[previously of interest]

“Are you taking advantage of Web 2.0?” New York Times technology columnist David Pogue explains what it is and how to do it.

“I began my blog by accident, and for some time maintained it almost as a whim,” says poet and critic Reginald Shepherd. “But it has brought me many good things.”

Errol Morris notes that in the 17th century, Descartes solicited and published the opinions of readers. As for Morris's blog, he quips, “So what is going on here? I believe it should appropriately be called… 'Cartesian Blogging.'”

Dan Gilbert presents evidence indicating our minds routinely synthesize happiness.

Kenneth M. Heilman and Russell S. Donda argue thoughtfully:

…a doctrinal belief system which is intolerant of one’s own or another’s personal interpretation, or one which dispels science and foments intolerance of others while setting its followers apart as elite and uniquely special, is a move away from our full potential…

New York Times: How much are consumers willing to pay for small amounts of Web content?

Google CIO Douglas Merrill on innovation at Google: “Whatever you do, start innovating with the user.”

In the New York Times, Brad Stone and Matt Richtel give examples of “high-profile figures who tried to exploit the anonymity of the Internet to promote their companies and combat enemies under false pretenses.”

Why should you be reading Arts & Letters Daily? Robert Fulford of the National Post attempts to explain.

Mark Bowden envisions journalism's future.

Edward Tufte teaches audiences how data, gracefully displayed, can make a stronger impact.

Writing for the New York Times, Saul Hansell deftly explains how and why “Google keeps tweaking its search engine.”

In the Virginia Quarterly Review, Erik Campbell opines, “There comes a point in many a person’s life when things that Nietzsche said begin to make good sense.”

According to a recent report from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, “If 2004 was the year of the blog, 2005 and 2006 were the years the hyperlocal citizen media movement exploded.”

In Slate, Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens takes a jab at marketers' appeals to our persistent narcissism.

Clive Thompson applauds “The see-through CEO” in Wired.

Andrew Nachison on Assignment Zero: “The site makes my head spin.”

A pro-am journalism experiment: Assignment Zero

Fiona Ehlers gives us “A day with Saigon's last public letter writer” in Spiegel Online.

Astronauts: “Unlike those of us here among the trees, they have seen the forest,” writes Dan Glass in Seed.

Members of Generation We have a much more global outlook at a younger age, because they and their parents are comfortable with technology.

“Kid turns 70 and nobody cares” by Joseph Epstein

“Encounters with the opposite sex skew our psyches in such a special way that reason and bias climb right into bed with each other,” according to Kaja Perina in Psychology Today.

Next, reports redOrbit.com, Google Earth may superimpose on its aerial images new views of hazards that could threaten people's homes.

A Christmas letter from Garrison Keillor

“Neoclassical economics, as the Chicago School of thought is now called, has become an international elite consensus…” says Christopher Hayes of In These Times.

“Scientific communication is impersonal by design,” muses Chet Raymo.

In the NYTimes: “How to make your web site sing for you”

Will Wilkinson shows us:

…a sensible measure of a culture’s quality is the extent to which it can shape potentially destructive natural propensities, such as self-interest, status-seeking, tribal solidarity, and mate competition, into benign or even beneficial cultural forms.

Writing for Vitamin, Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path notes, “…the developers I’ve worked with have, in many ways, been much more reasonable and less difficult than most of the designers I’ve worked with.”

Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair speculates on the fate of the New York Times: “Panic on 43rd Street”

From Studies in Intelligence: Journal of the American Intelligence Professional: “How the Web can relieve our information glut and get us talking to each other”

On blogs: “All the Internet’s a stage. Why don’t CEOs use it?”

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