Memex 1.1

From today’s New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 18 — Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the American military in the war zone, according to new government numbers…

Foreign Policy has published a sobering photo-essay on what happens to our digital junk after it’s been dumped on the developing world.

Thanks to Nick Carr for the pointer.

Sean French pointed me to this:

Like him, I’m baffled by how anyone could have such an encyclopedic knowledge of film. This is not the kind of stuff you find by Googling.

More… Quentin (like Sean, a movie buff) writes: ” I wonder if somebody had access to the close-caption text transcripts for a large movie library – you could search that…”

From Quentin’s blog. Seen in an Antipodean airport.

I often wish I could afford the $6,000 conference fee for the TED conferences.

Here’s why — a riveting talk by Ken Robinson on how School stifles creativity.

This morning’s Observer column…

PG Wodehouse wrote the best evocation I’ve ever read of what it’s like to be totally astonished. He describes the expression on the face of a chap who ‘while picking daisies on the down line, has just received the 4.15 in the small of the back’. Well, I saw that expression this week. It crossed the visage of a friend who is a grizzled veteran of the print business, a man who was once deputy editor of one of our more disgraceful national newspapers. No more cynical observer of human depravity can therefore be imagined. But he was, for an instant, genuinely taken aback…