ambrosite

"The translation process is itself an art form."

Without question. I have also read books in several different translations and it is remarkable how different they can be from each other. In his notes, one translator said there is no such thing as "translating" a book from one language to another, what you are really doing is rewriting the book in another language.

Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell is a novel that was required reading in Canada for generations, but it is almost completely unknown in the United States. I don't know if it is a "great" book (I have not read it myself), but many Canadians consider it a classic of Canadian literature.

That doesn't look nearly as bad as I thought it would. I never had a problem with Picard being bald though. Even as a kid he was my favorite character on the show.

Very interesting way of looking at it. I've always wondered what is the evolutionary advantage of consciousness -- if we don't have free will, then why have self awareness at all if we would function just as well without it? Your idea provides one possible answer to that question.

I see this story as a kind of thought experiment about the way in which societies treat minority groups. There have been many societies that felt the oppression of a minority was justified, or even necessary, in exchange for the greater good of the society. This story takes that idea to its logical extreme: a perfect society, with unlimited health and happiness for all, in exchange for the complete and utter oppression and degradation of the smallest possible minority -- a minority of one. Is it still justified? The people who feel it is not are "the ones who walk away from Omelas."

"Only check out the first screen of any news web site. No scrolling down, and no clicking links."

I like that rule. One quick check of the news home page should be enough to tell you if there is anything truly important going on that requires your immediate attention.

It has been a really long time (years) since I had to use any printed book as reference material. For any question I have concerning a random factual matter, I am always able to find an adequate answer online in less time than it would take to reach for a book, look up the topic in the index, and then turn to the appropriate page.

Where I still find books useful is in learning a new subject from scratch. Reading an entire book from cover to cover gives me a broad mental overview of the whole subject, and that is extremely helpful when trying to put the random bits of knowledge I find online into context.

No downvote from me; I agree with what you said and I appreciate your having the courage to say it. The writer of this article has dumped one form of religion and replaced it with another, right down to the wishful thinking about a "super empathetic" supreme intelligence, and hope for immortality.

Strangely enough, this tactic has made me much less inclined to click links for the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any other online publication that uses paywalls. I think, "Hmm, I only have 3 free articles left this month, I don't want to waste one of them on this particular article" and therefore I end up never reading any articles at all.

If you are from Europe then you don't get it. This is mostly an American thing and it has been going on for years. I recall a story from about 10-15 years ago where a couple from Europe (I think they were Dutch but I'm not 100% sure) was arrested in New York City for leaving their child outside on the sidewalk while they entered a cafe for a few minutes and ordered coffee. They could see their child through the cafe windows the entire time. They expressed shock upon being arrested because such behavior was normal and commonplace in their country.

Sinbad should just go ahead and make that movie now. He can then release it with a marketing campaign that says, "The classic childhood favorite, lost for 20 years, now available and fully remastered!"

That's awesome, but to me it is an example of retro design -- that is, a site made to look as if it was built back then, not something that would actually have been built back then. Still very cool though.

I just found my first website (from January 2000) in the Wayback Machine. Not gonna post it here, but it's actually not that bad -- it had a consistent header, sidebar navigation, and a collection of nerdy sci-fi jokes that for some strange reason I thought were hilarious. :/

I actually get a little excited when I see the blink and marquee tags still being used on current websites. (yeah I know, I'm psychotic!)

I love it. I have an unreasonable amount of nostalgia for old websites like this. This is what the whole Web looked like back in the early days, before the usability and design gurus figured out the "best practices" and all sites started looking the same. It really was a wild new frontier. I'm not saying the Web was objectively better back then, but it sure was fun.