http://evanmcc.com Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:12:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Reading [this](http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11434920&fsrc=RSS) economist analysis of the latest OECD report on broadband penetration got me wondering something. Not about broadband penetration _per se_, but about productivity and its relation to computer technology. This bit specifically: > In other words, new applications that effectively harness broadband must still be developed. So far, ... http://evanmcc.com/2008/05/23/yet-another-whats-the-next-big-thing-post/ My super belated chime in on the whole [death of the SF magazine market thing](http://windupstories.com/2007/11/17/interesting-post-on-online-content/). I think that Paolo's and Erin's comments are particularly interesting because they actually propose some forward movement in the market. The short SF market has shrunk so much that there's almost nothing going on ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/11/17/the-magazine-that-id-like-to-see/ I don't really have a lot to say about this book that hasn't been said more elegantly elsewhere. I liked it, but that was mostly on the strength of Charlie's engagement with nascent technology and the things that one might do with it, and the feverish density of ideas ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/10/10/halting-state-charles-stross/ I put aside something like thirty five books the other day. I'd recently needed to clean up all of the books at the foot of my bed and on my chair, so I reorganized and cleared out another shelf for those. As this involved some shuffling, I got ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/10/10/discards/ To the guy on the salmon and teal race bike from the seventies: Riding out of the saddle all the time with the sprinter face on and the body gestures like you're hammering it over the finish line? These things make you look like a douchebag. Learn ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/08/21/to-my-fellow-commuters/ I was bored tonight and procrastinating, as per usual, so I decided to toy around with some simple simulations. The subject for these experiments was taxation, which I'm sure everyone and their dog finds wildly exciting, but these kinds of things are important, and if my life was exciting ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/07/27/tax-modeling/ *The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America*, by Daniel Brook This book is quite likely to make you angry. Angry, if you're a conservative, at a white, yale-educated author whining about how in order to make ends meet, living in a big city, he has to either ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/07/21/trapped/ Some truly remarkable data visualization stuff [here](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/140). Also, the [presenter](http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/90), Hans Rosling, is a hell of a public speaker. And it's not just tech glitz, either. Much thoughtful analysis of numerical trends as they relate to development. It gets weaker towards the end, but I ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/07/04/you-should-really-watch-this/ That's the title of a new David Levine story in April's F&SF. I thought that his Hugo winner Tk'Tk'Tk was OK, but not mind blowing, but this one is really quite good. A an episodic story, told going backwards in time, wound around a string of just ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/05/26/titanium-mike-saves-the-day/ When I was in high school, the Chaplain, who was a liberal sort, invited a group of Buddhist monks to come and visit. They came and talked, answered questions, skinny asian men, some young, some old, with shaven heads and saffron and orange robes, wearing sneakers or Birkenstocks ... http://evanmcc.com/2007/05/26/write-once-then-destroy/