David Pogue has a thorough review of Amazon.com’s Kindle at the NYTimes.com. There’s been alot written about the Kindle, but I like Pogue’s review for how he points out all little details you may want to know before you buy it. He’s a good tech writer.

But what I want to highlight is something he addresses towards the end of the review, where he asks and answers the question:

“So, for the thousandth time: is this the end of the printed book?

Don’t be silly.

The Kindle has the usual list of e-book perks: dictionary, text search, bookmarks, clippings, MP3 music playback and six type sizes (baby boomers, arise). No trees die to furnish paper for Kindle books, either.

But as traditionalists always point out, an e-book reader is a delicate piece of electronics. It can be lost, dropped or fried in the tub. You’d have to buy an awful lot of $10 best sellers to recoup the purchase price. If Amazon goes under or abandons the Kindle, you lose your entire library. And you can’t pass on or sell an e-book after you’ve read it.

Another group of naysayers claims that the Kindle has missed its window. E-book programs are thriving on the far more portable (and far more popular) iPhones and iPod Touches. Surely smartphones, which already serve as cameras, calculators and Web browsers, will become the dominant e-book readers as well.

The point everyone is missing is that in Technoland, nothing ever replaces anything. E-book readers won’t replace books. The iPhone won’t replace e-book readers. Everything just splinters. They will all thrive, serving their respective audiences.”

I put in bold what I think is crucial. Actors still act on stage despite movies and television, musicians still perform concerts despite recordings, radio and YouTube videos, and readers will still read books regardless of the quality and quantity of e-books that come out. The publishing industry will be affected, of course, but that is a different matter. When it comes to the printed page, there will still be people who long and look for that, and there will still be books to meet that demand and desire.

Ryan Lizza has a good profile of Rahm Emanuel in the New Yorker (The Gatekeeper).

The whole article is good, but I liked this part:

“They have never worked the legislative process,” Emanuel said of critics like the Times columnist Paul Krugman, who argued that Obama’s concessions to Senate Republicans—in particular, the tax cuts, which will do little to stimulate the economy—produced a package that wasn’t large enough to respond to the magnitude of the recession. “How many bills has he passed?”

It reminds me of Stalin’s critique of the Pope during World War II. (It’s both a very bad and a very good metaphor. 🙂 )

Emanuel will move the troops up the field, but he will do it in his own way. He knows how.

(RED)WIRE, as the site says,

“…is a digital music magazine with one very important difference. It not only changes the way
music is discovered, it provides medicine for people who need it in Africa.”

(RED)Wire states that it will provide you with weekly delivery of great music delivered weekly for a cost of $5/month. The best part is that half of that goes to buy medicine for people living with HIV in Africa.

If you are already buying music online, consider buying some via (RED)WIRE – an online music magazine that saves lives.

One of my favourite mashups is this cross of Run DMC’s It’s Like That with some (sped up) Russian soldiers dancing. You have to see it.

Brilliant.