and character drive for sequels? The answer that came immediately to mind was "zero," and after reflection and consultation with friends I still can't find any. Most novels expend all their ideas at once, and to keep going would be like wearing a shirt that fades from too many washes. Even in science fiction, very few if any series maintain their momentum over time; think of how awful the Dune books rapidly became, or Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series. A few novels can make it as multiple-part works, but most of those were conceived of and executed as a single work, like Dan Simmons' Hyperion or Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (more on those later).

The minimum word count bothers me too. It's not possible for Pearle Transit to be stretched beyond its present size without destroying what makes it coherent and, I hope, good. By its nature it is supposed to be taunt, and much as a 120-pound person cannot be safely made into a 240-pound person, Pearle Transit can't be engorged without making it like the bloated star that sets its opening scene. If the market reality is that such books can't or won't sell, I begin to tie the quality of the science fiction I've read together with the system that produces it.

If the publishing system itself is broken and nothing yet has grown up to take its place (I have no interest in trolling through thousands of terrible novels uploaded to websites in search of a single potential gem, for those of you Internet utopians out there), maybe the source of the genre's troubles isn't where PC Pro places it.