Web/Tech

Happy 30th to the Walkman, which started the revolution that meant we would never again "have to endure the tedium of doing only one thing at once." And our great disengagement was soon to follow:

Rupert Murdoch goes way out on a limb:

NEW YORK News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch believes that in 10 to 15 years, newspapers will be read mainly on digital devices.

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Not to date myself or anything, but I remember when kids were reluctant to go to summer camp because they didn't want to give up TVs and their record players. So this is my favorite story today, about how much more reluctant modern kids are, for the obvious reason:

Reason magazine has been predicting the end of the postal service so long that even another 2-cent increase for stamps can't get it that excited these days:

As Associate Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward said in a post two years ago, "Reason has been predicting the imminent demise of the post office since at least the '80s, so I suppose we'd better not get too cocky just yet."

Justice Antonin Scalia recently made some remarks that seemed to indicate a less-than-concered attitude about privacy and its possible invasion:

Every single datum about my life is private? That's silly," Scalia [said]. . . .

Scalia said he was largely untroubled by such Internet tracking. "I don't find that particularly offensive," he said. "I don't find it a secret what I buy, unless it's shameful."

Michael Kinsley uses a lot of words to say, "Nobody knows what's going to happen," but he uses them well:

So, I've gotten drunk and stupid once or twice in my life. But there weren't that many witnesses, and none of the people involved have written books about the incidents so far as I know, so my indiscretions have been allowed to dissolve into the mists of time. They haven't haunted the rest of my life. There was this one time, for example, when a bunch of us who were stationed at Fort Hood started drinking on Friday night in San Antonio and somehow ended up in a motel room in Mexico . . . but let's not ruin a good memory.

The plug has been pulled on newspapers. They're already circling the drain. But, wait -- Kindle to the rescue?

Is there really such a thing as "hot news" anymore?

What, nobody hangs out at the feed section of the hardware store to hook up anymore?

MARTINSVILLE, Ind. -- Love can be hard to find for small-town folks, but a Web site is helping change that.

FarmersOnly.com is geared specifically to those who love the rural lifestyle and are searching for someone who shares their culture and beliefs.

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