Articles+and+Essays
Douglas Adams
This guys wasvery entertaining!
I like looking at things from different angles, and this guy has an interesting take on things:Artificial God. I'm not saying that I agree with his 'radical atheist' view of religion, I just like his description of human history from the view point ofsand. Actually, this isn't an article or an essay, but rather a speech.
Summary: During thefirst age of sand we made telescopic lenses. We found the universe was different from what we thought. Thesecond age of sand, we made microscopic lenses. We found the universe is even more different from what we thought.Third age of sand: we made silicon from sand. Using comptuers we are able to see how complex things can be made from very simple things, i.e. we have the first real-world example of evolution.Fourth age of sand, we used it to build fiber optics and finally put our computers to good use. Using the internet, we have made a new way to communicate. A way that allows the average person can make and impact on the world.
Piracy
A very interstingcommentary on Piracy by author Tim O'Reilly. O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly & Associates, thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. He's also a victim of piracy, as his eBooks are readily available on P2P networks
Summary: O'Reilly believes that piracy is no different than the phenomenon of shoplifting: an annoying fact of business life. The RIAA and MPAA believe that piracy will be the death of all media. O'Reilly likens the difference between downloading music,video, books from free services like kaaza to taping a movie off of public television. Despite the minority of people who do this, there are millions more who pay for HBO, Pay-Per-View and DVD's. Why do they do this? Because when you pay for something you receive something better. Kaaza, and the like, will force companies to produce a service superior to Kaaza's. And this new pay-service will be the future of media publishing and consumption.
Ryan Barrett
He's got a few pieces ofwriting...stories, rants, you name it!
Paul Graham
Hewrites his opinion and outlook on a bunch of topics.
The Death of Meritocracy
This somewhat harshstudy attempting to prove that UCLA medical school no longer uses affirmative action in selecting its students. Unfortunately, the study found that this public university's admissions committee weighs non-merit based factors when deciding who should be offered a place at the school. I can't say I know enough about these policies to have an informed opinion, this just seems like an unenforced law. If you have an opinion on the subject, I'm all ears!