Social Media: If newspapers disappear, will it matter? — response to Goodin’s piece: The reality is that this kind of public-interest journalism has never been supported by the public.
Seth Goodin: When newspapers are gone, what will you miss? — Newspapers took two cents of journalism and wrapped in ninety-eight cents of overhead and distraction. The magic of the web, the reason you should care about this even if you don’t care about the news, is that when the marginal cost of something is free and when the time to deliver it is zero, the economics become magical.
Earth2Tech: U.S. Utilities Support 80% Emissions Reduction by 2050
CSMonitor: Five ways Bush’s policies changed world
Finished “Guns, Steel, and Germs” by Jared Diamond. It attempted to explain why different parts of the world developed at different rates. He looks at various factors including the number of mammals in the area, the diversity of plants and the orientation of the continent (east/west compared with a more varied temperature of a north/south orientation). He viewed those factors as being more of a factor than issues such as religion, race or nature of the people. His book won a Pulitzer Prize.