He was a master storyteller. He could craft a story in just about any genre, including fantasy romance (Somewhere In Time and, arguably, What Dreams May Come) and western (the novels Journal of the Gun Years and The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickock). The range of his body of work is impressive.

Natural climate fluctuation is pretty much indisputable, even with human historical periods (medieval warm period, Little Ice Age, etc). Likewise, the current warming trend is also indisputable, and it's fairly certain that even if it's NOT human caused, it's probably at least human exacerbated.

The US didn't ratify the Kyoto treaty because, if I recall correctly, China and India among others were exempt. The US would have taken an economic hit as a result of the treaty while China, which has only gotten bigger and bigger as a major industrial country in the years since Kyoto, would not have been saddled with the same regulations. This is a legitimate economic issue, but the political argument shifted away from the arena of economics, where perhaps it might have been a bit easier to arrive at an agreement or way forward. The political argument shifted instead to one about the scientific validity of the research. Skeptics deny the science as a way of trying to preempt the political conversation that necessarily follows. I think this is a disingenuous approach. If someone (or some organization) has an issue with the proposed political remedies -- as I sometimes, perhaps often, do -- then they should make THAT that their argument, not the underlying science.

Apparently they do have the internet in Missouri. They might, however, be lacking the Constitution. Doesn't this touch on "freedom of association" issues?

Maybe, but 2nd Amendment cases have lately been succeeding in court. DC, for example, had its gun ban struck down about a year or two ago.

The fact that Mass. would even put together a plan like this shows you just how weakened the 4th Amendment has become. Of all the amendments in the Bill of Rights, this one, it seems to me, is the one that's the most gone.

And the consequences of breaking the pledge would be ...?

Exactly what the Twitter account in question brought up: "Dear NYT: if you don't want people following your stories on Twitter then you probably shouldn't, you know, post 'em on Twitter."

And to add to the lack of logic and/or sanity, there's this gem mentioned in TFA: The NY Times spent $40 million on a paywall that can be defeated by clearing the browser's cache!

For a fun look at our dreams of the future that never panned out, you should check out Popular Mechanics' recent book "The Wonderful Future That Never Was: Flying Cars, Mail Delivery by Parachute, and Other Predictions from the Past".

Totally agree. Most of the lights I have at home are CFLs, but there are a few places in the house where I want the lights to be at full brightness when I flip the switch or where I *want* the combination of heat and light of the edisons.

I agree. I was never a big fan of version 2, and my initial take is that this is an improvement. It could do with a bit less whitespace, perhaps, but it's a nice, clean, uncluttered look. I'll have a better idea in a few days, but so far I like it.

It'll take a couple days for me to give it a proper test-drive and fully form an opinion, but my initial reaction is positive. Good work, guys.

I went to see Tron Legacy with the missus and had occasional geek-out moments but overall I thought the movie was just okay. I'm old enough to have seen the original in the theaters and to me, the experiences just didn't compare. Not that I ever expected them to. Tron Legacy may have been the superior movie -- maybe -- but there's really a lot to be said for seeing a fantastical movie at the right age. I saw the original Tron when I was something like 10 years old, and it blew me away. Similarly, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Raiders might not be the best movie I've ever seen (although it's still very high up on my list) but no movie-watching experience will ever match seeing it on the big screen at 10 years old.

As for the movies this year, I didn't get out to see very many of them, but I did catch Inception and really enjoyed it. Between Dark Knight and Inception, Nolan has quickly put himself on my "go see whatever he makes" list.

From Google's "about" page for their Books Ngram Viewer lab: "Why does the word 'Internet" occur before 1950?"

AFAIK, Google Books doesn't do the sort of methodical OCR clean-up that Project Gutenberg does, so a lot of Google's digitized books have a a fair number of errors. It'd be funny to see what kind of blips this might creates in our extracted cultural history!

Hey, stop talking about me!