Thursday, May 22, 2003

Kathy to Hilary, May 16, 1972 cont., Tehran, Iran. . . . . PS [handwritten in pencil]: I know that when one hasn’t written for a long time it seems as if so much has happened and you could never say it so that you came out a heroine in your story. I often wonder what you’re like now. People change so much in one and three-quarter years, especially if they’re teenagers (I guess we really are OFFICIALLY teenagers now, with all the capricious emotions and faults that the title entails) and I wonder...At any rate, I suppose our paths will one day cross again--that happens, so you hear, and it would be interesting, if I were the analytical sort--to see the growths, prejudices of two people who had the same sort of early environment (but not early early environ.) and education but whose later ones were different. This is some kind of weird digression, nicht wahr? I’ve lost touch with the old homestead--childhood innocence and all that crap--but sometimes it really seems like Utopia. So green and running like crazy kids down to the Potomac all the time. I don’t want to go back--there is so much else to see and I don’t know if I have the time. What are your plans? There is so much that must be done and so little that I can do, I don’t know where to begin. KAT Still one of the better things on the Web, the Tehran <-> Washington, DC 1970-1973 teen girl blog. 3:18:51 PM    comment []

The Case Against Micropayments, by Andrew Odlyzko. (pdf) 12:37:08 PM    comment []

Harvard study wrestles with Gator. A study sponsored by the Harvard law school's Berkman Center for Internet and Society gives a glimpse at the inner workings of the much-despised pop-up advertising utility. [CNET News.com] 7:01:48 AM    comment []

Lenny Bruce Pardon (SCOTUS Blog). Ronald Collins and David Skover, the authors of The Trials of Lenny Bruce (2002), are petitioning Governor George E. Pataki of New York to posthumously pardon Lenny Bruce for his 1964 obscenity conviction at the Café Au Go Go nightclub. . . . . [L]etters of support [have been] signed by, among others, Floyd Abrams, Margaret Cho, Martin Garbus, Thomas Goldstein, Nat Hentoff, Lee Levine, Penn & Teller, Steven Shiffrin, Nadine Strossen, Laurence Tribe, Eugene Volokh, and Robin Williams. See also: Trials of Lenny Bruce Web site Posthumous Pardon Asked for Lenny Bruce, by Susan Saulny (NYT). 7:00:23 AM    comment []

The Orphans of Invention: Something more than jobs were lost in the Internet bust. It has to do with people and history, with what might be called industrial memory. By Ellen Ullman. [New York Times: Opinion] 6:56:02 AM    comment []

Shocking New Jacket Hits Street. Defense technology for women gets close and personal. Researchers have developed a protective jacket that wards off bad guys with an 80,000-volt shock. Don't miss the stunning video. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News] 6:53:47 AM    comment []

Anticipating a post-Web, post-PC world. Technologists just can't stop thinking about tomorrow, but industry watcher Kevin Werbach writes that business leaders may either take the Web for granted or look at it as yesterday's revolution. But they cannot avoid the inescapable truth that the context has shifted--for everyone. [CNET News.com] 6:52:11 AM    comment []