Quentin is game for anything challenging or dangerous. Bungee-jumping, for example. And now this. At £695 it’s not cheap. There’s a two-wheel version with seat for £699.95 which would be more my style. About the same price as an Apple Watch Series 2! Unlike the watch, though, it’s illegal on UK pavements and roads.
Quentin’s other electric vehicle is indeed a BMW.
Aw, isn’t that nice. The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum is switching to solar power to save money.
Good news from the Electronic Freedom Foundation:
European Union Announces Plan for Privacy Wall Around U.S.
European Union Commissioner for Justice Vera Jourova announced plans today to permanently protect Europeans’ data from U.S. government spying with the newest transnational data agreement: Privacy Wall. Once approved by the European Commission, the EU will begin constructing a thirty-foot wall around the United States. Only U.S. tech companies that comply with EU privacy restrictions and prohibit U.S. government access to their data will be given fiber optic grappling hooks to transport Europeans’ data across the Atlantic, over the wall, and back to their U.S.-based servers. U.S. lawmakers appeared unfazed by U.S. companies’ complaints that Privacy Wall will effectively kill their business abroad, but they responded to alarm bells raised by officials in the intelligence community who are concerned about losing generalized access to Europeans’ data.
Hmmm… Pity it’s April 1st.
Jimmy Breslin died last week at the age of 88. May he rest in peace: his writing gave some of us a lot of pleasure. The NYT gave him his due in a nice obit. Sample:
Love or loathe him, none could deny Mr. Breslin’s enduring impact on the craft of narrative nonfiction. He often explained that he merely applied a sportswriter’s visual sensibility to the news columns. Avoid the scrum of journalists gathered around the winner, he would advise, and go directly to the loser’s locker. This is how you find your gravedigger.
“So you go to a big thing like this presidential assassination,” he said in an extended interview with The New York Times in 2006. “Well, you’re looking for the dressing room, that’s all. And I did. I went there automatic.”
And if you’re wondering what that refers to, here’s his column on the funeral of JFK.
Interesting snippet from Tom Ricks:
I interviewed Eric Schmidt of Google fame, who has been leading a civilian panel of technologists looking at how the Pentagon can better innovate. He said something I hadn’t heard before, which is that artificial intelligence helps the defense better than the offense. This is because AI always learns, and so constantly monitors patterns of incoming threats. This made me think that the next big war will be more like World War I (when the defense dominated) than World War II (when the offense did).
“In one of my first articles, I used the phrase ‘in terms of.’ He insisted on deleting it, because, he explained, writers used it as filler when they thought there was some relation between A and B but did not know what the relation was.”
Robert Darnton, remembering Bob Silvers, founder of The New York Review of Books, who has died after a short illness.
First drafts don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be written!
Lovely passage in David French’s review of Tyler Cowen’s new book — The Complacent Class:
This weekend, my wife and oldest daughter visited her first-choice college, the University of Tennessee. There was one curious moment in an otherwise wonderful weekend. The tour guide noted that the university was there to help students get through the trauma of exams. It brought in masseuses to massage away the stress. It rolls out a sheet of paper, passes out crayons, and lets the students express their rage against algebra. Oh, and it vowed to bring in puppies, so students could cuddle something cute to take the edge off their anxiety.
