Random bits
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008With the downfall of three major banks recently (Bear Stearns, and now Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch), we may be seeing the death of “Wall Street” - i.e., the the end of New York as the financial capital of the world. Nicole Gelinas writes that it could have a disastrous impact on New York City as a whole, given that financial firms currently represent about a third of the city’s economy. I guess we’ll see.
Author David Foster Wallace’s suicide last week probably would have been much bigger news had it happened ten years ago. His novel “Infinite Jest” is still one of my favorite books, and, in my opinion, may be the Great American Novel, if such a thing has ever been written.
Everyone’s talking about the U.S. presidential campaign, but no one has mentioned the that the Obama-Biden ticket is noteworthy for being (I believe) the first to have a name composed of alternating vowels and consonants.
I really like Google Chrome, Google’s new browser - it might be the fastest browser I’ve ever used.
I’m also a fan of the Samsung Instinct, the iPhone clone for non-AT&T users - I just got one last week, and emailing and texting are a breeze.
The Technology Review has their annual “Young Innovators Under 35″ issue, and once again I’m not on the list. But another article in the same issue (registration required) mentions a site, SNPedia, that uses my software. So that’s nice.