Jeffrey Goldberg, “Why I’m Not Blogging More About Gaza“:

The more complicated answer was provided by Marc Ambinder, who analyzed my personal situation correctly: Gaza has overdetermined me into paralysis. His point: I actually feel too close to this problem, a problem that symbolizes all problems. It’s true: I have friends in Gaza about whom I worry a great deal; I’ve seen many people killed in Gaza; I’ve served in the Israeli Army in Gaza; I’ve been kidnapped in Gaza; I’ve reported for years from Gaza; I hope my former army doesn’t kill the wrong people in Gaza; I hope Israeli soldiers all leave Gaza alive; I know they’ll be back in Gaza; I think this operation will work; and I have no actual hope that it will work for very long, because nothing works for very long in the Middle East. Gaza is where dreams of reconciliation go to die. Gaza is where the dream of Palestinian statehood goes to die; Gaza is where the Zionist dream might yet die. Or, more to the point, might be murdered. I’m not a J Street moral-equivalence sort of guy. Yes, Israel makes constant mistakes, which I note rather frequently, but this conflict reminds me once again that Israel is up against an implacable force, namely, an interpretation of Islam that disallows the idea of Jewish national equality.

My paralysis isn’t an analytical paralysis. It’s the paralysis that comes from thinking that maybe there’s no way out. Not out of Gaza, out of the whole thing.

The Edge Annual Question — “WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING? / What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” — is here. The usual suspects give their often-too-usual answers, and I (as usual) am taking about a week to read and process it all.

However, I’m already charmed by “Never-Ending Childhood,” the entry from UC-Berkeley psychologist Allison Gopnik:

Humans already have a longer period of protected immaturity

I just read Kottke’s self-assessment of his best posts/threads from 2008. One in particular — a loooong comment thread on the intentional mispronunciation of words — was a surprise to me, since I don’t usually read comments on JK’s blog (often ’cause he doesn’t enable ’em).

But! This reminded me that Snarkmarket has probably got thousands of readers who hardly ever look at the comment threads after they digest the nice juicy post or link elsewhere. So I thought, as Snarkmarket’s long-time commenter-in-chief, I would put together Snarkmarket’s Best Threads of 2008.

Read more…

This really is Lovecraftian:

In an alarming yet little-noticed series of recent studies, scientists have concluded that Canada’s precious forests, stressed from damage caused by global warming, insect infestations and persistent fires, have crossed an ominous line and are now pumping out more climate-changing carbon dioxide than they are sequestering.

This fact might be the best illustration I’ve seen of the unexpected consequences of climate change. “Inexorably rising temperatures are slowly drying out forest lands, leaving trees more susceptible to fires, which release huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.” What a catastrophic chain of events. How frightening to imagine that global warming is powerful and sinister enough to co-opt the very forces that ordinarily keep it in check.

I just became a Boxee alpha tester, and while it isn’t flawless, it’s the best setup I’ve seen yet for watching TV shows and movies on the computer, particularly a computer hooked up to a television screen. Haven’t used its social recommendation engine yet (if you’re using it too, let me know), but the Hulu and Netflix integration set it apart from XBMC, Plex, Front Row, et al.

I watch a lot of computer-based TV, particularly since I don’t have cable. My setup — first-gen MacBook Pro with busted screen, Western Digital 500GB external, Wireless-G router, Samsung 26″ HDTV, Apple remote, and a Logitech keyboard (DiNovo wireless for Mac). I’ve got a DVI-HDMI cable and a simple stereo output running between the notebook and the HDTV. Best experiences – 30 Rock on Netflix and Hulu, The Daily Show at ComedyCentral.com, all five seasons of The Wire backed up on my external drive, and Yo Gabba Gabba through iTunes.

I’ve been mulling over a bunch of different ideas about this computer-media server-television hybrid, but first I guess I’ll just ask the ‘matrix — how do you guys watch TV with/without your computer? What do you like or not like about it? What are you still trying to figure out?

All of these insights have their deep and shallow versions.

1. Practical knowledge is impossible without knowing what information to discard.
2. Vapor in the atmosphere makes light visible.
3. Every cuisine is the triumph of centuries of vernacular chemistry.
4. The idea of the future is a lens that brings spaces closer together.
5. All of our neighborhoods hold familiar secrets, depths we’ve never plumbed.
6. Consider your arguments and carefully circumscribe your conclusion. Then exceed those limits by at least twenty percent.
7. Aesthetically, we respond to nuanced humanity and inhuman purity, the shaving mirror and the telescope, the contingency of a moment and the point of view of the eternal universe. Everything else rings false.
8. An unheralded virtue: vigilance against an urge for thrift, misplaced.
9. Any task of memory or thought benefits from an association (even an artificial one) with vision.
10. Maps fool us into believing that cities exist in two dimensions, when they actually persist in (at least) four.
11. Food, Books, Weather, Conversation — excellence in these four things is an apologia for an unhappy memory or an indifferent universe.

Thanks, Robin.