New features on Amazon.com

I am really impressed with the new Amazon mp3 website. Not only are the downloads DRM-free, but they are cheaper than Apple’s iTunes store. I had stayed away from iTunes because I wanted some security in case I got a non-Apple media player, but also because I am deluded by rap songs on the iTunes homepage and have to search for the songs I like. In Amazon, I get great recommendations based on music I like. Why hasn’t Apple done this yet??

For those of you who are interested in such things, Amazon is making available an RSS feed with my recent purchases. This is a cool feature, but I think it would be even cooler to browse “John Smith’s Store” which shows everything a person has bought along with their ratings. Obviously, you’d need to build some privacy control into this.

How cool would be to browse a virtual store with all your purchases and your ratings of products? This would make grocery shopping much faster. When can we finally get a kitchen which will reorder products automatically? How great would it be to visit a bookstore with just the books all your friends liked? I’m afraid that the hysteria over privacy rather than technology is the biggest roadblock here.

Make October 20 "Light’s On" day in Los Angeles

The city and county of Los Angeles is organizing a voluntary “lights out” event on October 20 to “fight climate change.” 

If you agree with me that this event is a moral atrocity and a stepping stone to coercive restrictions on human industry, then I urge you to use as much energy as possible from 8-9pm October 20th, 2007.  Shine your lights bright, and run your dishwasher, laundry, vacuum, and any other electronic device you have.  If we don’t take a stand against environmentalism now, we might not have a choice when the next blackout hits because yet another power plant was banned.

(The site is lightsoutla.org, but please don’t link to it.)

Ayn Rand Institute editorial/press release RSS feed

Since the Objectivist Metablog republishes most of ARI’s press releases, I created an RSS feed which allows you to feed those press releases to your newsreader/website:

http://www.objectivismonline.com/Feeds/ARI.php

Please note that the feed contains a copyright notice reproduced verbatim from ARI’s press releases.  You will have to follow the rules in their copyright notice if you want to publish it on your site.

Salon: The religious state of Islamic science

Turkish-American physicist Taner Edis explains why science in Muslim lands remains stuck in the past — and why the Golden Age of Mesopotamia wasn’t so golden after all.

Q:Why did the scientific revolution happen in Christian Europe and not in the Islamic world?
A: … My perception is that a number of factors came together so that scientific institutions in Europe got lucky. They were able to break free of church constraints and unleash a powerful technology that plugged into emerging capitalism at that moment in history. After that, it was too late to go back and strangle science even if somebody wanted to.

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WSJ: Why Rich Kids Don’t Stay Rich

Rich kids, we hear, have it all. Money. Connections. Top educations. Cars and clothes. For those who are part of what Warren Buffett calls “the Lucky Sperm Club,” life is supposedly one long shopping trip with an no-limits ATM card.But what if it’s not? The great thing about America is that your parents’ social status is no guarantee of success.

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Socialist healthcare failing in Canada

NY Times:

Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other politicians remain reluctant to openly propose sweeping changes even though costs for the national and provincial governments are exploding and some cancer patients are waiting months for diagnostic tests and treatment.But a Supreme Court ruling last June — it found that a Quebec provincial ban on private health insurance was unconstitutional when patients were suffering and even dying on waiting lists — appears to have become a turning point for the entire country.

“The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services,” the court ruled.