Steven Weinberg has a top-notch article over at the New York Review of Books titled, "Is the Universe a Computer?" and the Raven highly recommends it if you have a few minutes. He presents a critical analysis of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science and tackles the tough job not of explaining what Wolfram is trying to say with his theory of cellular automata—you could read his book for that—but of placing Wolfram's work into the context of current scientific and mathematical research. Weinberg, a particle physicist, is one of those people who sees a bit deeper than most and ties a lot of things together:

Wolfram is allying himself with one side in the ancient struggle between what (with much oversimplification) one might call cultures of the image and cultures of the word. In our own time it has surfaced in the competition between television and newspapers and between graphical user interfaces and command line interfaces in computer operating systems.

Dead Tech

More gloom and doom from the Chicago Trib this morning.

The technology slump analysts once thought would have receded over the summer shows few signs of leaving. Now many observers believe it may last another year—or longer.

"If you can show a manager how he can save hiring a body, you've got a good talking point."

The Scavengers

Here's a amusing story for you. Seems that Associated Credit Service, a collections agency, was brought in on a case involving a woman who'd bounced a check at a restaurant. Wendy Ehringer was more than happy to make the debt good and did so. But after she settled the matter and paid the penalty fee, the nice people at Associated Credit went into high gear:

Four months later, the agency sued Ehringer—claiming she still owed 18 cents plus more than $300 in attorney's fees and other charges.

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